Visual merchandising is a key element when it comes to promoting your products in-store.  It helps to get people inside your store, lead them around to all the right places, and put your products front and center. Every retail space needs to use visual merchandising to get the most out of their store. Whether you have a permanent store, a pop-up or even a market stall, you can use visual merchandising to influence people. It aims to use principles of psychology to get people to take certain actions and follow a particular path. Here’s some more about what visual merchandising is and why it’s important to understand and use it.

What Is Visual Merchandising?

Visual merchandising is the practice of creating visual displays to grab people’s attention and to influence their behavior. It might involve the use of mannequins to display clothes, window displays, wall displays, point of sale displays and even just the way that products are presented on shelves. However, visual merchandising isn’t just about isolated displays or product sections on their own. The whole store needs to come together to present a visual feast for the eyes that essentially convinces people to buy things. Some stores use a specialist visual merchandiser to do this for them, but many rely on their regular store staff to do this.

The Importance of Visual Merchandising

Why is visual merchandising important? Visual merchandising is one of the main ways that stores should be getting people to come into their store and buy stuff. Staff can help to sell things once people are inside, but it’s the less obvious things that often get people to buy. In fact, many people don’t enjoy a sales experience that’s too forceful, and they want to be left to shop on their own. This means that visual merchandising becomes even more important, having more of a subtle influence over your customers.

Perhaps one of the most important purposes of visual marketing is the use of window displays. Displays in your windows help to tempt people into your store, which is vital if you want to ensure you get enough customers. Brick and mortar businesses can find it more difficult to survive in this day and age, which is why they need to do everything possible to get customers. Visual displays in your windows can help you to get people firstly to stop and take a look. Once you’ve caught their eye, your displays need to convince them to come inside. When they’re inside, you need to catch their attention, but without having too many things happening at once. There’s a lot to think about, from where to put displays to the best designs.

Types of Visual Merchandising

There are several ways that you might use visual merchandising in your store.

Some of them include:

Window displays

• Organizing products on shelves
• Interactive displays
• Point-of-sale displays (next to the cash register)
• Styling clothes on mannequins
• Posters and other graphic design
• Seasonal displays and decorations

All of these things do many things for your store, from enhancing your branding to encouraging more sales.

Benefits of Visual Merchandising

There are many benefits to effective visual merchandising. Well-designed window displays are one of your key tools for getting people to come into your store. You can keep things exciting by switching up your displays based on the season, new products, special events or anything else that inspires you. Stay on top of trends to see what people currently enjoy so you can use it in your displays.

Using visual marketing, you can place displays where they will be most effective. For example, many stores use the technique of placing small items in point-of-sale displays. These are intended to be inexpensive extras that customers can grab at the last second. It could be chocolate bars, chapsticks, small toys, accessories or other items. The inexpensive nature of the products makes it easy for people to make a last-minute decision to buy a little something extra.

Another important aspect of visual merchandising is simply putting products where people can find them. Visual merchandising forces you to think about the layout of your store and the best ways to organize your shelves. You also need to think about where to put displays so that people will spot them from across the store and come over to take a look.

Visual merchandising is a vital part of selling your products in a brick and mortar store. You should use a range of tactics to attract and sell to customers.