One of the easiest ways to boost sales is to take advantage of your silent sales person – that is your visual merchandising. Visual merchandising can convert a shopper into one who stops and walks into your store instead of one who continues to walk on by.
The reality is we only have 3 seconds to grab a customer’s attention.
The way to grab a shopper’s attention is to make the most of the Hot Spots in your store. Research has shown that a well planned hot spot can dramatically increase sales.
So what is a hot spot?
Hot spots are focal points in a store — the areas at which a customer naturally looks before or after entering a store or while turning into an aisle. In these hot spots you would feature key promotions, best sellers, or high profit items with a strong sign, a graphic, a display, or lighting to help direct the customer’s eye.
Hot spots include display windows, the store entrance, demo areas, end caps, bulk stacks, and display tables.
Each store has a number of areas that can provide better selling opportunities than others. These usually occur at points with the best exposure to shoppers. This is why they are referred to as hot spots. The hot spots tend to be those that get the heaviest traffic, adjacent to the entrance and exits.
As displays in these areas tend to be very visible, they can lend themselves to impulse shopping and should be changed frequently. Frequency can vary from business to business and with the time of year.
Ideas when merchandising your Hot Spots:
- Plan your display
- Must have enough product for the display to keep it full and to provide impact
- Present merchandise at customer’s eye level
- Display your promotions in Hot Spots
- Hot Spots need to be managed and be re-merchandised on a regular basis
