Psychology of Visual Merchandising

Visual merchandising is a way of making your products appealing to customers through their appearance. Based on the psychology and desires of customers, you can use visual merchandising to draw attention to your business, help customers flow through the layout of the store and accentuate products and their uses through placement, lighting and context.

If you are resourceful and creative, you can use branding to your advantage without a huge budget. Branding uses a simple image or logo to get the attention of the customer. The challenge is that your brand needs to be appealing and stimulating to stand out and grab attention. On the other hand, you don't want it to be so detailed or intense that it’s overbearing or hard to comprehend. Brands can catch the attention of customers in front of a sign or display, on fliers or even attention-grabbing packaging. One of the most intelligent ways to use branding is to get other customers to display your brand on bags, hats, t-shirts and other specialty items so that potential customers can see it as desirable.

Set up your store in a natural, intriguing and easy-to-navigate manner. If you have a bestselling product, it shouldn't be in the back of the store or too high to reach. However, other layout elements are more subtle; you can't simply rely on the best-sellers to completely carry your business. Set up a store that eliminates congestion, guides customers and caters to needs and questions. For example, if there is a crowded section of your store, space it out so that customers won't be hesitant to walk through it. If there is a section or product that intrigues and mystifies customers, have staff nearby to answer questions.

The way in which you arrange products is crucial. The point is to draw attention to individual products by where you put them, what they are next to, the shape of the shelf they’re on, the lighting and other environmental factors. Products can look more appealing in the right context. For example, no grocery store puts seafood and cake next to each other. It's obvious that this combination is unappealing and doesn't make sense to the mind of a shopper. It makes much more sense to put like products together, highlighting the way in which you might use them. For example, pasta, tomato sauce, garlic and basil look good on a display together.

You want customers to be able to derive all of the most important information about a product from just looking at the way it’s displayed. You might use a sign, a tag or another way of communicating the features of the product. Go for simplicity and highlight the most important information. For example, the price, features and perhaps a display of people using the product can be useful. Too much information, however, can be burdensome and confusing. The point is to give customers the information they need to decide if they want the product, so they can just pick it up, pay for it and go.