5 Things to Know Before Buying time display units

There’s no denying it, good retail displays are essential in your stores. They entice your customers, engage them in new products, build brand awareness and drive more sales. However, creating them can be daunting for even the most experienced marketer. Whether in a new retail marketing role or seeking fresh inspiration, this blog is the ultimate guide to creating a compelling retail display. And, we’ve found some great examples that stand out on the high street for all the right reasons.

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What is a good retail display?

A good retail display must be creative and grab the attention of passing target customers with engaging, readable content. In addition, it needs to be easily visible, in excellent condition and provide messaging that resonates with shoppers making purchase decisions. 

While this may sound simple, great retail displays require nuance and a crisp understanding of your audience. So let’s explore it in greater depth.

What is a retail display?

Firstly, let’s refresh what a retail display is.

A retail display is a piece of physical marketing, fixture or in-store area designed to attract and engage customers, showcase merchandise and drive more purchases. It can be almost anything that presents or promotes your products or services. 

“Retail Display” also refers to combining physical structures and marketing materials with other psychological marketing tactics. For example, using certain colours and imagery, engaging the five senses and strategic floor planning. We’re talking creatively designed free-standing display units, bold shelf talkers, interactive in-store areas – the lot.

Why are retail displays so important?

With up to 76% of purchase decisions being made in-store, retail displays can be the final push to secure a sale. Whether executed on a big or small scale, the results can be outstanding. For example, a recent study found that placing products in new displays can increase sales by up to 478% – yes, you read that right, 478%!

They are like your additional (but silent and usually stationary) salespeople. They offer a quick and effective way to grab your customers’ attention, showcase your brand, offer promotions and make your products and services stand out from competitors. We know that they work, but studies such as this one, show just how effective they can be.

We look at it like this: imagine your retail display is a person that you haven’t seen in months. You might know them well or you might have only met them a couple of times, regardless, when you see them, you make instant judgments… just like you do in stores with products and their displays. Have they caught your attention? How are they presented? Do you want to know more about them?

With time and big budgets going into retail display planning, design, production and execution, it’s vital that they work. They need to send out the right message to your customers. You need them to have the desired impact: more sales.

6 steps to creating a great retail display.

1) Build the foundations.

Understanding your target customers is the first step in creating a good retail display. How do they behave? What appeals to them? How do they navigate through your stores? We’ve explored different shopper demographics in more detail in this article.

While you likely have this information already, utilising it can ensure your displays engage the right consumers. Ultimately, shopper insights should inform everything from the colours, imagery and messaging you use to product arrangement and lighting. And let’s not forget the importance of coordinating your in-store displays with what’s happening in your online marketing.

With clear aims and foundations, you can focus on other visual merchandising tactics. For example, the Rule of 3 (that displaying products in groups of three is more engaging), creating displays for eye level, displaying products in optimal locations, and how often you refresh displays.

2) Know your retail displays.

Understanding and using the right retail displays is vital – particularly when they will impact your customer’s journey through your store, and you can position them strategically. So, what are some of the most popular types of display?

Window Displays

The eye into your store. Your window displays should provide a taster of all the exciting things you have to offer and drive footfall.

Entryway Displays

The first thing that customers see when stepping foot inside a store. The Entryway display is perfect for seasonal goods and announcing new products and sales.

Standalone Displays

FSDUs are great for stopping shoppers in their tracks and encouraging impulse buys! Dump bins can save space and often house a lot of merchandise.

Endcap Displays

Endcap displays sit in the space between aisles. They are ideal for your best product promotions and creative brand or individual product takeovers.

Tabletop Displays

Tabletop displays are brilliant for more immersive experiences and adding a lifestyle/aspirational feel to your displays. Or, they can be great for stacking essential items for shoppers to grab on the go!

Display Cabinets

Display cabinets are ideal for jewellery and other luxury items, these enclosed displays can help to make your items look more special, expensive and/or beautiful.

Gondola Displays

Gondola displays are great for regularly changing seasonal products and campaign materials. They offer flexibility as they can be arranged to showcase products of varying sizes.

Banner Stands

Quick, effective and portable, banner stands offer a large graphic display and can be used to share information with customers, tell brand stories and direct attention to certain products or deals.

Shelf Talkers & Wobblers

These smaller in-store marketing tools stand out from the aisle or display unit to attract customers’ attention. They are great for highlighting new products and offers.

Signage

From countertop posters and A-frames to large lifestyle wall graphics and overhead posters, signage can draw attention to your products and enhance all your displays.

For more information, including the pros and cons of each display and when to use them, check out our latest article exploring the different types of retail displays.

3) Embrace localisation

Every individual store is unique. Your retail displays and product promotions can tap into local sales opportunities. From geographical location to consumer demographics, micro trends and local events, knowing and exploiting these demands can help you to better connect with customers and drive more sales.

Grab a free copy of our ebook Store Profiling: The Complete Guide to learn more about utilising store space.

The ultimate optimisation of your retail displays is pinpointing the products and messaging that will be the most effective in that specific store at any time. Unlike online, this is no easy feat but with the right tech – such as Colateral’s Artwork Automation platform – you can localise your national campaigns while maintaining brand consistency.

Discover our 8 tips for marketing localisation for multi-site retailers.

4) Be inspired by great examples

Here are some great retail displays we’ve spotted in stores. Although they use different techniques to attract and engage customers, depending on their store type and objectives, we think they all do it well.

Helping shoppers make a decision.

These campaigns show how effective seasonal displays can be, whether happening store-wide or in certain departments. They use multiple techniques to grab customer attention, from bright and engaging designs to FSDUs, shelf talkers and posters and encourage impulse buys. However, a clear theme is reflected in the displays, and all of the products are well stocked and positioned to have maximum impact on the customers entering or walking around the store.

How it could look in your home.

These aspirational displays catch the eye with perfectly arranged and colour-coordinated merchandise, signage and props. This arrangement encourages shoppers to stop and look at individual items. Using emotive language on the displays, they promote more luxury purchases for loved ones and ‘sell the dream’ of what these products could look like in your own home. The different levels of display helps to showcase the products in a balanced and beautiful way.

Encouraging shoppers to get involved.

While this may look like quite a simple design, the signage telling shoppers to ‘find your fit’ personalises the display and encourages them to stop and learn about the individual products. The power of three is used in both the graphic and the visual merchandising to draw the eye in and make it more visually appealing. The hanging jeans make shoppers want to stop and touch the fabric, and everything is well-stocked and easy to read.

5) Get local insight from store teams.

There is so much more to good retail displays than communicating what goes where (and when) in stores. Your store teams understand what is happening on the ground. They have a wealth of information about in-store demand, customer experiences and how your retail displays work.

Meanwhile, head office can see the sales spikes from certain campaigns and every store’s locality information. Enabling store teams and head office to communicate seamlessly and work in tandem to optimise your displays can deliver incredible results.

Store data can be easily collected and stored in dynamic store profiles, ready to be harnessed for future campaigns. For example, damaged or missing displays can be reported and rectified rapidly. Colateral allows stores to order whatever they need instantly! And, head office teams can better understand (and even see) what’s happening in each store, all helping them to improve the customer experience.

6) Ensure displays are right in every location.

Multiple teams are involved in bringing your displays to life, from the initial planning and creative decisions to the production, communication and installation in-store. However, when it comes to good retail displays, execution and maintenance of your displays – such as restocking items and refreshing display elements – can make or break your campaigns.

Research has found that 68% of consumers believe a store’s signage alone reflects its products or services. You need your displays to be implemented on time to coordinate with your other marketing activities and look incredible year-round. Having tools to easily manage and monitor display execution and condition across the store estate is a must.

Additional reading:
3-Axis vs. 5-Axis CNC Machining: What to Know - Xometry
Grooved Couplings: The Fastest Way to Connect Pipe
Understanding BSP Fittings: How to Measure Them Properly

You will get efficient and thoughtful service from California Triangle.

It sounds simple, but we’ve found that most displays are only 40-60% accurate. Check out our guide to achieving 100% display compliance in every location. 

So what is a good retail display?

A good retail display needs to be creative and grab the attention of passing target customers with interesting, legible content. It needs to be correct. There is nothing worse than a display with incorrect dates, themes, and featured products in a bad location (don’t add to the examples of in-store marketing faux pas). It needs to be in great condition, with all of the available marketing areas filled correctly and anything worn, damaged or missing quickly replaced. And, to have the best impact, it needs to be executed as planned by the Head Office, with the flexibility to allow location-specific intel to be utilised by store teams.

It’s not a lot to ask, is it?

Well, actually, it is. You need considered creatives, the right displays in the right places, brilliant communication with your store teams and eyes on the ground when you can’t be there in person.

You need your retail displays to do as much of the hard work as possible – and know which displays work best for you and why. It’s far too much to manage without the help of some purpose-built tech.

At Colateral, we ensure your retail displays shine in every store. Whether you’re running a store-wide sale, new product launches or one-off immersive experiences, you can plan and manage in-store campaigns in a simple system. Get in touch to find out more.

When it comes to visual merchandising, retail displays are where most of the action happens. Knowing the different types of retail displays and how they are used across a variety of product categories is critical to making an impact on sales.

In this post, we will first give a brief overview of what retail displays are and how they fit into a brand’s visual merchandising strategy. We will then go into detail on three categories of retail displays: standalone POP displays and store shelving displays, which are common in the CPG industry, followed by clothing displays, which can differ from CPG retail displays due to the nature of the product.

Retail Display Definition

A retail display is anything in a store that houses or promotes your product. A visual merchandising strategy focuses heavily on the appearance of retail displays, as they are often the first point of contact between your product and the shopper.

Any brand that sells at retail will use retail displays. Visual merchandisers are usually the ones to design and implement retail displays and are also in charge of making sure the displays maintain their appearance over time.

Standalone POP Display: Explanation and Examples

A POP display, also known as a point of purchase display, is any store display that draws attention to your product.

A standalone display is a type of POP display that exists separately from traditional aisle shelves. These displays often appear in the middle of large store aisles called “action alleys,” or anywhere else in the store where there is open space. Standalone displays play a huge role in a brand’s visual merchandising strategy and should be carefully designed to stand out within a retailer.

Here are some examples:

Dump Bins

Dump bins certainly live up to their name — they are literally giant bins in stores that are commonly stocked with individually packaged products. You’ll often see them full of candy other small products that provoke impulse buys.

A great advantage of dump bins is that they are standalone displays, and can be strategically placed to be seen or interacted with from all angles. They are also usually made out of cardboard or are otherwise customizable, so bins are not only a great opportunity to get creative with how you project your brand’s image, but they’re also easy for your field team or distributor to ship and set up..

Freestanding Displays

Freestanding displays are similar to dump bins in that they are also standalone displays and can be interacted with from 360 degrees. That being said, they are more organized in appearance than dump bins, and often neatly display slightly larger products on shelves or hooks. Like dump bins, freestanding displays are also commonly made out of cardboard, so they are a great chance to experiment with some attention-grabbing shapes or designs.

Entryway Displays

Displaying your products near entryways can put your brand at the top of shoppers' lists before they even see your competitors. Entryway displays are effective at encouraging impulse buys, as customers at the beginning of their shopping trip are entering the store ready to spend money. If you’re lucky enough to be in a place with nice weather, setting up an outdoor entryway display is a great way to catch shoppers’ attention before they even get inside.

Gondola Displays

Gondolas are two-sided, standalone shelving units that also appear in larger, more open areas of a store. They have adjustable shelves, which makes them customizable to accommodate different sized products. While they typically are made with steel frames and pegboard, there are options for brands to promote their product through graphics and an attractive color scheme.

Display Cases

Retail display cases are a type of standalone display that is closed in on all sides by glass or clear plastic. To access the products, shoppers may have to speak to a store associate to retrieve the item from the case for them. Other times, if the case is serving an ornamental purpose, shoppers can find the product on its home shelf. Because of their security, higher-end products will often find their way into these displays.

Brands can design unique cases by displaying their product in a nontraditional way. For example, if you are selling perfume or lotion, including objects that represent the fragrance of your product will present an aesthetic that is simultaneously attractive and informative to the shopper.

Window Displays

Window displays, also known as window dressings, are exactly what they sound like — product displays that are set up in the window of a retailer. These displays are extremely lucrative as they represent the retailer and can be the deciding factor on whether a shopper enters the store in the first place. If given the opportunity to occupy a window display for your product, it is imperative to create a visually appealing design that will positively represent your product and the retailer.

Banner Stands

Banner stands are standalone signage that brands can place throughout the store to feature their product or announce a promotion. Banner stands are inexpensive, mobile, and effectively catch shoppers’ attention. When creating a banner stand, always remember that less is more — you don’t want to overwhelm the shopper, so avoid using too many colors or providing more written information than what the shopper would be willing to read. If your banner stand is not located next to your product, you can include a message within the graphic on where it can be found in the store.

Retail Shelving Display: Explanation and Examples

Shelving displays are any type of display that exists on a traditional store shelf. They utilize the space provided by these shelving units to showcase products, feature signage, and interact with shoppers.

End Cap Displays

End cap displays are the shelves at the end of a two-sided retail shelf which the shopper passes by when going from one aisle to another. Like free standing displays, end caps allow you to place your product in relevant areas beyond typical aisle shelf space. They also give you a prime location to attract a lot of eyes — shoppers walking through action alley can see your products without even going down the aisle, giving you a major advantage over your competitors.

Shelf Talkers

Shelf talkers, also known as “hang-tags,” are the promotional signage you see sticking out perpendicularly to aisle shelves. They’re useful for making your brand stand out within the aisle, educating the buyer about the product, and guiding the customer directly to your shelf. Shelf talkers are also great for pointing out promotions or sales. When designing a shelf talker, it is good practice to use colors and messaging that are very similar to the packaging of your product. This way, it is easy for the shopper to make an association with your product and the sign.

Clip Strips

Clip strips are long, vertically hanging strips with hooks that are ideal for holding small products. Using clip strips gives you a chance to get your products on shelves beyond your primary placement, or simply to add a few extra facings to the SKUs you already have. They are ideal for cross-merchandising, as you can set up a clip strip display of chips next to salsa, or lip balm next to other cosmetics.

Header Cards

These signs usually appear on the shelf tag, next to a product’s price. Header cards can help differentiate your brand from similar items nearby on the shelf. Similar to shelf talkers, brands can use these cards to educate the buyer, point out promotions, or even suggest a way to use the product. This small shelf display can go a long way, as the shopper sees the information you provide on the card as they are checking the price. With the right messaging, you can convince shoppers to go with your product over your competitor’s.

Clothing Display: Explanation and Examples

While clothing displays sometimes use similar components as CPG displays, there are some key differences between creating displays for apparel merchandising as opposed to something like grocery merchandising.

Garment Racks

Garment racks are one of the most common types of clothing displays. Still, not all garment racks are the same — some are circular, some have multiple levels to hang items on, and some include shelves with them as well. Additionally, merchandisers don’t just toss the product onto the shelf and walk away. There are many ways to organize clothing on a garment rack to capture a shopper’s attention.

For example, grouping items by color is visually appealing and also makes it easy for the buyer to see their options. If you are working with tiered racks, cross merchandising garments will give the shopper an idea of the outfit they can put together with your products.

Display Tables

Display tables are also a very common clothing display, likely due to their versatility. Display tables can host a myriad of products, from apparel to accessories to jewelry. One benefit of display tables is the amount of room they provide for merchandisers to get creative. Create themes around your brand, the season, or holidays by incorporating signage and decorative elements.

Mannequins

Mannequins are the embodiment of visual merchandising. They display products in a context that gives the shopper a clear visual of the product in use. To capitalize on this visualization, merchandisers should use the best of their products to create trendy outfits shoppers will want to wear themselves. Mannequins definitely promote impulse buys as they showcase to the shopper multiple items that they may not have been shopping for in the first place. Thus, be sure to have your products nearby, as there is nothing worse than missing out on a sale because the shopper couldn’t locate your product.

Retail Display Best Practices

Designing and implementing retail displays is hard work, but the potential return on investment is well worth it. From shelf talkers to gondolas to mannequins, deciding which retail display is best for your product might seem daunting, so here are a few best practice takeaways to help you move forward in your visual merchandising strategy:

• Using creative signage and messaging with your display will get you noticed by the shopper.

• Endcaps, entryway displays, freestanding displays, and window displays get you more exposure to the shopper.

• Dump bins, clip strips, and table displays are ideal for displaying smaller products.

• There are multiple options for improving your product’s shelf presence by using things like shelf talkers and header cards.

• The effectiveness of a retail display doesn’t rely on how extravagant it is — even the simplest displays can increase sales as long as they are part of a solid visual merchandising strategy.

  Contact us to discuss your requirements of time display units. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.