How many individual signs do have in your shop? How many of these signs do you think your
customers read? If there’s many, probably none!
I love to see a new shop opening on the high street,
especially if it’s an independent or new brand to our shores. At this point of newness everything looks as
it was intended by the designer, everything will be clean and free of clutter
and the message to the customer will be clear and the brand identity understood.
But once the business has been operating for a few months
the chances are more stuff will appear, more products to entice us to spend and
unfortunately, more signs to promote new brands, new services, new promotions,
new special offers… But here lies the problem, customers don’t read. In fact
the only time they tend to read anything is in the doctor’s surgery while they
try to occupy their minds waiting for their appointment or, if they have a food
allergy, checking the ingredients on packaging.
Over time we all tend to accumulate stuff but for some
reason shops, and in particular independents tend to accumulate signage. The more signs that get added the more
difficult it becomes to inform your customers about a new offer or product
because at this point additional POS (point of sale) just gets lost with all
the other messages and becomes totally ineffective.
There are usually three types of signage that you’ll find
in a shop. The first will be the shop name which is there to strengthen the
brand identity, the second will be internal signposting (hopefully aligned with
the branding) telling the customer where the main product categories are, cash
& wrap etc but then comes all the other stuff – suppliers point of sale,
credit card companies, promotions, special offers, information signs, health
& safety stuff, organisation membership signs and please don’t get me
started on window stickers and shop doors covered in posters and other stuff.
Why anyone thinks putting messages on a shop door (other than open/closed and
opening times) is beyond me. Doors are for customers to enter and exit not
block while they stop and linger to read something, which as I’ve already said they
probably won’t anyway!
So my advice is to take a good look at your shop signage
and decide if it’s time to do a bit of de-cluttering and editing. You don’t
need to tell everyone everything. If there ever was a time to apply ‘less is
more’ to your company ideology then this is it!
Keep within you brand guidelines, keep it visual, keep it simple and
keep it to a minimum…
All the best
Peter
#visualcommunicator #retailconsultant
#designer
tel 07907 691711
email info@artysmith2.com
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