Setting the Tone: How Retail Display Installation Shapes Buying Decisions

Learn the four rules of retail design and installation

You’re looking for a new pair of shoes and decide to visit Urban Treads at your local mall. Everywhere you look, there are shoes. Boxes piled haphazardly on the floor, some open with just one shoe inside. It’s shoe chaos. You start to feel a bit overwhelmed and even panicked. You know there are some great shoes here – but you just can’t find them. So you leave, feeling exasperated and disappointed.

But lucky for you, a few stores over you see a new store called Kick Flip. With a first glance through the bright window display you see modern shelving units filled with shoes organized by type. As you walk in your heart rate actually slows down, your hands unclench, and you find yourself wandering the aisles picking up more shoes than you had planned on. You leave feeling satisfied and excited about wearing your new shoes (you may have bought multiple pairs).

This is the power of retail display installation. Retail displays do more than support your products – they set the mood, vibe, tone, and expectations for your customers and sales team.

A crowded and overwhelming store like Urban Treads likely has a sales team that is equally overwhelmed and stressed trying to find shoes and help their customers. Meanwhile the sales team at Kick Flip has the exact opposite experience, all thanks to their retail store design and installation – that makes it easy for everyone to find what they want and need.

The reality is there are a lot of stores who use the Urban Treads design and installation ethos. Chaos. Clutter. Crowding. Complete disregard for supporting and encouraging customers and sales teams. Do not be like Urban Treads.

In fact, take a walk around your retail store right now. What do you see? Be honest. Pretend you are your customer, you don’t have a lot of time, you know you need to make a purchase and it needs to be straightforward and easy. Is this doable in your store? If you hesitate for even a second – it’s time to rethink your retail display installation.

What Does Retail Display Installation Involve?

Retail display installation involves planning, research, design, build, installation, finessing, and maintenance. Whether it’s single brick-and-mortar retail installation or a global roll-out of a new branded retail design – the process is the same.

Do not be convinced by retail installation companies who tell you something else! We know what will happen – we have helped so many brands and store owners who followed bad retail design and installation advice. And frankly, we’re tired of seeing this happen.

Cutting corners, making assumptions, rushing the process, and neglecting to ask questions about customers, products, and sales cycles delivers the same result – a chaotic, disjointed, confusing, cluttered, and ineffective retail store.

Here is the retail display installation process you should expect from your retail installation partner:

Planning and Research: this is when we learn about your brand, customers, store ethos, vision for your retail presence, and learn about your market. This information is critical to designing a retail environment that shows off and markets your products and brand.
Design: your choice in shelves, racks, mannequins, lighting, signage, colors, music, store layout and more must align with your brand aesthetic, mission, and customer demographic preferences.
Build and Install: rely on specialised project managers and local field teams to receive, build, and install your retail displays, fixtures, millwork, digital displays, and complete your retail environment.
Merchandising and Finessing: keeping in mind your visual merchandising strategy, it’s time to display your products and make any final adjustments, ensuring every aspect of your retail environment is safely installed and optimized for a positive customer experience.
Maintenance and Logistics: preventive and reactive maintenance keeps your retail space looking as good as it did on the day you opened. Rely on an experienced team to keep your space in top condition and to manage warehousing and logistics for seasonal fixtures, pop up shops, and store inventory.

Retail display installation is about more than positioning shelves and racks. It’s about emotion, marketing, brand awareness, environment, people, and psychology.

The Four Rules of Retail Design and Installation

Memorize these four rules of retail design and installation:

People shop with their senses.
Retail fixtures are part of your sales team.
Your store is for your customers – not you.
Great products cannot compensate for poor retail design.

Remember these retail design and installation rules always.

Think twice about the all-black interior with disco lighting for your cosmetics brand. Pause on the suggestion for glass shelving and lightweight freestanding displays for your children’s toy store brand.

Multisensory Marketing and Retail Design

Your customers shop with their senses. This is why retail is here to stay. Shopping from a laptop or mobile device is convenient. But it doesn’t satisfy our sensory desires.

Touch. Sight. Smell. Taste. Sound. This is the benefit and power of brick-and-mortar retail.

Your customers can see and touch that new sweater they saw on Instagram.
Your customers can trial new surround sound speakers in a bespoke listening room in your store.
Your customers can use, touch, hold, and feel that new baseball bat, football, or hockey stick, helping them imagine how much better their game will be with new gear.

When you trigger one or more senses, you’re giving people an elevated shopping experience. Multisensory marketing is essential to creating emotional, aspirational, and associative connections to products, brands, and purchasing decisions.

Every aspect of your retail design from the color of your floor, the hue of your lighting, the position of your shelves, the depth of the display cases, and volume of music influences customer decisions.

How To Choose Retail Displays for Your Store

You understand the retail display installation process. You know the four rules of retail design and installation. You know the power of a well-designed retail store.

Now it’s time for you to choose your retail displays…

Think of your customers. Who are they, what do they want from your store, what do they not want, why are they choosing your store?
Think of your products. What are you selling, how can you showcase product features, how can you make your products appealing?
Think of the five senses. How can you create connections between your products and your customers, how can you use sight, touch, smell, sound, and taste to build brand loyalty, awareness, and customer desire?
Think of your retail space. What is the best way for people to move through it, how can you design it to best support your customers, products, and sales team, what are your retail goals, what do you want people to do in your store?
Think of your sales team. What are their biggest challenges, how do they spend their days, how can you make it easier for them to do their jobs, what are their moods like at the end of the work day?

The beauty of retail design is its flexibility. If a particular design resonates with you, your customers, and complements your products, embrace it. Just because no one else has done it – doesn’t mean you can’t do it. And do not do something because everyone else is doing it.

Be wary of retail display installation companies who always create the same but slightly different design for their clients. Be cautious with retail installation companies who cannot come up with new ideas for you or shy away from eye-catching design.

It’s your store, your brand, your products – do what feels right for your store, brand, products, customers, and you.

At Dynamic, our unique combination of IN-HOUSE offerings makes us your single source provider for all your retail display installation service needs. No one understands installation better than we do.