5 Practical Visual Merchandising Tips To Remember

Visual Merchandising is important in every store, no matter the industry. Your shop window display and internal floor plans should be organised with the mindset of maximising sales, educating customers and promoting your products.

With more people shopping online every day, now is the time to pay close attention to your shop displays. While not every retailer has the budget to invest in show-stopping product stands and elaborate props, there are several practical techniques you can adopt to help increase your competitive advantage. Here are 5 practical tips to keep in mind when it comes to your visual merchandising:

1. Place Key Items at Eye Level

Keep your customers informed and
communicate your products with eye-catching,
branded signage and/or displays.

When presenting your items in store, you need to consider exactly how your customers will see your products. One of the best methods for catching customer attention is placing your items at eye level. This technique can be applied both in-store and in your window displays. This way, items are less likely to be missed and more likely to engage traffic.

2. Consider your Environment

There are several tactics you can use when it comes to the layout of your store. Picture your shop environment as a blank canvas. If you stock a small product range, you may want to keep your layout minimal so customers can see everything on offer. If you sell a larger array of items, you may choose to adopt the ‘maze,’ approach (think Ikea) which entices consumers towards other products, or down a particular path of your choosing. One thing you should always remember is to put ‘afterthought’ items front and centre on your register counters at POS, to encourage those last minute, impulse purchases.

3. Branded Signage & Displays

Reinforcing brand is a key element of visual merchandising, especially when it comes to introducing customers to a new product or range.

Retail floor displays are ideal for brand communication. Not only are they versatile and eye-catching, but they can be designed to display almost any product while extending the product brand to your customers.

4. Refresh your Displays & Layout Frequently

Window displays don’t always
have to be over the top! Play
with proportion to offer your
customers a different
perspective on your product.

While you might think it’s good for customers to know your store like the back of their hand, changing your displays and layout every so often gives your business the opportunity to highlight new products.

Refreshing your shop displays doesn’t always have to be seasonal! Keep your customers on their toes with new designs and by swapping products around. This should be done most frequently with sale items to give them a fresh new look.

5. Don’t forget to get creative!

In the competitive world of retail, it’s essential to make your shop displays stand out. But remember, creativity doesn’t always have to be over the top! One of the easiest ways to catch the attention of shoppers is through your window displays. Try playing with proportion, lighting or even suspending elements to offer a different perspective on your product.

As your packaging design and manufacturing partner, our in-house packaging engineers can help refresh your current solution, or design a completely new solution to suit your retail display requirements. Connect with us or call us on 1800 25 8000 to book your FREE initial packaging consultation.

Advantages Of Multi-Product Packaging

Multi-product packaging is the practice of placing multiple, or a range of products into one box or package. The advantages of multiple-product packaging include:

• Decreasing the number of packaging product lines
• Creating economy of scale for production runs
• Saving on packing time
• Reducing packaging sizes
• Cutting down the volume of storage space required

Here are four reasons why you should consider multi-product packaging for your products:

Adaptable

Customised protective inserts are
a versatile and practical solution
to use for a wide range of products.

Multi-product packaging can be adapted to suit a variety of products. If you have products with different packaging requirements, you can standardise the external package and customise the internal packaging with protective inserts suited to the exact product.

PPI can design and engineer multi outer packaging with protective inserts for freight fragile, odd shaped and even hazardous items which are all 100% recyclable.

The size of your external packaging can be customised, depending on your products. Remember to keep the size as small as possible to save on shipping costs, which are based on size and weight.

Creates Brand Consistency

Multi-product packaging can enhance your brand reputation! Complex products with multiple components can often arrive in separate packages of different shapes, sizes and colours. Standardising your packages into one branded box or package will result in a streamlined consumer experience when receiving, opening and reviewing their products.

Consistency makes your brand feel more professional and dependable to consumers. Creating a consistent packaging experience builds brand awareness, trust, and makes it easier for consumers to know what to expect from your business and product.

Cost Effective

Multi-product packaging is more economical than individually packaging your products into different sized boxes. Individual packaging can increase the risk of items getting lost in the mail or arriving at different times. Items lost during freight not only puts your customers’ satisfaction at risk, but can also incur frustrating replacement costs to your business. 

Multi-product packaging allows you to better predict your shipping costs, and will reduce your storage space requirements. This is particularly cost efficient when using outsourced storage spaces for housing your stock and/or packaging – the more storage space saved the better!

Environmentally Friendly

Packaging waste is not only expensive for your business, but consumers who are energy conscious often make active choices to avoid excess packaging. This could mean the difference between choosing your product over a competitors’. 

Multi-product packaging can help you save on packaging costs, especially if your product line changes regularly and it’s difficult to predict how many orders you need to bulk-buy packaging for. Standardising your package sizes and adapting the protective inserts per product range can go a long way to helping you reduce waste. Any excess pre-ordered packaging can be used and adapted for future product ranges.

At PPI, our in-house team of packaging designers and engineers will work with you to understand your packaging needs. We offer custom solutions that are economical, protective and environmentally friendly.

Connect with us or call us now on 1800 25 8000 to book your FREE initial packaging consultation in Melbourne. We’ll work to ensure your packaging requirements are met, if not exceeded.