When your visual retail signage strategy is working for you, customers move fluidly from first impressions to checkout – or adding one last impulse item to the cart before they pay.  

Window clings and window posters pique curiosity, drawing customers in. Promotional retail signage attracts and entices, and strategically placed product signage can spur unplanned or impulse purchases. When organized and deployed as one cohesive plan, effective product displays throughout a retail space create an environment that engages customers and motivates them to spend time and money in your store.

Tips for Making Retail Signage Visually Appealing

Understand Your Customer

Your retail signage is a conversation that you have with your customer from the moment they enter your space until they make a purchase. Doesn’t it make sense to have a clear idea of who you’re conversing with? This understanding goes beyond the usual demographics like age and income. You want to know if elegant or humorous signage appeals to them or what type of point of sale (POS) signage will influence the shopper to buy more.

Quality Matters

Your customers are making snap judgments about the quality of your merchandise and service based on the condition of your retail signage. Customers increasingly expect retailers to use recyclable, sustainable materials for their signage. Using fade-resistant, eco-solvent and UV curable inks adds vibrancy to branding and design that gets the sign noticed. Even temporary signage needed for promotions lasting 6 months or less should be durable and well-crafted.

Find a Theme

Building a visual signage strategy around a theme can simplify the choices you make and coordinate the look and feel of your displays. Sometimes architectural details in your space can trigger ideas. Display signage may also be dictated by the shopping season, special sales events, or even popular cultural occasions.

Use Color to Motivate

Understanding the effect that the colors used in your displays and how they influence attitudes and actions of your customers will make a big difference in the success of your retail sign strategy. Color psychology has long been a marketing tool for affecting human behavior. In the case of retail signage, it’s usually effective to go with bold and contrasting colors and hues to draw attention and get the message understood.

Have Fun

Spice up your visual retail signage with signs that add enjoyment into the shopping experience for your customers. You can create signs out of practically any material and in all sizes. Create encounters for your shoppers that are out of the ordinary to make their time with you memorable. Add elements of interactivity into your displays using WebAR and QR codes to entice customers to spend more time and money in your space then they originally planned.

Benefit from White Space

White space helps visual signage appear less cluttered and makes signs easier to read and understand. White makes every color stand out. Use it to draw attention to the most important part of the sign, whether it’s the latest promotion or the call to action (CTA). Remember that people in your retail space are usually on the move, and if your signage is so filled with words and graphics that it’s indecipherable, you’ve missed an opportunity to engage a customer.

Optimize Lighting

Don’t overlook the benefits of proper lighting for adding to the visual appeal of your retail signage. Spot lights and track lighting can highlight elements of the signage and decorative lighting can create moods to enhance the look and feel of the overall space. Customers will spend more time when they feel comfortable inside a store, and the perfect blend of lighting and attractive retail signage can lead to happier customers and more sales.

Make it Interesting

Shoppers can quickly tire of the same old-same old, especially if your brand is associated with a cutting-edge attitude or your products reflect the latest fashion, technology or cultural trends. Deploy signage where customers aren’t used to seeing it, like a wall mural running the entire length of one wall or a temporary, semi-permanent, or permanent POP display that serves as a speed bump to slow customers down and encourage browsing.

Keep it Fresh

Turn your retail space into an entirely new space, at least in terms of visual signage, and treat your customers to a new experience every time they visit. You can always find new products to feature and new themes to explore, and you can use new signage to convey it all. Update signage to adapt to changing buyer habits and tastes, and upgrade print signage with QR codes for a fuller shopper event.

Promoting Products with Visual Signage

Promotional retail sign strategies include deploying visually appealing signage that is placed strategically where it can’t be missed. These signs are intended to draw attention and stand out with eye-catching designs and bold, bright colors. Retailers use promotional signage to announce new products or special offers, help shoppers find products, and engage with customers as they move throughout a retail space.

Promotional Navigation Signage

The first things your customer will want to know when they enter your retail space is where is the product they came to buy and how do they find it. Navigational signage should immediately capture a shopper’s attention and provide the information customers need to take the next step in their relationship with you. These signs are the initial opportunity to begin making a sale because strategically placed wayfinding signs help shoppers quickly find the right aisle or department and begin filling up their shopping carts.

There are many types of navigational signage and lots of fun and engaging ways to incorporate branding and promotional messaging to attract attention, create interest, and make shoppers take notice as they move throughout your space. These include wall murals with larger-than-life displays and fun and engaging floor decals that make the shopping experience a memorable one.

Point of Purchase Promotional Signage

Point of Purchase (POP) signage displays are a great way to market your merchandise to customers and make shoppers stop and take notice.  POP signs come in all sizes and are versatile, and can be set up on floors, shelves, and countertops. They can be used as impermanent displays, constructed from lighter sustainable materials and easily moved. Temporary POP signage is commonly deployed by retailers during holidays and for seasonal advertising.  Retailers use semi-permanent POP signs for promotions lasting 6 months to a year. They’re made of sturdier materials than temporary POP signage in order to endure the wear and tear of customer contact and staff handling, and are often used as secondary displays or off-shelf displays that can stand up to restocking. Permanent POP displays, while not as everlasting as the name implies, are intended to last for several years, so they are usually constructed of durable materials and can serve as stand-alone kiosks, display cases, or pop-up stores.

Increasing Sales with Visual Retail Signage

Retail signage is invaluable for increasing sales and well-placed signs can prompt shoppers into action. Beyond merely attracting attention, retail signs can spur impulse purchases and help customers make a decision by including information like ‘Sale Ends Soon’ to make it feel like they’ll miss out if they don’t make their purchase immediately.

Complementary Retail Signage

Wherever you have a big-ticket item on display, consider surrounding it with signage to suggest add-on purchases for products that are practical and add value to that big purchase. Even if the add-on has its own place in the store, reminding and directing shoppers to those products can lead to sales. Use complementary retail signage to inspire what is called an “aspirational” effect for creative displays that tap into emotional, psychological, and cultural elements to create a sense of alignment between the main purchase and accessories.

Point of Sale Retail Signage

Point of Sale (POS) signage is concentrated around the checkout area or cashiers with the purpose of enticing a shopper to make one last additional purchase, based almost entirely on impulse. They’re positioned where customers will notice them, usually while waiting in line where they have a few moments to be enticed by sale merchandise or last-second add-ons. POS purchases tend to be small items, usually have low prices and high margins, and often rely on brand recognition and colorful displays to stand out and attract attention.

Your retail signage is an important component of your overall marketing and merchandising strategy and can transform your retail space into a place that your customers will want to visit and enjoy again and again. Contact a Marketing.com marketing expert today to learn more about how we can help your business connect the dots to create a signage strategy for your retail operation that improves your customer’s experience and increases sales.