Effective Merchandising Tips For Your Store

You need to have a good enough merchandising plan in place if you want to reap the expected rewards in terms of sales. Retail merchandising is becoming more important for stores these days as they now have online shops to compete with in addition to other local stores. If you want to stand out and become the preferred location for customers of a particular category of products, you need to hire a retail merchandiser to make the most of the space and products available to you.
And when you consider studies that show that customers still prefer the in-store experience that they get at retail stores, you need to make the most of this opportunity and provide your customers what they want by implementing a well thought out merchandising plan. Here are a few retail merchandising tips that can help you better your sales numbers over a period of time.

· Never undermine what engagement can offer you. Customers are the happiest when they are engaged. If you want to entice your customers into making a purchase, make sure you engage them by allowing them to try on a clothing item, demo an electronic product, or touch an exclusive gift item. Now there could be times that engagement these things may help customers come to a conclusion that is different from what you expected. To avoid these situations, you need to have an inventory that can lead your customers to something else they may be interested in. Engagement can offer you endless opportunities to make a customer buy from you. To not let these opportunities get away from you, let your customers touch and feel products. It’s a simple tip that can have a huge impact on your sales numbers.

· Don’t have displays that overshine the products. People don’t walk into stores that are too elaborate for their liking. If they are confused, they will likely move out before making any purchase. It has been seen in many cases that stores are not too well-versed with the rules of merchandising – products should be clearly visible to customers, they should be approachable, and they should appeal to customers. Instead of following these general rules of retail merchandising, they do what customers don’t like – have cluttered shelves, have products too far away from customers’ reach, have products not clearly stacked. This is what leads to confusion, which doesn’t help the cause of these stores. The very first thing to do is keep your newest products in a way that they are very easy to find. Also, your customers should know that these are new additions. Your existing products shouldn’t be mixed with new products.

· Another tip is to merchandise your store on a regular basis. It isn’t such a huge task, either. You just need to move things around every few days to ensure that even your regular customers are pleasantly surprised to see the change.

Merchandising can put you ahead of your online as well as local competition with the help of in-store design, customer services, and product placement, amongst other things.