7 Essential Tips To Increase Sales With Smart Product Placement

The shopping experience doesn’t just happen. While it appears this way, the entire experience is — and should be — carefully constructed to ensure not only that customers easily find what they are looking for, but also what they weren’t looking for. We do this by ensuring they come into contact with best-sellers all placed at eye level, amongst other things.

A smooth flow of traffic from aisle to checkout starts with an effective store layout. This works best when products are carefully organized to appeal to shoppers’ senses and psychological needs, balanced with their need for various products that support their dietary and lifestyle habits.

Tips for Effective Product Display

Strategic product placement wouldn’t be possible without the right tools. For one, it’s important to know your customers: what they like and gravitate towards, the first thing they see — and buy — and how these products are stored and displayed for maximum impact. A well-stocked, polished, glass commercial freezer or cooler helps retailers push both best-sellers and new offers into the market.

How are you positioning products in your store for maximum customer impact and revenue? Learn how to create a compelling visual merchandising strategy and create a pleasant and profitable shopping experience at every customer touchpoint:

1. Welcome shoppers with produce and everything fresh

The produce section is one of the busiest, high-traffic touchpoints in any grocery store. At the onset, you may be worried about crowding if fruits and vegetables are placed near the entrance, but it creates a welcoming and healthy environment that appeals to customers’ sense of well-being.

Similarly, an on-site bakery or flower shop would be perfect complements, as they give an aura of freshness and impression of quality taste. Even at the entrance, their senses are enticed by bright visuals and aromatic scents.

2. Place essentials at the back

Laundry detergents, cleaning agents, personal hygiene products, and other everyday essentials should be stashed in the back. This forces now-hungry customers to trek across the store to pick up these items, and along the way, encounter other types of food laid out after the produce and baked goods, such as dairy, meats, and even prepared foods in commercial freezers and coolers. The chances are, by the time they reach the back, they will have already picked up at least a few extra items they hadn’t planned on buying.

3. Organize shelves according to item visibility

How are products arranged on individual shelves? Beyond organizing them by type, shelves provide prime real estate for product display that maximizes both customer satisfaction and revenue.

To start, place best-selling items at eye level — known as “buy level” — where customers can easily spot them. When pushing out new products or complementary items — like sauces or ready-made alternatives to individual raw ingredients — try inserting them alongside best-sellers and trusted brands.

This is also a good strategy for marketing higher-end branded items, as customers find them first and therefore gravitate towards them; keep generic or no-name items on the bottom shelf.

The phrase “eye level is the buy level” should be kept in mind when organizing shelves. While most best-selling essentials are placed at the eye level of adult shoppers, cereal, candy, and other products designed with kids’ favourite characters should be positioned accordingly.

4. Highlight competing products

While eye-level placement places best-sellers at an optimal height, it’s equally important to create a wide-spanning view of competing products and brand alternatives. Once a display row has captured a customer’s attention, maintain this momentum by stacking competitors right next to each other.

With ample lighting and shelf space that’s easily visible through the glass panes of a commercial freezer, customers can easily spot their favourites, and incentivized to explore new alternatives or product varieties.

5. Use bright, appetizing colours

Colour is a key component of a compelling visual merchandising strategy. Commercial freezers and coolers are typically designed with LED panels for inserting flyers and other promotional materials.

The interior LED lighting also provides contrast, highlighting the oranges, reds, healthy greens, and relaxing blues of product packaging. These colours stand out through full-length glass panes and make products highly attractive and appetizing to a wide range of customers — from the healthy, eco-friendly consumer to kids hunting down treats.

6. Maximize product visibility

Customers window shop even in grocery stores — and a well-stocked, brightly illuminated commercial freezer might just help convert these eyeballs into sales. Fitted with energy-efficient LED lights and full-length glass panes, commercial freezers and coolers are the number one tool of visual merchandising. The LED lights and glass panes reduce glare, and as a result, renders colours accurately and enhances the colours of products for maximum appeal.

Take note of these features and position products accordingly, starting with an eye-level display of best-selling items. Use this prime real estate to position new items alongside products that customers trust, and add attractive graphics and promotional posters to further direct traffic to the merchandiser.

7. Increase impulse buys at the till

Take the shopping experience full circle: finish the strong welcome at the produce section with ample opportunities for last-minute impulse buys of the “grab-and-go” variety. Similar to how eye-catching displays and seasonal offers may be installed at the entrance that gets customers to stop, touch, and try, maximize their last few minutes by prompting last-minute purchases at the checkout aisles.

Use small commercial coolers to display small, ready-to-eat items and drinks, and highlight new products that customers can easily pick up on the way out. That’s easily a few extra dollars in revenue with every transaction — and for customers, increased convenience for the little items they may have forgotten to pick up along the way.

To learn more about effective visual merchandising and product placement to optimize sales, call Ancaster Food Equipment at (855) 888-9644, or contact us here.