Visual merchandising for your retail business

You should monitor the effectiveness of your visual merchandising to make sure you're getting value from the time and effort you're spending on it. This will also help you to improve future techniques.

Measuring visual merchandising can help you:

• decide whether to continue or change what you're doing - for example, if something is difficult to sell, try moving the product or the same display to another location before completely giving up on it
• improve your decision-making on which techniques to apply and when - for example, if you have sold all of your inventory and you have no back stock, change your visual merchandising plan to something you have plenty of

How to measure the impact of your visual merchandising techniques?

Here are some ways to help you measure the success of your visual merchandising practices. You can evaluate:

• Return on investment - compare sales before and after a significant change to your retail space. Use a suitable comparison period, such as the previous week, month or season.
• Customer visits - record how many people enter your store and, if possible, how many pass it. Compare the figures to assess whether your displays are attracting more visitors.
• Average customer spend - compare the average amount spent per visit before and after you change your visual merchandising.
• Browsing time - compare how long customers spend in the store before and after a change.
• Repeat customers - track how many customers return and how often they visit within a defined period.

Use the results to improve your visual merchandising. You could also consider:

• Retail analytics tools - use suitable tools to understand in-store customer journeys and how they relate to sales.
• Benchmarking your business - setting benchmarks will allow you to compare your business with others. You can identify areas for improvement or adapt specific best practices to increase your own performance. See measure performance and set targets.
• Entering awards - seek recognition for visual merchandising best practice. This will help raise the profile of your business in addition to increasing your exposure to what other businesses are doing well. See how to enter and win business awards.

Measurements may show the immediate effect of a visual merchandising change. Monitor results over time to understand longer-term effects on sales and repeat visits.