Whether it is a shop, showroom, or a health club or leisure centre foyer; winter is generally the ideal time to be giving your front-of house a timely makeover.
It is the ideal time to review the first impression greeting visitors as they enter your building; to maximise point of sale marketing opportunities and to enhance your visitors’ experience to encourage them to be coming back for more.
It is also the perfect opportunity to review the performance of existing products and services; to consider how you can display your stock and explore ways to boost sales across all sectors and all seasons by smart marketing moves.
It is not just the choice of product that will help increase sales but also the way you position them.
You work hard with advertising and on-line promotions to get visitors to your business. So don’t waste the opportunity.
“The golden rules are the same all year round,” advises business and retail guru, Ellen Watts of Elle Rich Training Ltd.
“A well stocked, well presented, well lit and clearly priced showroom is even more important in the winter, as generally moods can be lower and people’s tolerance to look for a price or product information will be lower too.”
BRIGHT LIGHTS
Ellen emphasises how brighter lighting can boost the mood of not just your customers – but staff too.
“A supermarket boosted its lighting by adding brighter bulbs and saw their sales increased by 17% – it appears SAD syndrome is real.”
Craig Trusson of Home Counties, Horsham, a business with an award-winning showroom, agrees: “We will typically look to enhance the lighting in our main display areas to compensate for the duller days and darker nights.
“Our hot tub showroom has been fitted out with an illuminated light box displaying the Beachcomber logo; we have positioned individual spotlights to show off each display tub with LEDs within the display sauna cabins adding vital elements of colour.
“We also have coloured rope lighting adorns our retail store too so as to ensure the consumer knows we are still very much open for business.”
It is not hard to find themes to regenerate the showroom over the darker months. For instance, try this for a calendar of decorative themes:
• October – Halloween
• November – Fireworks
• December – Xmas
• January – New Year, New You
• February – Valentine’s Day
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