Boost Sales by Enhancing Center-of-Store Displays

If you put as much creative effort into enhancing center-of-store merchandising as you do into building motivating perimeter displays, just imagine how much you could boost sales. Since endcaps are the prime territory within your center store, and you have multiple endcaps, energizing them is a great place to start.

Studies show that endcaps are not price-sensitive for shoppers, so don’t waste the space promoting off-price items. Focus on convenience and creating interest in impulse items:

• Use stand-alone kiosks, either heavily branded and vendor-supplied or custom-designed just for your store.
• Invest in some mobile endcaps, so you can move them around the store to draw interest from different types of shoppers.
• Set up sampling stations.
• Add digital signage and videos.

Especially in stores prone to the traditional “corduroy” arrangement of multiple straight-aisle display rows, today’s customer-focused merchandisers are improving shopper experience by making their entire store – including endcaps -- more pleasant and inviting. They’re using Y-Gondolas that incorporate entirely different, undulating endcaps, and using curved or pyramid shelving to create new endcap shapes.

Light leads to sales.

Lighting is rapidly becoming a vital display technique because it can significantly influence customers’ buying behavior. Varying light levels provides contrast that looks more natural. That makes shoppers more comfortable, and when customers are comfortable, they’re confident. They buy more.

In one study, highlighted endcaps attracted attention from twice as many shoppers as endcaps that received no special lighting. That endcap lighting study also revealed:

• More than twice as many shoppers who browsed illuminated endcaps bought products, compared to those who browsed unlit endcaps.
• Highlighting endcap displays caused more passersby to glance into the store (21.6% versus 12.1%).
• Shoppers spent more than twice as much time browsing lit endcaps as unlit ones.

Just as accent lighting can lead your customers’ eyes around your store, using directional lighting on endcaps draws maximum attention to these displays. But “power lighting” your endcaps doesn’t mean light has to be ultra-bright.

Backlighting is a hot new trend for displays of all types, and it can work wonders for your endcaps, too. It’s distinctive and modern looking. Backlighting enables you to create light boxes for signage and graphic displays, and to highlight shelf-displayed items with more dramatic visual impact. However, not every product lends itself equally well to backlighting.

Energizing your endcaps doesn’t have to drive up energy costs.

An increasing number of new lighting solutions feature LED systems that are far more energy-efficient and last far longer than other light sources. LED lights make it possible to highlight displays from the front or back without altering the true colors of the merchandise. Color is crucial for apparel, jewelry, furniture and food, especially produce. And LED lights don’t give off heat, so there’s no risk to sensitive products or your energy bill.

Good quality lighting increases customer perception of value. But remember the first rule of endcaps: keep them fresh. Otherwise, customers will become “blind” to them, no matter how snazzy your lighting.

Palmer Retail Solutions strives to offer our clients the absolute best combination of innovation, quality, service, and value for our diversified custom store fixtures and merchandising displays. For more information about our designs, retail fixtures, cash wraps, kiosks, or point of purchase displays, visit our website at: http://www.palmerretailsolutions.com.