Traffic Flow:
Make it Work to Maximize Sales
Here are three axioms that may help you create
excellent traffic in your store:
Retailing axiom #1: Roughly 90 percent of your customers will enter
your store, turn right and walk through the store in a counterclockwise
direction.
Retailing axiom #2: Wider aisles encourage your customers to walk
briskly past your merchandise. Narrower aisles encourage browsing. Clogged
aisles make customers turn around and leave the store.
Retailing axiom #3: Light attracts. You can use these axioms
to form the basis of an effective strategy to manage your store's traffic
flow. Since people move in predictable patterns, why not take advantage
of this to maximize the effectiveness of your store's layout and floor
plan?
It's a fact. Most of us are right-handed, but did you know that we are
also rightfooted? (The next time you step up on a curb, check to see which
foot you step up with a good indicator of your dominant foot.) Right-footed
people prefer to turn right, and like to walk counterclockwise through
a store. How can you use this to impact your traffic patterns?
First, check to see where your cash wrap is located. Are most of your
customers coming into your store, turning right, and facing the cash wrap?
This is an immediate turnoff to customers, who receive the unconscious
message, "This store will cost you money." Plus cash wraps cost you money.
Is there a case display at the front of the store? If so, this, too, can
create a traffic jam. If customers entering the store must squeeze past
others trying to make a selection, you can be assured they will leave
the store rather than push past other people.
When it comes to traffic patterns, nothing says it better than a correctly
designed store. Let's look at how correct design affects store traffic.
Wide aisles encourage your customers to "power walk" to the merchandise
they have come into the store to buy. While this might be great for very
large stores, it's not so good for specialty retailers. Since a customer
spends an average of eight minutes shopping in a store, it's impossible
to see a large number of SKUs in the average store in so short a time.
We have to slow our customers down to get them to see more
merchandise, yet we cannot create traffic jams in the store or we'll lose
them altogether. The best strategy is to establish aisles that are narrow
enough to force customers to slow down, which gives them enough time to
notice the products displayed, but not so narrow that they create a traffic
jam.
It's a tough one. On one hand, we must avoid traffic jams
in the front half of the store, but at the same time we want customers
to stay. Therefore, the best place for customers to linger is at the rear
of the store. To achieve this, position lower density fixtures at the
front of the store, and higher density fixtures in the back - the higher
the density, the longer a customer is likely to stay to look at merchandise.
Increasing merchandise density to the rear of the store encourages customers
to stay and browse.
Another important note about fixtures: Rounders can hold
a lot of merchandise, but think carefully before you place rounders along
an aisle. Customers may not take time to walk completely around this type
of fixture when placed along a traffic pattern, and those who do will
face the exit of your store once they've completed their browse. The ideal
placement of a rounder is at the rear of your store a high-density fixture
at a location where customers need to turn around anyway.
Speaking of rounders, customer traffic patterns are influenced
by shapes in general. Severe angles like those found in square columns
or hard right angles tend to impede traffic flow. Instead, round out your
square shaped columns and make wall areas concave. Both of these techniques
make your store look more inviting while improving the flow of traffic.
As they enter your store, customers turn to the right. Therefore, they
must look in front of them. What if you could figure out just exactly
where they look? As a matter of fact, we have. When entering a store,
customers look to your right wall at a 45 degree angle from the entrance.
This spot on the right wall of your store is an incredibly important visual
cue to your customers. As such, you must provide something intriguing
here to compel customers to commit to staying inside your store.
Why not provide a destination at this visual "sweet spot"?
The focal point they see here should reflect the lifestyle they are thinking
about. Use lifestyle displays, vignettes, posters, etc., at this spot
to raise the level of ''welcome" in your store. Take a look at the departments
within your store. Do any of them give a feeling that ''this department
never ends?" If so, you are creating the impression of a spatial trap.
Customers are more willing to walk through a department if they can see
a way out. Usually, this visual termination point is at about 30 feet
from the department's entrance. Help your customers avoid the feeling
that they might get trapped within a department by using the floor and
fixture layout to show them how to get in and out.
Is your store flowing well? Is there some area of your store that is not
seeing traffic? Try this simple technique: Draw a store layout and count
the number of people who shop in the different areas. Use this to determine
what areas of your store are not receiving as much traffic as they should,
then adjust your traffic patterns. Customer traffic flow is like a river.
You can use the techniques in this article to keep the merchandise full
and the people moving. Don't forget if your customers are going too fast,
they lose the opportunity to see that special item; too slow, and you
may lose them altogether.
Reprint from the Alabama Retail Digest with permission
from the Alabama Retail Association..
|
