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Gearing Up Your Storefront for Spring Retail Shoppers

As spring comes back into bloom, it’s time for you to give your storefront a breath of new life as well. Customers are excited about moving around freely in the beautiful weather for the first time this year. With a skillful spring-themed makeover for your storefront, you can tap into that energy and convert it into a great selling opportunity.

Designing Your Storefront

Be thinking about the particular message that you’re communicating through your brand this spring. Do you want to invoke people’s sense of release after spending the winter indoors; appeal to the traditional theme of rebirth and new opportunity; or craft a completely new approach based on your existing brand image? Decide this, and make sure your storefront design choices reflect this theme as you apply it to all of your springtime marketing.

One of your first considerations will be to pick a color scheme. Pantone predicts an array of rich, cool pastels as this spring’s main fashion choice. While the group as a whole brings a relaxing calm to the increasing frenzy of a connected world, some of the individual colors stand out and stir excitement — good for attracting shoppers who love springtime.

It can be a little intimidating to look at your empty windows and realize that you have almost unlimited creative opportunity. Fortunately, in this digital age, there are tons of ideas for you to try with simple some research, whether you’re on a budget or want to create something a little more extravagant. Whatever you decide to do, make sure you’ve considered the area surrounding your windows and assembled all the essential tools for your project.

For an effective time-saving solution, consider designing a window display that has some permanent elements and some changeable ones, like window clings. This gives you a cost-effective way to let passersby know about short-term promotions without redoing your whole window every time. (As always, never install anything until that window is sparkling clean!)

Choosing Your Holiday Themes

Spring is full of holidays for you to celebrate in your promotions. Bizmology has a lovely infographic prepared to help you navigate the spring holiday calendar (and start thinking ahead to the rest of the year!) If you run a boutique or niche store, your visual marketing is a perfect opportunity for you to raise awareness for holidays or events that aren’t big in mainstream consciousness. Just make sure that the approach you take is sensitive and appropriate.

As we mentioned above, the theme of your marketing will go far beyond your windows. On social media, have you made sure that any hashtags you’re using are free of unfortunate misappropriations? In your imagery, have you done your research to avoid using colors or symbols that have negative connotations for those who celebrate your highlighted holiday?

Aside from the very obvious misstep of offending customers, try not to do anything that will just make them scratch their heads, either. Seemingly irrelevant tie-ins, like offering a Mother’s Day sale at your men’s clothing store, would only work if your brand is already known for taking an irreverent, unexpected approach. (Example: “Running low on cash, now that you’ve bought a gift for all the deserving moms in your life? We’ve got you covered with our on-the-go essentials sale.”) Make sure your brand image can handle it before you try pulling a similar rabbit out of your hat.

Arranging Your In-Store Merchandise

Once you’ve got shoppers in the store, make sure your outdoor theme is continued in how you arrange your merchandise. You already know this, but it bears repeating: don’t make them hunt for anything that you’ve featured outside. Do a trial setup and walk through your store slowly, starting from the front-door displays. Does your product placement make sense with the theme you’ve created? Are shoppers likely to convert to buyers, based on the first things they see when they walk in?

Intuit’s Jan Fletcher has a useful list of points to watch for, such as putting your main displays too close to the door and not giving customers enough room to browse lower-shelf items. Your indoor arrangement should be as navigable as an online store. Be intentional about how you position all products and signage, whether they’re big-ticket items or not. Elsewhere on Retailminded.com, there’s a wealth of information to get you started in finding your optimum product arrangement.

How is your store preparing for spring? Have you found this advice helpful? Add any tips of your own in the comments below!

Katherine Halek is the Content Strategist at Signazon.com, a leading online printer that works with thousands of small businesses around the country. Katherine enjoys writing about retail, marketing, and entrepreneurship. Connect with her on Google+.

Photo Credit: Signazon with permission to use 


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