Visual Merchandising Consultancy at St Albans Museums

During July, I have been very excited to be working again with St Albans Museums, offering their museum teams Visual Merchandising consultancy and bespoke training workshops which will run during September.

When I first worked with St Albans Museums in 2022, I worked with their teams on the importance of creating monthly seasonal promotions by installing an impactful in store hot spot area at the front of their store. Creating a monthly hot spot space, creates consistent newness and interest for your customers and can help to connect to your monthly promotions. I was very pleased to see a fantastic hot spot table example which was featured in the Verulamium Museum to celebrate Queen Bodica, who famously burned Roman Verulamium to the ground.

A very useful store layout exercise which I usually set attendees of my bespoke visual merchandising training workshops is a customer flow/ customer mapping exercise. I wanted to share the details of this exercise with my blog readers for you to carry this out within your own stores ;

Observing your customer flow by carrying out a customer flow exercise

Customer flow exercises are an excellent way in which to practically measure your customers in store navigation and shopping habits. Reviewing the results of these exercises will assist you in observing for opportunities of how to increase the flow of customer activity in under performing areas.

I would recommend when carrying out your first customer flow exercise, make your changes as per your observations, then carry out your second flow exercise approximately 2 weeks later to observe whether your changes have made a difference.

Repeat these customer flow exercises every quarter to monitor the activity on the shop floor within typically quiet areas, such as the rear of the store or corner areas.

To carry out a customer flow exercise you will need.

You will need an overview (birds eye view) plan of your store space.

We recommend observing around 5 customers shopping journeys.

Use a different coloured pen per customer.

Position yourself in a central location within your store, till point areas can be ideal. Select a location where you can easily observe your customers journey in store.

Map on your first customer, track their journey on your floor plan. Use the key of a cross where the customer pauses to browse and a star at an area of a purchase. Continue to track this customers journey until they leave your store.

Once you have observed 5 customers shopping journeys. Look for the areas in store which have been well shopped and those which were not accessed by your customers. Use this evidence to review opportunities.

For more information on how I can support your business with either in person or online Visual Merchandising Consultancy, please get in touch ;

Email   sarah@visualmerchandisingconsultant.co.uk

Mobile UK +44 7976 575847

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