Retail space planning refers to the idea of designing a retail store layout that influences a customer’s shopping experience. Since a retailer’s prime objective is to drive sales and provide value to customers, they use a combination of aisle navigation and merchandise display techniques to create an ultimate shopping experience.

However, the amount of space available to a retail store is very limited. Therefore optimizing every inch of the store is crucial for retail success. Planograms are ideal tool that assist in this direction. Planograms are visual representations of a store layout, with prime focus on product placements. A well-designed planogram ensures that the right products are available at the correct location and time-thereby ensuring maximized sales and customer satisfaction. Additionally, planogram also provides insights into space planning affects sales.

Read on to know different space planning techniques that can be successfully implemented using a planogram.

• Decompression Zone: One of the most important aspects that shape up a customer’s shopping experience is the decompression zone. This is basically the entrance of a shop where a customer analyzes his new surroundings and decides whether to venture further or not. Here, the retailer’s main idea is to create a space that prompts customers to explore the store and spend more money. A decompression zone is often designed to look wide and open with no much marketing or advertising gimmicks. It also allows easy entrance into the store, inviting customers to explore the store.

Let’s take an example to understand this better. Studies claim that 99% shoppers tend to turn right during a shopping experience. Retailers use this concept to improve their decompression zone and create a better circulation path throughout the store. They can display their best products/brands towards the right of the decompression zone to fully capitalize this concept.

• Carefully organized shelves: Strategically organized shelves play an important role in increasing sales and improving customer’s shopping experience. Here are a number of methods adopted by retails to ensure their shelves are well-organized:
  • Identify the most attractive part of their store and place shelves with the most expensive products there.
  • Placing products at eye-level, that increase chances of sale.
  • Keeping shelves fully stacked at all times increases customer’s confidence about the store.
  • Keeping complimentary products within reach for increased chances of impulse buying
• Slow down: In retail, the function of a speed break is to slow down customers. In order to give buyers a break from monotonous displays or big aisles, sellers use fixtures like small tables, rotating racks, and navigation screens in the stores. These visual breaks are great for increasing changes of seasonal/impulse buying. For example, sellers may place frequently bough items in the middle of a section or towards the end of a store, forcing customers to walk all along the aisle looking for it. This is done to maximize time spent by customer in a store, resulting in higher buy-ins.
• Color Blocking: Color blocking is a merchandising technique that involves use of colors to attract buyer’s attention. Colors have a psychological impact on buying behavior. For instance, for a product to be associated with trust and reliability, the preferred color would be blue. Similarly, during holidays or festive seasons, retailer uses bright colors to entice buyers.

Overview of Nexgen POG

Nexgen POG is a cost effective and cloud based planogram software designed for efficient planogramming. Planograms can be designed easily by dragging and dropping products. Multi browser, multi device compatibility feature of POG let you create planograms anywhere, anytime. It is equipped with an array of features like easy compliance, bulk upload, customizable templates, web based sharing, automated planograms and much more. Moreover, Nexgen POG has affordable licensing models, that lets users buy unlimited licenses at a cost that is less than the cost of a single license of other sophisticated softwares.

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