When designing a grocery store, signs play an immensely important part in cultivating an excellent customer experience. Since there are innumerable products to deal with, it is a necessity to have well designed signage that can direct customers to these products as well as provide any information needed. Additionally, navigation of the store improves significantly when signs are present, designed well, and easily viewed.
One of the most important signs a grocery store needs is one outside the business to attract customers. Other advertising may accomplish this such as ads in a newspaper or online, but impulse shopping is real and very helpful to grocery store sales. With a noticeable and recognizable branded sign, customers on their way home from work or to an outing will see the sign and stop in for any immediate needs. Naturally this branding must continue inside the business to create a sense of reliability, letting a customer know that the brand is there to supply anything the customer might need.
Once the customer knows they can trust the brand to provide, the business can use signs to lead the customer to what they need. This is where department and sale signage comes into play. Department signage is important to lead the customer to where they’ll find their needs, and sale signage allows them to find things they didn’t know they needed thus boosting sales. Both of these must be properly designed, or else they appear garish and frustrate the customer.
With department and sale signage guiding the customer, the final piece of the puzzle lies within regular item signage. Each item in a grocery store should have a simple sign denoting price, supplier information for ordering purposes, and unit pricing so consumers can make better decisions. While these signs do not need to be flashy or grab the customer’s attention, they are vital because of the information they provide. Some exceptions exist such as call out signs for local or organic products as well as information signs for particular products where the history of the item is important. Item signs are the backbone of a functioning grocery store and need to be designed with simplicity and efficiency in mind.
Grocery stores require many different kinds of signs. They work together in ways that customers ideally do not even notice by providing an experience that gives the customer exactly what they are looking for with all of the information they need. If done well, this will lead to a successful grocery store with repeat business.
