When selecting a location for your Coeur d’ Alene retail store or designing or redesigning the layout, always make sure to keep in mind who your customers will be. For instance, if your target audience is mature folks, then make aisles wider, lights brighter, sign lettering bigger and bolder. Make sure parking is convenient and good access to transit is close by. Provide easily accessible areas for sitting and resting. Alternately, if your target audience is young children then paint the shop in bright colors, lower displays, and make all fixtures more durable to avoid damage. 

 

Give extra attention to safety-related details and issues. The objective when designing a retail store in Coeur d’ Alene is to appeal to the largest segment of your target audience in the broadest way so that they will feel comfortable in the CDA store and therefore will want to return and shop often. This is one area where it pays to hire a local Coeur d’ Alene professional designer and decorator with experience in commercial retail store applications. 

Listed below are general design tips that can be handy in any retailing situation regardless of the products you sell. 

  • When arranging displays and merchandise keep in mind that the most “profitable zones” are the areas around the sales checkout, immediately inside the front entrance, and on a direct path to the sales checkout counter. These are the areas that will account for the largest percentage of impulse buying in Coeur d’ Alene Customers; therefore, it is wise to display your CDA business’s bestselling merchandise in these highly visible profit zones. 
  • Occasionally try new designs in terms of how you position your displays and merchandise. The majority of Coeur d’ Alene retailers find that a grid pattern, much like that used in a supermarket works best as it enables shoppers to have to pass most of store merchandise to get to certain product sections or displays within the store, increasing the chance of impulse buying. This is referred to as directing Local CDA shoppers where you want them to go. Additionally, rotating merchandise will give CDA shoppers the perception that the stock and displays are new and fresh. 
  • Always group products together that enhance or complement each other and that make for logical package sales. For instance, a pet shop should display bags and cans of dog food on the bottom and middle shelves while leaving the top open to display food dishes and bowls even if they have a bowl display elsewhere in the store. This sets off shopping triggers
  • Keep clearance bins and sales racks to the back of the store so local customers who come in to browse have to walk past the other merchandise to get to the back of the store to go through the sales merchandise. However, do clearly promote clearance bins and sales racks with signage displays on the back wall or hanging from the ceiling over the racks. You want Coeur d’ Alene shoppers to take note of the sale not only to clear dated and out-of-season merchandise but also to pass your newest merchandise with the possibility to create impulse buying. 
  • Always think about key vertical profit zones when displaying products. The best zones are between 18 inches off the floor to a maximum of 66 inches off the floor. These are the ones that are the most visible and easily accessible to the vast majority of Coeur d’ Alene shoppers.