Deciding to undergo a full commercial shop fit out to upgrade your store’s interior design and breathe a new lease of life into your company space is a big commitment for any business owner. There are many things that you need to consider before renovation begins as to ensure that you get the best possible results from your investment.
A professional retail shop fitting job is what turns visitors from browsers who are ‘just window shopping’ into paying customers. Every business, large or small, needs to consider undertaking a shop fitting project at least once every few years. Considering the following factors will ensure that your project is completed with the utmost success.
Deciding The Size of Your Project
Do you want to just touch up the existing design of your premises or do you want to completely overhaul your brand image? The former will be cheaper than the latter in the short term. However, totally redesigning your entire shop floor could make your business much more lucrative in the long run.
Determining Your Budget
Look at the project from several angles. You might want to decide what you want first and then work out how much it will cost later. Alternatively, you might prefer to sit down and establish a tight budget and then see how many good quality changes you can make using the money that you have. Make sure not to just go for the cheapest option. Spending most of your budget on a single, but professionally executed, alteration in your shop floor (for instance, replacing the lighting system) will have a much better and more durable effect than paying less for a shoddily performed overhaul of every aspect of your premises.
Making Customers Feel Welcome
One of the most important considerations to keep in mind when redesigning your store is what you expect the final product to look like. Ensuring that you go into a shopfitting project with a clear floor plan and design in mind is a great way to ensure that all elements of your fit out come together to form a cohesive store front that appeals to customers and positively reflects your business. Your shop’s interior design should be representative of your brand and customer base, so taking the requirements of your target market into account when planning for a refurbishment is a great way to accommodate to your customers and make them feel welcome withing your establishment.
Creating A Striking Display
When you’re running a store, you need to understand how to make the shop as attractive and appealing as possible to customers. This means you need to spend time focusing on how you can make the best first-impression. Customers will make judgements based on your display, and this can play a big part in whether or not you are able to attract repeat business.
Positioning
It might not occur to you, but the positioning of the display can have a major impact on how it looks, and how customers interpret it. You could choose to have your display straight, diagonal, or mixed, but think about what is the most aesthetically pleasing layout. The positioning of your display matters a lot, and just a few tweaks here and there can make all the difference. If you are serious about making the best retail display you possibly can, this is of paramount importance.
Colour
Colour is another of the most important parts of the process, as you need to have an engaging and striking display. Think about all the best retail displays you’ve ever seen – they will definitely be memorable for the use of colour. Colour can evoke strong emotion and feeling, and can influence the way customers perceive your products. Prospective customers are more likely to remember a colour over an object, so make sure you use colour well to make your display as unforgettable as possible.
Signage
You need to also combine the strong colours with memorable and promotional signage. This is just as important, and caps the display off nicely. Signage is directional and promotional, and it’s important for showing people what offers you have on, and how they can benefit from your promotions. You have to engage and captivate customers in just a few seconds, and using the right signage is an absolutely essential part of this. Do what you can to come up with the best possible signage to make your display stand out from the crowd.
Lighting
So many people overlook the impact that proper lighting can have, and this is something you have to make sure you use. The overall atmosphere of the display will be capped off by the correct lighting. You need bright and ambient lighting that can help give you the best-looking visual display possible. Never overlook the importance of lighting when trying to make an impression with your retail display.
Utilising Floor Space
The amount of space that you have to work with is one of the most important factors to be taken into consideration when preparing for a shop fit out. Measurement and floor plan can easily be miscalculated if your interior design is not properly planned in advance, so it’s vital that your final design and floor plan is considered before work begins.
Taking the time to work on a cohesive floor plan that takes into account the space that you have available is a great way to optimise your layout and ensure that any necessary furniture and equipment can be accommodated without causing your establishment to feel too crowded. This is a great way to conserve space, helping you to get the most out of your shopfitting project.
Optimising Storage
The parts of your store that will be made accessible to customers are not the only sections that need to be properly taken into account when preparing to undergo a shopfitting project; ensuring that you have an adequate amount of storage space for any extra products and equipment is just as important and helps your store to function successfully.
Future-Proofing Your Design
A shop fitting project should ideally be a way of ‘future proofing’ your business. That means that it is a long-term investment that helps to carry your shop comfortably through the next half a decade at least, ensuring that fluctuating trends and changes in customers’ behaviour do not affect your profits. To future proof your business successfully, it is essential to ensure that any shop fitting project you undertake provides you with a timeless style, rather than adhering to trends that are trendy now, but ultimately ephemeral.
Overall, there are many things to consider when undergoing a shopfitting project, helping you to get the most out of your refurbishment. If you’re looking to undergo a shop fit out, learn more about the services that our shopfitting contractors can offer to you.