Your grocery store’s layout has the power to make or break the customer experience.
If your store has a confusing floor plan, you’ll find frustrated shoppers wandering around your store — resulting in empty carts and lost sales.
On the other hand, a well-planned, intuitive small grocery store layout will guide your customers through your aisles as they quickly and easily navigate your store, finding everything on their lists and more.
In short, an excellent grocery store layout is essential for high sales and satisfied customers. To help you design a top-notch small grocery store layout, let’s explore these six best practices.
1. Organize Your Store Intuitively
When creating your small grocery store layout, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. How will they tackle their grocery lists? In what order are they likely to visit each of your aisles? Where will they expect to find certain items?
Answering these questions will help you design a predictable, intuitive floor plan for your grocery store.
For example, most grocers display fresh items like produce, meats, and dairy on the perimeter of their stores, so your customers will expect to find these items on the outer edges of your sales floor.
You’ll also want to group items in a way that makes sense. For instance, your breakfast items should be in one convenient place, allowing your customers to add cereal, granola bars, and pancake mix to their carts all at once.
2. Leverage Clear Signage
Your signage acts as a map for your customers as they navigate your small grocery store layout. Make sure you have signage throughout your store, guiding them to each of your departments and aisles.
Here are a few tips to keep in mind when designing your grocery store’s signage:
- Use large fonts that are easy to read.
- Place signs where they’re easily visible.
- Design your signage to be consistent with your grocery store’s branding.
The right signage can go a long way in enhancing the customer experience, so don’t skip this critical step.
3. Utilize Shelf Labels
Labeling your shelves and individual items is just as important as using aisle-level signage. These shelf labels help customers evaluate your offerings and decide which items they want to take home.
Make sure that each of your items is clearly labeled with the product name, exact price, and unit price to help shoppers make budget-conscious choices.
If your grocery store shelf labels need an upgrade, your easiest option is to choose a point of sale (POS) system that allows you to generate and print custom barcode labels for your shelves and individually packaged items.
Related Read: Grocery Store Price Labels: 4 Pro Tips
4. Encourage Impulse Purchases
The right small grocery store layout gives you the opportunity to make bigger sales, filling your customers’ carts with items that they weren’t originally planning to purchase.
To reap this benefit, create an attractive display near your checkout counter to spotlight last-minute impulse purchases.
You might include grab-and-go items like cold drinks, single-serving snacks, and candy in your checkout area to encourage your shoppers to treat themselves as they wait in line.
Another way to boost sales through your small grocery store layout is to use a cross-selling approach.
This strategy involves placing related items near each other to encourage your customers to purchase them together.
For example, you may place a variety of dips and salsas on your chip aisle to inspire customers to try something new, or you might stock coffee filters near your coffee grounds to remind shoppers that it’s time to stock up.
6. Regularly Refresh Your Layout
To keep your customers’ carts full, you’ll need to keep your grocery store layout fresh. Make sure to regularly update your displays and featured items to reflect your new arrivals, promotions, and seasonal trends.
For example, as summer approaches, you might want to create a new, colorful display highlighting cookout essentials like chips, dips, and hotdog buns. As temperatures cool down in the fall, you might change up your display to feature seasonal favorites like pumpkins and squash.
To identify your seasonal trends and optimize your small grocery store layout, lean on your POS system’s sales reporting and analytics.
Make More Grocery Store Sales With IT Retail
A well-designed small grocery store layout is just one essential ingredient for small business success. To keep your customers satisfied and your bottom line healthy, you’ll also need the right POS solution.
If you’re looking for the best POS system for your grocery store, check out IT Retail. Equipped with robust inventory management tools, a sales-boosting customer loyalty program, and insightful reporting and analytics, IT Retail has everything you need to become your neighborhood’s favorite grocery store.
Take IT Retail for a spin by scheduling your personalized demo, or use our build and price tool to create a custom POS solution for your small business.