Starting a business is no easy undertaking. Once you’ve chosen a location, lined up your supply chain, and secured loans to launch your retail venture, it’s time to take a long, hard look at your retail space and determine the best ways to represent your brand and create an immersive experience.

What sights, smells, and sounds will greet your customers when they enter? Will they feel compelled to touch your wares? Will you offer refreshments to tantalize the taste buds? Shopping is a largely sensory experience, and when you take a multi-sensory approach, you enhance stimulation and create a richer, more engaging, and more memorable experience overall.

How can you support your brand imaging and reach sales goals by designing an immersive and multi-sensory retail environment? Here are a few things to consider.

Sight

Humans rely on visual input for the lion’s share of environmental information, so your efforts should start with the visuals in your store. Spend time considering the colors, textures, and materials you’ll use, as well as how the layout looks from outside the store and within the shopping space. Whether you opt for plush carpeting, chic chandeliers, and acrylic displays, or you choose rustic wood and industrial lighting fixtures, your visuals need to represent your brand and speak to your preferred demographic.

Sounds

Many stores play music, and there are endless stations and styles to choose from. These days, you can even curate Pandora or Spotify playlists to create a truly unique listening experience. Consider how the audio in your store speaks to shoppers and impacts their experience (not only in the music you choose, but the decibel level).

Smell

This is one sense most retail stores don’t put much thought into. As long as it smells clean, you might not fret. You should take a cue from realtors, however, who often use scent to their advantage during open houses, baking cookies to create a cozy feel or adding lemon scent for the illusion of cleanliness. Which aromas would your customers find appealing? Floral or fruity scents? Coffee or popcorn? While you can’t go wrong with the fresh scent of citrus, the most universally popular scent is actually vanilla.

Touch

Retail stores offer a tangible alternative to online shopping, and you can make the most of it by creating displays that invite browsers to touch your wares; think sparse clothing racks (rather than overstuffed) and demo stations, for example.

Taste

This is a weird one for many retailers, but offering tasty treats like a tray of attractive, non-perishable finger foods (baked goods or candy, for example) or a drink station (coffee, tea, cucumber water) is a great way to hit the final of five senses and complete your immersive experience.

In Conclusion

With sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste, you have the best opportunity to engage shoppers and create a positive and memorable experience.

If you are interested in purchasing Retail Store displays and accessories for your retail store, shop our website, Specialty Store Services.  We have everything you need to be a profitable retailer.  If you have a question that you would like answered immediately, you can Live Chat, or phone us at 800-999-0771.