A recent report indicates that between January and May this year, 20 stores closed their doors each and every day. This may look like a damaging figure – many chains have had to slash costs in an attempt to cope with difficult trading conditions – but in reality it doesn’t need to be that disastrous. Online shopping may be on the rise but a study found that customers still value the physical format, with 59% having a better experience when shopping in person than they do online. This could be due to any number of different reasons but it points to one thing – give customers what they want and they’ll keep coming back.

It’s essential that retailers keep up with shoppers’ demands in this ever-changing climate, and it’s vital that they give them a point of difference to shopping online – they need to give customers a reason so shop in-store, so while the online experience still needs to be good, it needs to be even better when they come to the high street. They need to offer an exceptional level of customer service and should embrace new technology in order to achieve that – things like self-service checkouts and payments by smart phone should be readily employed.

Effective retail design is crucial, as is an emphasis on point of sale display units, all the while giving customers something they can’t get with a computer screen. It’s a lot to live up but it’s essential you can outperform the rest if you want to embrace the changing retail age, and if you need a bit of help with point of purchase design or to devise a whole new concept then get in touch and see how we can help.