Just like there are universal laws of attraction regarding money, there are universal laws for creating dynamic retail store windows that attract customers to look at your windows and come inside.

Every time someone passes by your store, you want to leave them with a memorable impression about your brand and your products. Store windows are like mannequins, they are silent salespeople. Even when your store in closed, your window displays are selling for you as people walk or drive by your store.

In yesterday’s post we explained the five “laws of attraction” which was about the basic concepts of good visual design. Today we have the five ” laws of execution” to give you specific tips  for creating sensational window displays. We highly recommend that retailers use a trained visual merchandiser – many are are available on a freelance basis – to implement these ideas.

Once again we thank the The Visual Merchandising Blog (written by a blogger based in the Philippines) for the information below. The photos are from the Louis Vuitton store in Paris courtesy of Facebook page of Chameleon Visual, a creative consultancy based in South West London.

1 Merchandise 

The star of window display. Without the merchandise, the stores’ window display will lose its meaning. This is the most important element of window display because the merchandise is what makes money for your store.

This is the reason why you need different selling tactics and this is the reason why you need to have window display.

Your merchandise can be classified into best seller, impulse items, seasonal and trend items, advertised items, speciality goods, browse items, basic stocks and problems stocks. Among the classifications, the last on the list is a big NO NO to be included in you window display.

2 Props 

The advocates of the star. As advocates, your props should not take the role of merchandise as the star but to support your merchandise to be seen as what it needs to be – to be on its best, attractive and worth buying look. The first thing on your window display that the customers should notice is the merchandise, not the props.

In event that the props are more attractive to eyes of the audience, make sure that you can find a way to direct the viewers eyes into the merchandise. Motion and direction is a good technique to achieve this purpose.

Props can be classified as functional (mannequins, stand, panels), decorative (mirrors, flowers, sea shells) or structural (boxes, cylinder, sphere).

 

3 Signage 

The receptionist of window display. It breaks doubts, it answers common questions and it delivers straight forward information to your target audience.

The greatest mistake that you can do as visual merchandiser is to let the customers guess the message that you want to give them unless you are having a promotion using a guessing game. Use signage to tell people about your theme, the price and other necessary information that would encourage them to enter your store and make purchases.

These are many ways to classify signage but commonly, they are classified into corporate signage, information signage, category and location signage, directional signs and price tags.

4 Lights 

The make-up of window display. Without lights, your window display is like as a woman’s face without make up. The random and wrong application of lighting on window display is like a woman’s whose make-up is like that of Joker’s face. Can you imagine that?

Lighting can be over-all lighting like fluorescent lamps, accent lighting like spot lights and atmosphere lighting like colored lights.

5 Space 

The stage for the star. It includes the length, the width and the height. This where all of the above are found. This is where your star showcase its glamour and blast a seduction!

In Photography, they say that the best asset of a photographer to use is the frame; it window display, it is the space.

Fill the space but do not overcrowd.

This post was written by Mannequin Madness. We subscribe to visual merchandising blogs from all over the blogosphere (so you don’t have to) to bring you the best examples of eye-catching window displays from across the globe. We admit we are biased and primarily feature window displays that have a mannequin in them. But believe it or not, a lot of non-clothing related retailers use mannequins in their windows.

Mannequin Madness sells and rent a wide variety of new and used mannequins and dress forms.