10+ Retail Signage Tips To Increase Foot Traffic

Are you looking for ways to increase foot traffic to your retail store? It can be difficult to drive more customer traffic through your door when you feel as though you’ve tried everything. Here’s a tip—start with your store signage. Are you making the most use of your store’s signs to grab customers’ attention? If your signs need some updating, here are 10 retail signage tips to increase foot traffic to your retail store. When done right, these sign tips will help you gain new customers and turn foot traffic into new profits.

Set Up a Wide Variety of Signs

To attract and keep new customers in your store, you must use retail signage efficiently. Utilize the right signage from the beginning of the customer’s journey to the end. Here are some examples of retail signage you should be using along the way.

• Outdoor Signage: Your outdoor store signs are single-handedly the most important signage for driving more attention and foot traffic to your store. Your outdoor signs are what customers see first and offer the first impressions of your business. Not only should your store have a logo or title store sign, but you should also try to sprinkle additional outdoor signs around your storefront when trying to capture customers’ interest. Use a combination of large banners and smaller sidewalk signs to offer variety.
• Display Signage: Your store’s display is often the next aspect of your store to catch customers’ attention, so don’t neglect your displays or let them get stagnant. Store signs are a great inclusion for displays. These signs can help better inform the customer about your store and the products it offers at a glance, which is ideal for your display windows.
• Promotional Signage: Promotional signage is great for grabbing customer attention as well, and it makes a great addition to your window displays, too. Discounts and other promos will always help drive additional customer traffic. Who doesn’t love a good deal, after all? Make sure your in-store promotions are prominently displayed at the front of your store or outside it with a sidewalk sign or standee.
• Directional Signage: Directional signage is ideal for guiding customers to your store and once they reach your store as well. Even if your business isn’t large, you can still utilize directional signage to guide customers to certain products, sections, and more. In fact, directional signage can be especially useful for smaller stores that need help organizing and sectioning their products.
• Digital Signage: Digital signage is a quickly evolving part of the retail world. A vast majority of retail stores have already utilized digital signage in their stores. Keep up with the competition by incorporating digital signage in your displays, product pricing, and more.

Understand the Proper Placement

Once you have all the signs you need to attract new customers, you need to place them where customers will be able to see them in the first place. Each type of sign listed above will have different placement needs. For example, you can place outdoor signs all around your storefront to target different customers passing by. Those in cars will probably notice your larger logo or business name signs over the smaller display signs in your windows. On the other hand, customers passing by on the sidewalk will notice sidewalk signs and display signs first, which is why promotional signage works great at this level and distance.

Placement for indoor signs will vary depending on the size of your store. Make sure to keep signage heights varied for shorter customers or those who are wheelchair-bound. Directional signage on the floor or up above your aisles is best for easy readability no matter where the customer is standing.

Sign Design Tips

What do you do when you have all the right signage in all the right places, but customers still aren’t interested? In this case, you’ll need to reevaluate what’s printed on your store signs. You may need to touch up the signs’ text, colors, or other design elements. Find out which elements make a great store sign.

• Use Bold Fonts: Your store signs will have no effect if your customers can’t read them. Don’t be afraid to go big and bold with the fonts on your sign’s text. When it comes to outdoor signs, many of them will be read at a distance. You’ll need your message to be big and readable, even from across streets and parking lots, to attract the most attention. Even some indoor signs need larger fonts, such as directional signs hanging above your aisles.
• Edit Copy for Your Signage: Sometimes, we all need to go back to the drawing board and edit our sign’s copy. Your goal should be to keep your message concise and easy to read. Customers will lose the message if there’s too much text.
• Incorporate Color Theory: Finally, while designing your store signs, don’t forget to incorporate color theory and psychology into the mix. Colors are strong tools that you can use to influence your customers’ attention and even purchases. For example, marketing often uses red for generating excitement and a sense of urgency, while it uses blue for calmness and building trust.

Stand Out from the Competition

Finally, pay attention to your competitors’ signs as well. You don’t want your signs to look like all the rest, or your business won’t stand out. Get creative with your signage designs. This will also help your business steal customers’ attention away from your competition and drive more sales to your own store.

Retail signage is an extremely powerful tool that no retail store should be ignoring. If you haven’t given much thought to your store signs up until now, start using these 10 retail signage tips to increase foot traffic today. And if you’re in need of additional signage or holders for your retail store, shop here at The Global Display Solutions for door sign holders and more. We offer a wide variety of store sign holders to support almost any type of signage your store needs.