Laying it Out

When I enter a store, do I turn right, or left?
Is it easy for a customer to navigate around, and find what the are looking for? Are there a lot of gondolas segregating the store into sections?

What works for your store?
1. A grid store layout ?
- Enter : Check out, cast till, cart area
- Corner : Fresh fruits & Veggies
- Aisles : Food, Hygiene, Disposables etc
- Back : Storage, inventory etc


Thoughts :
- Cash tills must never be the first thing you show a customer. You remind them of spending money, and trigger a negative experience.
- Why is the fresh fruit & veggie counter so far out of the entry. In my opinion, it should be the first thing you show a customer. Make them feel good about spending money. Make them see the fresh fruits and smell the vegetables, instantly trigger a happy emotion.


2. Racetrack layout?
- Multiple entry & exit points between sections
- One section looping onto another
- Encourages exploration (sometimes too much that it distracts)



Thoughts -
- Mostly used in department stores for bags, shoes, apparel etc
- Like stated earlier, encourages exploration, and switching from one brand to another while staying in the same category, but procrastinates purchase decisions on the flip side

3. Free form
- Fixtures and aisles are asymmetric



Thoughts -
- Inefficient use of space
- Weak, loosely defined navigation
- Dis organized, functioning more as a put off, than a relaxation fix (as originally intended)

Be my Hero

When I am stuck in a store, lost, crunched on time, looking for the cheapest yogurt, or for the right oil balance face wash, or for the gluten free cookies, I want the store/ sales team to be my hero and resolve my problems. I want clear demarcations, I want to be asked if I need help, I need suggestions on the cheapest product from the collection, and on the healthiest cereal. I want tags clearly highlighting the before and after discount price. I want per unit price for every product so I can compare between multiple brands.

Not that you're not already doing some of the things, but I need all actions to be harmonized, so I can go tell the world about how delighted I am.

Disgust # 2

Disgust.

I went grocery shopping today, and got really really upset as it took me a long time to find the 'right' product. I have a guest who is allergic to Gluten.
So I have to find the right product, that is not only good value for money, but is also Gluten-free.

Referring back to the problem of bad organization on shelves. I need a tag to clearly demarcate the gluten free products. If I were a retailer, I would take care of that the first thing. And not just gluten, but other common ingredients that could prove to trigger a reaction must be called out on a separate shelf.

Disgust # 1 -Tag it right

Disgust.

What happens when you buy a bunch of items after some contemplation on price and quality. Then you head to the cash till only to find that the prices at the shelf were all messed up!

An increasingly painful peeve of today's shoppers. With increasing sales, and promotions, changing from one day to the next, smooth logistics in updating price tags throughout the countless aisles can turn out to be a complex task. 

Say a store has 2000 shelves, with a 50 product categories on each shelf. Updating (manually) 100,000 price tags everyday, can lead to errors even from the best of us. I had one bad experience. and it was a price difference of 20 cents. But I think of it. Every time I step into the grocery store. Every time I pick a loaf of bread, I wonder if it actually costs that much. Every time I run through my bill, I try hard to remember if the price tags I saw on the shelves tally with the bill in my hand. And almost each time I get stuck on one or two items, sure that I have been ripped. 

Now even though the store did not rip me, the experience took a lot away from my shopping experience. And it will take a lot of fully satisfactory cycles, for me to 'trust' the store again.

A stitch in time, could have saved nine.

Delight or Disgust?

Shopping experiences either delight, or disgust. Today, it was a little bit of both. 

Key takeaways :

- Delight the customer every step of the way. 3/5 customers who are completely delighted will share their experience with 3-5 individuals.

- Engage the customer when they stare at an aisle longer than 2 minutes, without any activity. (Just like I did, when I was trying to decide a new cereal I wanted to try. I would have bought 'anything' with just a little nudge. No one nudged me.)

- Get better at organizing sub sections

- Get digital tags

Delight

·      1. Quick check-out line. The cashier was not only adept at quickly billing my purchase, but also bagged the items, and handed them over to me, while her assistant pulled out my used trolley out of my way, all in 5 seconds.

·      2. Quick problem resolution – I cannot find the face cleanser. I could if I tried, but it’s been 15 seconds, and that’s almost a year in retail clock. Before I realize an assistant walks up and solves my problem in 5 seconds.

Disgust

·      3. I am walking up and down the frozen vegetables aisle, since I need frozen peas. I also need them cheap. And I need a decent brand. But they are all spread across, with frozen carrots and beans cropping up in between. Multiple brands of peas mixed with multiple vegetable categories. 5 minutes to find the ‘right’ bag of peas. What did I say about retail clock?

·      4. Bread. Very important on my list. Again, walking up and down the aisle, coz you know there are So many types. But the 2 associates have blocked my view as they are manually updating price tags. And they take 5 minutes just to cover half of it. I don’t blame them; they are doing their best, but what about my clock?

Opportunity – Let’s get the digital tags