A simple downtown solution to a retail store’s visibility
Roger Brooks, a nationally known retail and downtown renovation and restoration expert, recently spoke to a group of merchants in El Dorado, Arkansas. He had a lot of great ideas, but one simple suggestion really hit home with me. It was signage. Every store has signage, but is the most common signage, which is the store name painted on the front window, the right kind? No; and here’s why, according to Roger. First, most of the signage doesn’t tell a shopper what the store offers. In El Dorado we have a downtown store called The Olde Town Store. It’s name is painted on the window, but what does that name tell you? Not much. In every town there are hundreds of signs which have cute names, and, if you live in that town, you finally find out what they’re selling, but you don’t live there and are just visiting, you don’t have a clue. However, you don’t have to give up your cute name to tell a customer what’s in the store.
This is how you do it: Hang a small, 2 foot by 1 foot sign extending out at right angles from the storefront, or attached to the awning. On that sign tell what’s in the store. The Olde Town Store now has a hanging sign that says, “Bakery and Health Food”. If you’re on the corner of the block and look down the street, you’ll see the sign and know if that’s a store you care to shop in. If that sign wasn’t there, you might not even venture down the block. It has been docuemented that proper signage increases business, sometimes as much as 30%.
Fix your signage and watch your sales move up.
