Having your retail space appear online among shoppers’ social media profiles is a great way to advertise, especially if customers are inspired to share positive impressions of your shop’s interior design. It not only improves your brand’s image but also helps to make use of online discoverability, drawing more customers into your store, those who are impressed or intrigued by the images that appear online.
Capitalising on this potential is difficult because retailers cannot actively control shoppers’ actions. However, with the right interior design, shop spaces can influence customers, cultivating a stunning space that suggests and encourages photography.
Lighting A Shoot
While some retailers have made great use of creative darkness, photography requires a foundation of light. If a retail space is to actively support photographs being taken, it needs to be well lit. Both natural and artificial lighting will enable product and environment photography to capture, with creative design and use of spotlighting directing customers to capture specific areas and products.
Colour & Style
A store must have profile. If a retail space is to look excessively discreet or uninspired, especially in colour and style, it will not provoke customers to capture their experience. This is why, when choosing the design elements of shop space, whether retail furniture or shop fittings, they must exemplify a brand and actively serve to characterise a space.
To achieve this, a number of high street retailers turn away from catalogue stock and, instead, choose to purchase bespoke shop furniture and accessories. Custom-made shop furniture, such as a checkout counter, can help a store to stand out among competitors, being bold in colour or underpinning essential elements of a brand’s style.
Eye-Catching Emblems
One of the most effective ways to capture a customer’s attention and, in turn, see them share your interior design online, is with a statement design piece. This could be as simple as a window display, one with well-designed visuals, or it could be a striking wallpaper design.
Such visually arresting designs not only serve to encourage photography but also become signposts for your business, with photographs of your high street space becoming instantly recognisable as a key design asset, advertising your space to customers within moments of them seeing an image.
Social Media Curation
Outside of a shop’s interior design, retailers can improve their online presence with dedicated hashtags and online competitions. A brand’s own social media presence, for example, can encourage customers to interact and capture products in-store. Additionally, brands that establish their own social media popularity automatically prompt customers to interact and share their own images through positive association.
Retail Catwalk
While not every shop space has the room for an entire catwalk, the idea that retailers benefit from a dedicated space whereby customers can photograph their shopping experience and chosen products still stands. Some retailers cultivate a modest but vibrant space, one that offers a brief respite from the shopping experience for the benefit of a visual experience instead. Such interior designs benefit social media presence but are not without a positive impact on sales either as they tend to promote a more considered and slower browsing experience.
