Bespoke store counter

Each and every piece of store furniture is designed and installed to serve their purpose. Nothing is accidental here. All fixtures and fittings should blend in together to create an attractive frame for your merchandise display and desirable shopping environment for your customers.
A retail counter is not an exception – quite the opposite – it is in fact a critical part of your retail store and can offer a lot of benefits if designed, installed and fitted out correctly. It can increase exposure, boost your sales and send your customers home with a long-lasting positive shopping experience.  So, are you ready to give it some more thought?

Inviting store counter

You have a lot to consider when designing and then manufacturing and installing your store counter to work its wonders. The size and shape of your counter will obviously depend on the layout of your store and the space you have at your disposal. When designing the unit, the possibilities of combining shapes, colours and materials, coupled with technology are practically endless and perhaps for a whole separate article.

If it comes to the shape, for example, for projects with a little more space available, curved counters are a great way of adding depth and sense of flow to a space. You can go even further with your creativity and make it a work of art – to attract admiring looks and spark interest in the brand.

Remember that your counter is what your customers will experience last and take the feeling back home. Thus, provide your staff enough room behind the counter with sufficient storage space to enable fast customer service. And, do not compromise the quality of a shop counter- savings here can cost you more than you think.

Personalise your shop counter

Why not to use your sales counter to tell more about your brand? Present you brand story or its beginning, or other interesting and cool facts or images that are unique just for you. Or, if applicable, share your CSR efforts supporting a community or the environment. Especially young consumers do really pay attention and warm up to the brands that actively contribute to charity and environmental protection initiatives. Brief a creative agency or a designer to let you help you find out what would that be and how to incorporate it into the counter area.

Does store counter functionality matters? A lot

Whether a simple design, or a statement piece, a bespoke counter should feature all the necessary functionalities to make your shopper’s life easier and their experience better. No matter if big or small, your counter should always provide enough space for customers’ bags and other belongings they might have with them. Now, you don’t want your customer to get frustrated and quit in the very final moment, do you?

Increase basket size right at the store counter

Encourage impulse buying by using the counter area effectively. Allocate some space at and/ or around the cash wrap and place an interesting display wall behind the counter to encourage last minute purchases.

Also, a good idea might be to install a TV screen on the wall behind the counter. This tactic will enforce your brand on products, especially these from your current promotion of merchandise. This is especially important in case of a long waiting line or some hold-up. People who made it to your cash register are clearly in a mood to buy. And will be more likely to add some items to their basket.

Avoid, however, displaying too many impulse items directly on the counter. Overcrowding might put shoppers off and they might ignore all that what was supposed to attract their attention.

Check-out counter

Check-out counter location in your store

Last but not least, the location of your counter should be a logical part of the in-store customer path that was carefully created. With the typical customer path starting on the right, the counter should be located at the front to the left. However, when choosing the best location for your check-out counter take into account the size and shape of your store and potential security concerns. Whatever you decide, the counter should not be located to the right of the store entrance.

We hope this short summary will be helpful next time you are upgrading your sales counter getting the right attention along the way. Or other store fixtures and fittings. Need a partner who can help you with this?

Contact us and let us take care of it!

About the company: at CAPS Group we get it. We provide a ‘one stop shop’ service to retailers that care about their sales performance and the power of customer experience.