The layout of your store has a far-reaching effect on your business’ success.

It guides customers through your space, exposing them to products. It can prevent bottlenecks from forming. It can even help you reduce theft.

But figuring out that layout can be

A planogram is a visual schematic of a store’s layout that focuses on product placement. These schematics help associated figure out where to place new stock, help management target sales with smart product placement.

If you’re ready to start improving your sales tactics, keep reading to learn what you need to know about setting up a planogram for your store.

Define Your Key Products

In order to design an effective planogram, you need to determine what your key products are.

For small businesses, boutique shops, and speciality stores, this is often easy.

You have a smaller number of products, and likely already know what your most popular options are. You also have less shelf space to worry about.

While this won’t make the design any less important, it doesn’t make it easier to design a layout that highlights your key products and helps them stand out in your store.

This may be more difficult for stores with hundreds of different products, because each buyer may be looking for a specific item. Look at past sales records to try to rank your products.

Understand Eye Tracking to Maximize Placement

Before you can start designing your own planogram, it’s important to understand how they work.

If you’ve ever wandered a grocery store’s aisles and wondered why they place so many of the same products side by side, you’ve already witnessed the role of eye tracking in the technology of the planogram.

Research shows that the “number of facings,” or the number of a single product lined up together, has an effect on sales.

Planograms are all about placing items on a shelf in a way that attracts buyers’ eyes and entices them to buy. 

A number of factors go into determining the layout of a planogram, and most of them are related to eye tracking. Buyers tend to look at eye level first, which means prodicts placed at eye level are noticed first. As mentioned, the number of products is also a factor in sales.

Additionally, factors such as the effect of placing related items, such as putting beer nuts in the beer aisle at a grocery store, are also considered.

Hire a Pro

Designing a planogram is an incredibly complicated process. It involves so many specific factors, with each decision affecting the next.

If you make the wrong decision on one factor, it can ruin the rest of your planogram and lead to a drop in sales.

If you want a planogram that does the most for your business, it’s best to leave the design up to a pro rather than trying to figure it out on your own.

Setting Up a Planogram for Your Store

Setting up a planogram for your store will help you increase sales and help your customers find exactly what they’re looking for, whether they know what they want or not.

While a planogram will help you place items on shelves, you’ll still need to decide where to put those shelves.

Check out these tips to help you master your store’s floorplan.