How to Make Visual Merchandise Audit a Success

Visuals are the most effective technique to stamp your brand's impressions in the minds of your customers. 93% of shoppers will purchase a product if the visual look is pleasant, desirable, and has attention-grabbing material. As a result, visual marketing in retail plays an important role in engaging and winning customers. While the typical human attention span is only 8 seconds, brands must ensure that their visual merchandising strategy can effectively capture their attention within this limited time frame. It may appear hard, but a few efficient display merchandising strategies can help you win over a huge consumer base over time.

Display marketing, whether using a visual merchandise audit or a theme-gated display, is a well-known method for increasing sales, engaging customers, and piquing clients' interest in making the ultimate buy.

Let us discuss more about Visual Merchandise Audit and how to have a successful one.

Visual merchandising audit types

The visual merchandise audit is classified into

• Self-audits
• Seasonal audits

Self-audit

Various activities are carried out during self-audits. You can make a Visual Merchandise Audit checklist that can include the following

• product's location, i.e., whether the product is placed in the agreed-upon location;
• where your product is in relation to the products being displayed to determine the best marketing strategy; and
• whether there is enough stock of your product to avoid any kind of delay,
• Were the proper planograms for the area and category used?
• Are products easily accessible in a suitable location?
• Heavy or bulky goods should be stored on lower shelves for safety, among other things.

Seasonal audits

In the case of a seasonal audit, it is critical to ensure that the customer is aware of the sale. The next step comprises the following

• Ensure that the sale or promotion's in-store signage is optimally situated and broadcasts the sale to the majority of customers.
• Ensure that the consumer understands where to find the sale products and what things are included in the sale once they are aware of the deal.
• The field rep must ensure that there is no difference between product pricing and promotional pricing. Otherwise, it will merely add to the consumer's confusion.
• Ensure that all of your employees are aware of any ongoing promotions, as customers will usually ask the salesperson more detailed questions about them.

This is a concise definition of a visual merchandise audit.

Let us discuss some best practices that must be followed while performing a Visual Merchandise Audit for it to be successful.

Tips to Make Visual Merchandise Audit a Success

Here are some best tips to Make Visual Merchandise Audit a Success to follow when your field sales agents undertake visual merchandising operations at customer sites to ensure that your brand is being promoted as agreed—both in the way products are arranged and pricing.

The following are the recommended practices for making it a success:

Planning

Field merchandisers should regularly visit retail outlets to ensure that products are always displayed in a way that increases sales. Determine and implement the best plan for your field reps based on parameters such as the last visit date, retail store product sales, store location, and audit issues identified during previous visits. This ensures that your representatives visit and audit the appropriate clients at the appropriate time. You can make use of an SOP management software to ensure everything goes as planned.

Stock Audit

The field representative must keep a careful eye on the company's stock to ensure that the major products are always properly stocked in the store since they are critical to the business. To be properly prepared, it is critical to evaluate the inventory level within the store. A task management software tool equipped with inventory management features can be useful here to ensure this is done efficiently.

Proper Product Condition

To ensure that your items, as well as packaging, shelving, and any adjoining fixtures, are appealing to potential buyers, they should be clean, fresh, and undamaged. Anything that appears worn, broken, or dirty reflects poorly on your brand's quality and reputation. The store manager should be notified as soon as possible.

Competitors

To stay ahead of the competition, keep a watch on your competitor's products and activities. Examine their product positioning and other marketing actions to ensure you are not falling behind.

Keep visual records

Allow your merchandisers to photograph displays and automatically tag them by account and geolocation. This allows operations managers to keep track of a location's adherence to display planograms and contractual obligations.

Maintain consistency in data collection

To facilitate straightforward business intelligence reporting, ensure that audit data obtained during client visits is captured consistently using standardized, configurable data collecting forms. In-store surveys should be as consistent as feasible to permit reporting that highlights trends and difficulties.

These are some of the methods that might help you succeed with your visual merchandising planning. Using software for your visual merchandising audit will have a dashboard containing data points and graphs that will give actionable insights that can be shared with sites and departments that need attention and corrections. This will help you to achieve the desired result from your audit.

Conclusion

If implemented properly, visual merchandising can raise your sales and increase the conversion rate of potential customers to genuine customers.

An Operational Excellence platform, such as Pazo, allows sales managers to give detailed feedback and can act as a repository of all the feedback for future reference. It also helps them to monitor and rectify Visual Merchandising in real-time at the shop, hence improving the quality of Visual Merchandising audit implementation.

Visual merchandising auditing provides the company with information about how its VM initiatives are being implemented in retail stores. As a result, to properly execute Visual Merchandising campaigns, it is critical to focus on efficiently planning, executing, and auditing them for thorough ROI on VM investments.