POP display advice: Top tips to help your displays achieve

POSTED: 25 February 2019

An interview with a top POP Display designer

We want to help you to achieve the success you desire; we aim to help brands and retail stores understand the elements that are key to the success of any POP display project. In this article we interviewed a top design professional to share insights into what makes a POP display functional and effective in a retail environment. Here’s what he told us:

Do POP displays always increase sales?

Extensive research shows how POP display solutions are great at pulling in more sales and creating product awareness, and in response, many brands and retailers have invested many dollars in POP display projects in a bid to reap their acclaimed benefits. However, deploying just any POP display may not get you the results you want. In some cases, a POP display project can backfire and reduce the volume of sales instead of increasing them.

With ever-increasing competition from online retail and e-commerce stores, bricks and mortar retail outlets must use every means at their disposal to boost their sales and generate more revenue. When a customer enters the doors of your store you gain a huge opportunity to win the customer’s trust and loyalty, and retain or grow your share of the retail market.  POP units, designed and executed in the right way, can help you with this.

So what actually makes a successful POP unit?

A successful POP display acts as a creative marketing tool to showcase products and encourages customers to pick the product off the shelf. It can be anything from an end-cap sign to an elaborate custom-made unit. POP displays are ideal for brand awareness campaigns and can be used to inform customers when there is an ongoing discount or a special promotion they can benefit from. Due to their eye-catching designs, POP units engage the attention of shoppers and provide them with a special shopping experience.

Sales increased by 87% with this Tic Tac POP unit.

However, POP display projects can only be effective when they have been properly planned and all the details specifically engineered to appeal to the targeted consumers. To this end, I recommend that before embarking on a POP display project, brands and retail stores should ask two key questions – Who will use the POP unit? And, how will the POP unit be used?

I’ll give you an example. Let’s digress from the world of POP for a moment to illustrate. Assume that you engage the services of a custom furniture fabricator to produce a chair. For the fabricator to proceed with your project, he needs to know if the chair would be used by a child or an adult. Aside from this, the fabricator also needs to know the purpose for which the chair will be used. If the chair will be used by an adult, it should be of a particular height and the materials used should be durable enough to carry an adult’s weight. These are just a few of the factors that would influence the design and manufacture of the chair. The same applies to POP display projects since you need to specify who will use the POP unit and how the POP unit will be used.

OK, so our first question to address is ‘Who will use the POP unit’?

Absolutely. Who will use the POP unit is critical in determining the type and format of POP unit to use. There are different POP units for different retail industries (groceries, electronics, fashion etc.) and to get the best results, it is essential that you choose the unit that best represents your industry. After choosing a supplier, you must prepare a design brief that contains comprehensive and very detailed information concerning your retail industry and send them to the design team of your preferred POP supplier.

I presume the design team themselves could help with this too?

Yes, sure. The brief may contain details such as the arrangement of the store, the size, weight, and height of the proposed POP unit as well as any health or safety restrictions that the POP manufacturer needs to be aware of. This helps the designers to figure out the best and most effective POP design that will appeal to your customers while ensuring that it meets all your requirements and any restrictions you may have.

The Reflex durable graphic holder, quick to deploy and easy to change. Perfect for promotions, in-store communication and sign posting.

And the second question then is, ‘How will the POP unit be used’?

Yes, this must be answered when developing the design brief since it deals with the manner in which the POP unit will be used. It helps the POP design team to create a design prototype that will be functional and ideal for your specific retail space. This question is critical in determining the kind of materials to use and whether the display will be a temporary or more permanent one.

Can you give an example?

Temporary POP units are usually promotional in nature and are intended for brands that want to undertake short-term marketing campaigns. For example, brands that have just introduced a new product into the retail market can make use of temporary POP display solutions as part of their overall marketing campaign to announce the product to their target audience and encourage sales. The POP display unit can be used to highlight the benefits of the product while contrasting it with other competing products.

Temporary Display Tray

For such short-term campaigns, the POP display solutions need to be produced as quickly as possible, and the materials used, though adequate, aren’t as long-lasting as those used for permanent POP display solutions. Such materials are used to cut down on the overall cost of the POP display project.

Any final words of advice?

To ensure the success of your POP marketing strategy, it is essential that you understand how the POP display solution will interact with your retail space and communicate your findings to the POP designer. Also, any details that must be incorporated into the design of the POP display solution should be documented in the brief.

Key Takeaway

Once you have satisfactorily answered the two questions that are critical to the effectiveness of any POP display project, i.e. who will use the POP unit and how will the POP unit be used, you are well on your way to achieving your POP marketing goals and objectives.

Email us for a sample box to see how Reflex could act as a simple POP solution for you