Whether your retail premises have recently undergone a refit, or you’re designing a walking route around a stately home, the challenges that face you are fundamentally the same: how can I use beautifully designed signage to enhance the brand experience for customers and visitors?
The problem that faces you is whether you can use bold and innovative signs to head off frustration, and whether you can develop a wayfinding strategy that hits all the touchpoints of your customer’s experience to positively improve brand recognition and experience.
Apply online navigation to offline spaces
Your customer should never be confused about the space they’re in. Signs need to be consistent with your branding and attractive and clear enough to bring in first time customers who can quickly interact with the brand thanks to the cues from your signage. Just as customers browsing your website will click away if the navigation isn’t simple, precise and consistent across the site, so your offline customers will go elsewhere if you don’t apply the same navigation principles.
The decision making process
Wayfinding is about keying into the critical decisions that consumers make and giving useful information at every decision point. The fact is a well-designed entrance will attract people when the overhead sign may be ignored, but the success of your overall strategy is directly dependent on how well all the elements of the wayfinding environment come together in the designs you create with your sign maker.
Wayfinding and the branding experience
If wayfinding is part of a wider visual environment, then it must be part of the broader conversation around branding. After all, it’s the purpose of good quality signage to control the movement of consumers within the retail environment. From the first touchpoint with your brand, you need to establish clarity and tone of voice, whether that’s a map on a flyer or spoken instructions on a phone message.
Interact with the space
Retail spaces are no longer designed to be static. Instead, ranges, layouts and promotions often change, which makes effective signage absolutely vital in helping customers navigate the store successfully, and creating a positive impression of their interaction with your brand. Treating the signage as integral to the success of the overall design will help avoid pitfalls that lead to frustration and disconnection with your brand.
Using a sign company to make signs work
You’ll need both directional signs (those with a visual clue like an arrow) and location signs (those that tell you where you are). Ask your sign maker to produce a group of signs that use corporate colours to enhance your signage, and pay attention to contrast, fonts and font size and accessibility. Remember that your customers will assume a frictionless brand experience that is the same offline and online, and if you don’t deliver, you’ll create a poor brand experience and impression that can be hard to recover from. Search out a decent sign maker who can help you deliver.
If you’re looking for an experienced and professional sign company in London, or the south-east, then here at the The Sussex Sign Company, we strive to earn the best ROI for our customers. Contact us via phone or email for more details.