For years, retailers have obsessed over every detail of the brick-and-mortar store, with the goal of optimizing the shopping experience to get customers to spend more money.
Store designers would examine the design and placement of the signs that are found throughout the store, where the shopping carts are located, what music is playing in the background, where the cash registers are located, what department is located where, etc.
However, with the advent of mobile phones and the increased use of social media, many retailers are being forced to change the way they design the store.
One of the things that retailers are now thinking about is whether or not the store inspires customers to take a photo of the store and post it on Instagram or any of the other social networking sites out there.
In the long run, having a photo-worthy store could be more important to the bottom line than one might think.
A Majority of U.S. Adults Use Social Media
According to a new Pew Research Center survey, roughly two-thirds of U.S. adults (68%) are Facebook users, 35% use Instagram, 29% use Pinterest, 27% use Snapchat, 24% use Twitter, and 22% use WhatsApp.
It is also interesting to note that over half of current Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram users visit these social networking sites on a daily basis.
This means that there are a lot of opportunities for retailers to get their stores featured in customers’ social media posts.
The key is giving customers a reason to post a photo or comment about the store online.
Is Your Store Instagrammable?
One of the ways to get featured on your customers’ social media posts is to create a shopping environment that just begs to be photographed.
Therefore, it is not surprising that many retail experts have started to use the adjective “Instagrammable” to describe the way a store is designed.
“Instagrammable” could be translated as a photo-worthy location or item that inspires customers to actually take a photo of and then upload it to any social networking site. Because Instagram is known for being able to make ordinary photos look extraordinary with filters, people tend to use that social networking site to represent all the other social networking sites that their customers use.
Others claim that “Instagrammable” goes beyond that.
In an article titled, “Do It For The ‘Gram: How Instagram is Changing the Design Industry,” Lucy Leonard contends that, “Consumers nowadays want to lead Instagram-worthy lives.”
“What does this mean, you ask?” she continues. “It means spending more money on cool, Instagrammable experiences. It means living a life full of adventure—or at least posting pictures that make it seem like you do.”
The way stores create this type of shopping environment will vary from store to store. Therefore, it is beyond the scope of this post.
Final Thoughts
The intention of this post is to point out that retailers need to start thinking about store design not only from their current customers’ perspectives, but also from the perspective of all the potential customers their current shoppers are connected to.
If a user sees the store in a post on a social networking site, there is a chance that it will influence his or her decision to shop at the store in the future.
Therefore, in addition to getting the current shopper to spend more money, now store designers also need to encourage customers to take photos of their shopping experience and upload them for their friends and family to see online.
Furthermore, store designers need to make sure that the store will be portrayed in a positive light and in a way that is consistent with the brand’s image.
Retailers also need to keep in mind that some customers might wonder if it is acceptable to take a picture of a store display while in the store.
Therefore, once you have created a store design that you think is “Instagrammable,” it is important to encourage in-store photography!
But, don’t get too carried away, because asking customers to take photos could make it look like you are begging, or even worse, it could backfire and create bad feelings.
This topic and others associated with the post will be explored, in detail, in future posts.
Photo credit: YL Tan on Flickr. (Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license – CC BY-ND 2.0.)
