Merchandise Display in Stores. Increase Customer Engagement and Boost Sales [Retailer's Guide 2025]

Shelf display is not just a way to organize products in a store. It is a strategy that influences customer behavior, their decisions, and increases overall business profits. In a competitive environment, retailers need to use effective display methods to retain their customers and attract new ones. In this article, we will look at how to properly set up product displays to make them a real tool for increasing customer engagement and sales growth.

What is a Merchandise Display?

A merchandise display is the strategic arrangement and presentation of products in a retail environment to attract attention, drive sales, and improve the shopping experience. These in-store displays are designed not only for visual appeal but also to guide customers through the store, highlight promotions, and influence purchasing behavior.

Effective store merchandise displays help shoppers find products quickly while encouraging impulse buys and increasing basket size. A well-thought-out displaying merchandise approach also enhances customer satisfaction and builds brand loyalty.

Why is a Merchandise Display Important?

For retailers, merchandise display is more than shelf organization—it’s a method to boost store performance. A successful store merchandising display can:

• Increase average transaction value

• Drive visibility for high-margin or seasonal items

• Improve store navigation and layout efficiency

The foundation of effective displays lies in planning, customer behavior analysis, and using planograms to manage product shelf displays.

Key Principles of Effective Displaying Merchandise

• Engaging Customers Through Planograms

Planograms are the main tool for retailers to organize shelf space and for planning and executing displays in stores. Planograms allow you to build a visual strategy for product placement based on real sales data and merchandising strategy, ensuring consistent and effective line of goods display across locations.

• Focus on High-margin Products

Displaying high-margin products at customer eye level and within hot zones increases their visibility and sales potential. These premium zones are areas of high customer traffic where store merchandise displays have the highest conversion rates.

• Horizontal and Vertical Display

Horizontal displays create product groupings that simplify comparison shopping.

Vertical displays streamline visibility and access across various product categories within a single sightline.

• Impulse and Seasonal Displays

Placing products (including seasonal and promotional items) in high-traffic areas near checkouts, or on special racks, standalone fixtures in the aisles is an effective technique to stimulate impulse purchases. We are talking about products that are often not included in the shopping list, but attract attention with their availability and favorable price.

How to Build a Merchandise Display Strategy that Increases Sales

There are several key factors to consider to create a merchandising strategy that works:

Analyze Sales and Customer Behavior

Use analytics to track sales and planogram performance to understand how customers move around the store, what products they most often buy together, and where they spend the most time. This will help you customize the display to best meet their expectations and needs. Understand how customers interact with the store using traffic heatmaps, purchase patterns, and product shelf display analytics.

Adapt the Display to the Seasonality

Seasonal products should always be located in the most visible places, which creates a sense of urgency and encourages customers to make quick decisions. Rotate your store merchandising displays based on seasons. For instance, bring holiday-related goods to the front several weeks before the event to create urgency and drive demand.

Create Themed Product Displays

Use the concept of themed merchandise displays to tell stories through products. For example, for the summer season, create displays with picnic products, from drinks to grills, combining them into an attractive and convenient set.

Optimize Planograms 

Use planograms not only to design effective layouts but also to manage inventory and standardize displays across multiple store locations. Automating planogram creation minimizes errors and enables quick layout updates.

Benefits of Planogram-Based Displaying Merchandise

Increased space efficiency. Every square meter is used to its maximum advantage, ensuring optimal placement of products.

Reduced inventory losses. Accurate arrangement of goods reduces the risk of shortages or overstocks.

Sales analysis. The connection between display and sales allows you to make timely changes and improve results.

Negotiation tool with suppliers. Planogram can be turned into a tool for negotiating with different brands and suppliers. Shelf space is of great value to brands. By presenting planograms, you can achieve special and favorable agreements for the store or distributor. Specific products can be given greater visibility and particularly valuable locations

Standardize the display across the stores. The use of planograms is especially important for chain stores. They help to create a consistent display across all stores in the chain. This helps to improve the customer experience as customers easily understand where they can find the products they need. For example, they can go to a store near their home and then to the same store in another location and, thanks to the standardized display, they will easily find the right product because the display is familiar to them. 

What does PlanoHero Planogram Software Offer Retailers?

A Complete Planogramming Solution

PlanoHero allows you to combine and manage all stages of the planogramming process in one service, which greatly simplifies the work of merchandisers. From creating planograms to monitoring them in the field, everything is done in a single system, which minimizes the risk of errors and allows you to quickly respond to changes. For example, if you need to quickly change the display of goods in a chain of stores due to a change in the assortment, you can do it in just a few clicks.

Cloud Solution

Manage displays from any device, anywhere. Thanks to cloud storage, PlanoHero provides access to the program from any device - computer, tablet, or smartphone. This means that managers can work on planograms from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. For example, you can check the implementation of planograms in real time while on a business trip or on the go from your phone.

Unlimited Number of Users

One of the key advantages of PlanoHero is the ability to add an unlimited number of users without being tied to the number of subscriptions. This is especially convenient for large store chains where many employees are involved in the merchandising process. In addition, you can easily manage access rights - from merchandisers who only create planograms and make changes to layouts to managers who analyze the effectiveness of planograms.

Layout Rules

PlanoHero software automatically distributes products to the shelves in one click based on a pre-created layout rule. When creating a layout with PlanoHero, you can take into account sales volumes and the number of multifaceted products or set the share of products on the shelf. For example, if sales of a particular brand are growing, you can increase its share of the shelf to drive even more sales.

Linked Store and Shelf Levels

Plan the full store layout, not just individual shelves. PlanoHero allows you to model product layout not only at the shelf level, but also in the context of the entire store. This makes it possible to create a holistic picture of the space, including planning the location of the retail equipment on the store plan. 

Analysis of the Customer Traffic

Analytics tools in the program help to study customer behavior in the store. PlanoHero allows you to identify “hot” and “cold” zones - places with the lowest and highest sales. This helps to place products more efficiently based on sales data. 

Easy and Affordable Integration

Connecting PlanoHero to the retailer's existing databases takes a minimum of time, and daily updates ensure that the data is up-to-date. This means that all changes in the assortment are instantly reflected in the system, allowing you to always work with the most up-to-date data.

In conclusion, displaying merchandise effectively in a retail store isn’t just a visual tactic—it’s a business strategy. When done right, store merchandise displays not only drive sales but also enhance the customer journey. Using technology like PlanoHero ensures your in-store displays are data-driven, consistent, and optimized for results.

Retailers that invest in smart, adaptable product shelf displays gain a lasting edge in today’s competitive landscape. Use these principles to build displays that sell—and keep customers coming back.