Custom Point of Purchase Displays: 6 Useful design tips

Point of purchase (POP) displays are a great way to increase brand awareness and grow your bottom line. If you are planning to use POP displays for your business, here are six design tips to get you off to a great start.

What Is a Point of Purchase (POP) Display?

Let’s begin by defining what a Point of Purchase display is.

A Point of Purchase display, often called POP display, refers to a display placed in the area where customers make purchasing decisions, such as aisles or any open spaces within a store.

By contrast, Point of Sale (or POS) displays are located next to the area where people pay for the items they buy. This means that POS displays are usually placed near the checkout counter.

Make Sure Your Point of Purchase Display Stands Out

The first step is to figure out how you are going to make your POP display stand out.

This is more complex than it seems because purchase areas are crowded with all types of visual cues, from wayfinding signage to posters, packages of all types, and other displays

How to grab people’s attention in such a busy environment? By focusing on one or two features that will make your display impossible to ignore.

These are some of the factors that can help you differentiate your display from the crowd. You can choose to emphasize one or more of them:

Size
Shape
Colors
Graphics (photos, drawings, typefaces)

Keep It Consistent With Your Branding

Now, here comes one of the tricky parts.

While your Point of Purchase display must be distinctive, it must also be consistent with your branding. This means that people should be able to associate at first sight your POP display with your brand.

The easiest way to achieve this goal is to incorporate into your design your brand’s color and logo (or logos) as well as any other distinctive elements that help establish an association between individual products and brand.

An experienced designer can help you find the sweet spot where a POP display not only sells but also helps build your brand

Combine Your POP Display With Other Visual Solutions

As we mentioned earlier, the competition for customer’s attention is fierce, so you have to take advantage of every resource available if you want your POP display to succeed.

A great way to gain an edge over your competitors is to combine your Point of Purchase display with other visual solutions for a more striking effect.

For example, if your display will be located in an open space, you can place a floor graphic that interacts visually with the display and helps direct the customers’ attention toward it.

Or if your display will be located against a wall, a wall graphic offers endless possibilities to create a memorable purchasing experience that will awe your audience.

Some of the visual solutions you may consider to complement your displays include:

Wall graphics
Floor graphics
Window graphics
Banners
Advertising flags

Choose the Right Type of Display

Not all POP displays are the same. They come in different shapes, sizes, and types.

The type of display you choose depends on your product, your branding needs, and your commercial goals.

For example, while most stores have aisles, other businesses have a counter where an employee talks with customers and get them what they need. In the first case, an aisle display is the best solution; in the second scenario, a counter display is usually a better solution.

These are some of the most common types of POP displays. Most of them are self-explanatory except for sidekicks, a term that refers to displays that can be attached to existing shelving to increase storage space and differentiate a product.

Aisle displays
Counter display
Sidekick
Banner stands

Make It Easy to Use

Never lose sight of this simple principle: the main goal of your POP display is to sell.

This might seem obvious, but it bears repeating because it’s easy to get caught up in the visual aspect of your display while neglecting its main function.

A visually impressive POP display that is not customer-friendly may help you score branding points, but it won’t do much for your sales.

As the design process progresses, never stop putting yourself in the shoes of a potential buyer. Is it easy to grab items off the display? If your aim is to promote a special sale, does the display offer all the information your customers need?

These may seem basic details but in marketing, as in many other areas, getting the basics right goes a long way toward achieving success.

Height Matters

This factor is so important that it deserves a section of its own, although it may be considered part of ensuring that your display is easy to use.

To put it simply, you should make sure that your most important message is at eye level of your customers.

Obviously, you can (and should) use other areas of your display, including the sides and bottom. But the core of your message, the essence of your campaign should be located at eye level.

This height will vary depending on your audience. For reference, according to the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention, the average height for American men is 5’9’’, while the average height for American women is 5’3’’.

As for children, the CDC charts show that the average height of an American 8-year-old is about 50 inches (click here for the boys’ chart, or here for the girls’ chart).