Stun Your Customers With Visual Jewelry Merchandising!

We live in an age where everything is visual. What can’t be seen, doesn’t exist. To sell your luxury and jewellery products, you need to make it appealing so that people who are just viewing them can quickly be turned into customers. 

Visual merchandising is about how to place and present your products in a store. To get an idea of how different brands approach their visual merchandising, walk into a mall and visit different stores and observe what catches your eye. 

In jewellery retail, a lot of high-end, extravagant products are not easy to sell by their own. Therefore, store owners invest in window displays, display cases, lighting, music and scent etc. to not just sell a product, but to sell an experience instead. 

Here are some strategies you can consider while you go about the visual jewellery merchandising process for your store:

Colour is King

Ask any jewellery designer, retailer or merchandiser about visual merchandising and they will emphasize on the importance of colour in your jewellery retail showroom/store. Colour helps with identifying a brand and it draws customers’ eyes into various parts of the store. 

Look around your store and see what colours grab your attention. Is your product highlighted against a contrasting colour? Do some jewellery get hidden behind other brightly coloured ones? Evaluate the goals of your jewellery retail business and adjust the display of your merchandise using colours to guide customers to the product. If you have an established colour palette in your store, you can choose different colours for different display sections depending on the brand colours you use.

Keep Your Display Fresh

Our brains are under constant attack from stimulations all around us, with all the five senses in constant use. Scientifically speaking, the human brain learns to filter out unnecessary details, especially the ones it is familiar with. The brain ignores familiarity, which is why your jewellery and luxury displays must be in rotation. Include new items under the glass at regular intervals. New, surprising details catch the human eye and pique curiosity in customers about the products.

Using Traditional Jewellery Displays

It’s the visual merchandising that we’ve all seen when we walk into a jewellery store: ravishing necklaces set against velvet neck displays and earrings hanging from a jewellery mannequin. For the longest time, jewellery and luxury retailers have displayed items in jewellery cases, mannequins, stands or pads made from silk and velvet etc. The idea is to give an impression of exclusivity and safety to customers. 

Use Augmented Reality (AR) to attract eyeballs

Use the Augmented Reality technology to allow customers to try on jewellery without actually wearing it. This tech shows how that piece of jewellery will look when you try it on using the rendered version of the jewellery and the phone/tab camera. The concept of AR became popular thanks to the Nintendo game, Pokemon Go, very quickly adapted by the jewellery industry. Tanishq has illustrated the use of AR beautifully at the Bengaluru Airport.  The passerby’s can use the large screens with in-built cameras to virtually try on several jewellery designs such as pendants, necklaces and earrings and even place orders.

Create Focal Points

Have you wondered when you walk into any jewellery store, you tend to gravitate towards certain sections of the place where perhaps a new collection of their products might be on display? Creating multiple focal points is an essential aspect of visual merchandising. Placing the product on a pedestal, or a mannequin, or under golden light are ways of pulling the customer’s attention to buy it. 

In your jewellery store, you can have multiple focal points – near the entrance, near each department/room of your store etc. You can use special lighting or digital signages to attract attention to these important sections of your store.

Making Most Of Your Space

A crucial element of visual merchandising is space. Space can help accentuate your jewellery designs and guide the eyes of your customer. Use space to sell a lifestyle. 

Your store will have limited space so it becomes imperative to make efficient use of it in order to showcase as much of your designs and products as possible. This doesn’t mean you put everything you have on display and over-crowd the display cases (for jewellery). What you can instead do is space out your jewellery in multiple display cases, to allow some visual breathing space for the customer going through it. 

Instead of putting all the popular items in one place, spread them across your store. Pair them with other items that are perhaps not-so-popular. This ensures your customers go around the entire space and get a chance to let their eyes feast on all the impressive collections you have, even ones that aren’t necessarily your best-sellers. 

Ensure you have discrete but enough storage spaces for your jewellery. Not all jewellery can be displayed. In fact, not displaying all of it helps sell more. It builds curiosity in the minds of the jewellery buyer about the possibility of finding something attractive as you remove it to showcase new designs. 

Bundling Jewellery

Bundling helps in directing attention to specific products in your store. It is promoting different items that go together as a set. Eg. A necklace, a pair of earrings and a bracelet can often be displayed together as set. This encourages customers to imagine how they might look if they wore all parts of this set, instead of buying just one item. For the jewellery retailer, it is a way to upsell. You can inspire your customers on how to use your products and also make complimentary suggestions.

Good Lighting Is Vital

The way the store is lit, the products are lit, can influence a customer’s decision making and buying behavior. Moreover, lighting and spatial ambience is directly connected to one another. A dimly lit space is less attractive than a brightly lit one. According to researchers, brightly lit spaces encourage impulse purchasing while use of soft lighting slows down the pace of customers and increases the amount of time they spend in your store. 

Lighting can be used to strategically highlight certain products on display. Strategic use of lighting can change a consumer’s mood and behavior on a subconscious level and create an enriching shopping experience for the buyer and seller. In retail, this helps create an atmosphere that corresponds to the brand’s personality. 

Use Merchandise To Tell A Story

Lastly, while your visual merchandising process is meant to guide your customers to boost your sales, it is also about creating an experience for your clients. All the points we mentioned above are parts of the storytelling process: what do you want your customer to feel when they enter your store, and when they leave your store? Think about your brand. What values does it stand for? How can you amplify that in your marketing and merchandising? Jewellery stores often use their merchandise to convey stories of commitment, love and affirmation. Look at your store layout and the products you have, and decide which story you want to tell. 

With these helpful tips and tricks under your sleeve, there’s nothing stopping you from dazzling your customers with your jewelry now, so get out there and stun the crowds!