POS Displays

The art of good POS displays:  reminding a customer that there’s something they didn’t know they needed.  We’ve all encountered POS displays that made us buy something we weren’t looking for – sweets in supermarkets; The Little Book of Calm in bookstores; or, in our childhood, those weird rubber finger puppets a person could find in boxes on Post Office counters.  We never knew we needed them until their POS displays pointed it out to us.

The POS (Point Of Sale) is the most critical part of a store.  It’s where the customer is going to part with his or her money, which makes it the last chance that business has to persuade them to part with more.  POS displays are designed to catch a customer’s attention in that vulnerable “wallet out” moment.  They’ve already committed to spending a certain amount of cash, and so are most receptive to being encouraged to spend just a little extra.  A “little” being a generally operative term:  POS displays are built to house small, relatively inexpensive items that don’t make the customer feel that he or she is being hornswoggled.  Items in POS displays will be snacks, stocking fillers – what used to be called “fancies”:  little objects that take a person’s fancy long enough for them to buy.

If the Point Of Sale is the most crucial part of a store, then its POS displays are some of the most vital pieces of kit that store can buy.  Good POS displays can drive retail revenue up by significant amounts (ask a bookstore how many Little Books Of.... it sold from the counter as opposed to the shelf):  which makes good POS displays vital investment for anyone in the high street/shopping mall environment.  Traffic-heavy stores like supermarkets or cafes exemplify the selling power of good POS displays daily:  other concerns show similar trends during footfall-heavy periods, particularly Christmas, when the proliferation of POS displays in shops gathering their perennial catch of willing shoppers speaks for itself.

What makes good POS displays?  POS displays that work are eye-catching, easy to access and hold plenty of products without looking cramped.  The most effective POS displays make it immediately obvious what it is they contain:  and they make customers feel like their contents are something they have to have.  Really good POS displays must take into account what it is they are displaying as well as how they’re displaying it – in really lucrative POS displays, the products available are always ones that are small, easy to pick up and fleetingly attractive.  Things that plug into a current trend without being substantive enough to make the customer worry about buying them. 

In some ways, products in POS displays seem counter-productive.  They’re almost always throw-away items no reasonable person would consider if they weren’t there, by the till.  But they are – by the till – and that’s why POS displays are anything but.  Counter-productive, that is.  Far from it.  Excellent POS displays are productive, period.  A couple of effective POS displays can turn footfall-profit ratios upward, dramatically. The money’s already out – what’s an extra couple of quid?  Multiplied by fifty per cent of all the customers who come to the till:  a lot.