3 Common Complaints Customers Have with Your Retail Signage — and How to Solve Them

Retail signage plays a range of key roles in serving your customers: it helps shoppers discover and navigate your store, boosts impulse sales, and provides a comprehensive branded experience. From exterior signage highlighting the entrance to interior signs labeling each section of your retail store, your shop is filled with retail signage that your customers engage with every time they enter. When your signage is hard to find, hard to read, or hard to use, customers are turned away.

Read on to explore three common complaints customers have about retail signage and how you can solve them with a team of signage and branding experts to build a better customer experience.

Retail Signage Complaint 1: Hard to Find

Exterior Retail Signage

Exterior retail signage is a key component in attracting customers. One study found that nearly 76% of consumers have entered a store or business they’d never visited before based on its signs, and over 50% of consumers reported that poor signage has deterred them from entering a store. If your customers are struggling to find your exterior retail signage, they may feel confused or lose interest in your business. Use vivid, clear signage above access points and in prime locations across your shop’s exterior to enhance customer experience and boost your branding to encourage new customers to explore your store.

Interior Retail Signage

The locations you place your retail signage inside your store matter too. When customers enter your store, your signage empowers them to easily navigate to different areas without confusion or stress. Key areas for interior retail signage may include specific sections such as a home section and a clothing section, as well as signs denoting restrooms, exits, fitting rooms, registers, and more. You can also place signage over areas in your retail store you’d like to highlight that encourage impulse buying, like a sale section or limited edition line. In one study, more than 67% of shoppers reported that they’d purchased a product or service because a sign caught their attention. Keep your signage clear and engaging to entice your customers and encourage sales.

Retail Signage Complaint 2: Hard to Read

Design

For interior and exterior retail signage alike, readability is vital. When signage is illegible, your customers may struggle to understand it and feel deterred from shopping. In fact, legibility was chosen as the most important characteristic of signage by both consumers and businesses. The fonts, colors, and sizes you choose for your signage determine whether customers can easily read and interpret it. Each choice also helps you build your brand’s identity. The design of retail signage for a vintage clothing store will differ from that of a glasses shop or a pet store. With this in mind, it’s important to choose signage that accurately reflects your brand’s persona while also seamlessly serving your customers with the readability they need.

Lighting

When retail signage is in a poorly lit area, even the clarity of the fonts and design falls flat in your efforts to serve your customers with better signage. Lighting helps ensure your exterior retail signage is easily understood day and night. Within your store, brightening up your signage with lighting solutions can make it pop to customers, helping them find and read it more easily. To accomplish clearer, more engaging signage, utilize lighting solutions like LED retrofit and upgraded lighting systems that illuminate your retail signage to be more readable.

Retail Signage Complaint 3: Hard to Use

Outdated Retail Signage

When customers encounter a store with outdated retail signage, it disrupts their buying journey and diminishes their customer experience. Dated signage may be cracked or aging, with damage or fading that makes it unappealing to look at. Outdated signage may also be inaccurate, poorly reflecting the section it denotes. If your signs are in need of a refresher, trust a team of signage and branding experts to revamp your retail signage with high-quality creations tailored to your brand and needs. More than 60% of businesses surveyed shared that changing the design of their signage had a positive impact on their sales, with an increase of around 10% in transactions and profits. Refresh your retail signage to appeal to your customers and deliver an enhanced experience.

Not Enough Retail Signage

If your signage is well-designed but sparing, it’s not serving your customers. With exterior signage, if your building has multiple entrances but only one large sign in the front, it may confuse customers and turn them away. In one study, nearly 60% of customers shared that the absence of signage deters them from entering a store. When you don’t have enough signage, you lose sales. Exterior retail signage that complements the design of your retail store will help customers locate your shop with confidence. For interior retail signage, offering ample, well-placed signage will help customers navigate your store more easily so they can focus on what they want to buy and not worry about how to find it.

Achieve Better Retail Signage with Stratus

At Stratus, we are committed to helping brands like you better serve your customers with well-designed signage. As a nationwide brand implementation company serving some of the largest industries in the country, we offer a wide variety of branding and signage solutions that we tailor to meet your precise specifications. We have ample experience successfully serving retail stores with enhanced signage, and we tailor our approach to address your unique needs and suit your brand and store.

From lighting solutions that illuminate your signage to interior and exterior retail signage that pop and serve customers, when you partner with us, you can feel confident your signage solves common customer complaints like those above. With more than 4,000 field partners throughout the US and surrounding areas, we can serve your needs no matter your location and are experts at delivering a comprehensive branding experience for businesses with a multi-state footprint. No matter how complex or simple your signage problems are, we will help you revamp your approach and boost your customer experience.

Contact us today to learn more about our retail signage solutions and how we can help.