IS YOUR STORE FRONT LETTING TRAFFIC PASS YOU BY?

Whether you are located inside a shopping mall, strip center, downtown or off the beaten path, there is one vitally important aspect of your business that should never be forgotten...your store front. As a business owner, you wear quite a few hats each and every day and one of them should be to create a regularly-scheduled walk through with the perspective of your highly-valued customers you work so hard to reach.
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If you're like most brick and mortar businesses, the ability to attract your target customer involves a great deal of time and in many cases, financial support. As we travel throughout our region, we observe quite a few best practices executed extremely well, while we also see a number of instances where just a little more attention to detail could convert that passerby into another tick on the traffic counter. Here are a few questions to ask that should always be top of mind when it comes to making that first impression:

• What does your store front look like after hours? Will your window shoppers return?
• Is there a menu, website url, bounce back offer or informative collateral piece available for passersby?
• Do poorly maintained newspaper racks greet your customers and could your landlord move them?
• Are decals, posters and unnecessary decor hiding your interior's carefully-crafted visual experience?
• Is your landlord maintaining your parking area, landscaping and overall property presentation?
• Are your signs handwritten, fastened with strips of tape, sun-damaged, crooked? They shouldn't be.
• Is your store front sign located high above your entrance area with eye-level signage being absent? Will strolling passersby walk right by your store front not knowing who you are?
• Will a simple coat of new paint take care of the worn woodwork that resides next to the menu that potential customers are staring at as they scope your menu?
• Has your critically-placed sandwich board been knocked down all day, is it carefully and artfully created to match the brand experience of your business?
• Are potential customers walking by a blank canvas with hope they'll look through the window? Try merchandising your lease line and entice passersby with a peek into what's inside.

We're all guilty of walking right by those little projects that gradually worsen over time or just need a little attention, but from a potential or loyal customer's perspective, these are all variables that factor into whether they will give you their business. We vividly remember driving by a restaurant that opened pre-holiday, but their store front was set back from the sidewalk and their only sign was blocked by the landlord's holiday icicle lights that still adorned the building in late January. This is a simple fix, but it's one of those areas that needs to be reviewed regularly from the customer's point of view...in this case, those month-long holiday tourists scanning the restaurant landscape may have just passed right by.