Planning Your Retail Store Layout in 7 Easy Steps

A loop floor plan, sometimes called a racetrack layout, creates a guided shopping experience. It features a defined pathway throughout the store, exposing customers to every item on display.

This floor plan is highly customizable and provides an excellent base for combining layouts. In the loop layout, the central part of the store can utilize a grid or free-flow layout, or even a mix of the two.

Loop layouts work well for most types of small retail stores, such as apparel and accessories, toys, homewares, kitchenware, personal care, and specialty products.

• Commonly found in: Apparel and accessories stores, toy stores, homewares, kitchenware, personal care, specialty stores
• Best for: Maximizing wall space and leading shoppers along a set pathway
• Pros: Engaging shopping experience, guided shopping path, high product exposure, customizable
• Cons: Difficult to update displays, can lead to browsing rather than buying, does not maximize floor space, frustrating for customers in search of something specific

A free-flow or mixed retail store layout uses different display types throughout the store—there is no set path, allowing customers to shop freely. This layout is the favorite among specialty retailers because it enables maximum creativity, is easily changed and updated, and fosters an exploratory shopping experience.

Free-flow plans create open sightlines throughout the store, making your wall space highly visible and poised for display features. The open sightlines also make it easy to funnel customers toward specific merchandise zones using eye-catching accent colors and product groupings.

The open look of a free-flow layout is ideal for all types of boutiques and upscale stores. It also works well for stores with smaller inventories since it highlights product groupings.

• Commonly found in: Gift shops, specialty stores, boutiques, retailers with limited inventory
• Best for: Creating customizable displays and promoting shopper exploration
• Pros: Uses different displays for different products, promotes exploration and product discovery, open sightlines, good for wall displays, works well in irregular spaces, easy to update
• Cons: Easily cluttered, can be difficult to navigate, customers won’t see the same things, encourages loitering, can be difficult to maintain

Diagonal floor plans are a variation of the grid layout, using aisles placed at angles to increase customer sightlines and expose new merchandise. They feel more open than grid layouts, which improves visibility and promotes more browsing.

A diagonal store design is ideal in electronic or technology stores, beauty and cosmetics retailers, specialty food stores, and any shop that encourages shoppers to test or sample products.

It lets customers move easily between aisles while providing store employees with good angles to view shoppers. Like free-flow store plans, diagonal layouts create open sightlines throughout the store, and this visibility is excellent for pointing customers toward a central sampling or demonstration area.

• Commonly found in: Self-serve kiosks, tech and electronic stores, and beauty and cosmetic retailers
• Best for: Maximizing employee visibility in retail stores with lots of product testing or self-service options
• Pros: Easy to navigate, high visibility for both employees and customers, maximizes display space, easy to implement theft protection measures
• Cons: Prone to narrow aisles, less room for creativity, difficult to change

Forced-path or guided floor plans are store layouts with one pathway that guides customers throughout the store, ultimately dropping them off at the checkout area.

These layouts are often found in large spaces, like warehouses, and operate similarly to a guided tour or museum. IKEA is a great example of a forced path floor plan. The Swedish retailer uses arrows on its pathways to guide customers through all of its expansive showrooms and avoid traffic issues along the way.

Forced-path floor plans are ideal for retailers that want to create a specific, memorable shopping experience and are a good choice for showcasing many different product departments or design displays in large spaces. These floor plans do, however, require a lot of effort to keep shoppers interested throughout their journey. Demonstrations, different types of displays, and signage are all great tools that retailers can use to keep the forced path engaging.

• Commonly found in: Warehouses, large showrooms, experimental stores
• Best for: Guiding customers through a predetermined path and exposing them to every product
• Pros: Ample opportunity promoting impulse buys, immersive experience, lots of control over customer experience, promotes exposure to every product
• Cons: Can be frustrating when shopping for a specific item, risk of boring customers, difficult to design, can cause traffic jams if not well-regulated

Angular floor plans use many smaller displays in the center of the store to create a dynamic shopping experience that highlights a smaller number of products. Table displays automatically draw customer attention, which makes this layout highly engaging and promotes interaction with all the products on the floor.

However, angular plans typically have limited display space. As a result, you mostly find angular plans in showrooms, high-end boutiques, and designer stores with highly edited or curated collections.

Stores with angular floor plans need substantial inventory storage space for restocking items and holding additional sizes.

• Commonly found in: Stores with small or curated merchandise that also have large inventory storage spaces
• Best for: Showcasing a small number of products that you want customers to engage with
• Pros: Perception of higher value, draws attention to merchandise, promotes engagement, easily updated and changed
• Cons: Limited display space, difficult to manage traffic flows, not suited for a high volume of customers

Tip: Displays with softer or rounded lines create better traffic flow than squared fixtures in open spaces.

In zone design, you categorize products into “zones,” such as kitchen and cooking, home decor, or skirts and pants. The quantities of products determine the size of each zone.

Zoning design makes it easy for shoppers to find what they are looking for, which will lead to more transactions and greater sales. Not only that, but your customers will also have a better experience shopping in your store.

Place Bestsellers in Primary Zones

Primary Zones are located in the back of the store and are where you display bestselling or essential products. For example, you will often find bread, milk, and cheese in the back of grocery stores. This arrangement will force customers to walk through your entire store, get exposed to new products, and even motivate impulse purchases.

Another popular way that retailers use bestsellers is by cross merchandising them with other items. This strategy works similarly to primary zoning in that the bestseller will reel customers in and then they will be exposed to new products in the same area.

Necessities like milk and dairy are often zoned to the back of the store. (Source: Crafty Coin)

You should also use cross merchandising to make shopping easier for customers and to promote multiple item purchases.

For example, say you cross merchandise pasta and red sauce in the same aisle. Placing these items together makes it easy for customers to find everything they need for a pasta dinner and will help you sell through your items faster.

As you are laying out your store, consider what products work well together and how you can feature them together in a cross merchandising strategy. Zone your products so that customers can find things easily and complementary items are together, even if that means placing categorically different items in the same area.

This grocer cross merchandised items for a barbecue to make shopping easier and to promote multidepartment purchases. (Source: Dor)

Place impulse items like small toys, candy bars, lip gloss, or other small, low-cost items near your register. When customers approach the register to pay and leave, you don’t want them to stop shopping. Placing low-cost impulse buy items near registers, as shown in the image below, encourages shoppers to add an item or two as they check out, which will drive your sales.

Zoning impulse buys at checkout will help boost your sales. (Source: Vendhq)

A power wall is a wall in a high-traffic or key area of your store that you merchandise with items that attract attention and promote engagement. Typically, you place it on the right of your store, just beyond the entrance, so that it is one of the first things customers see when they enter your store and can draw people into your space.

Power walls can be anywhere throughout your store—just be sure that they are in a high-traffic area to get maximum visibility. Use them to showcase important departments and new and seasonal items, create vignettes, tell product stories, and feature high-demand, high-profit products.

However, you should remember that your power wall will need to change frequently, so plan for that. Outfit your power walls with hooks, shelving, or other fixtures that you can easily change to showcase various product groupings.

Create power walls at high-visibility points in your store. (Source: Pinterest)

Your store’s walls, floors, fixtures, and displays should create a coordinated backdrop that defines your brand but lets your products pop. The ultimate purpose of fixtures and display units is to put your products front and center. At the same time, however, the overall look, styling, and finish of your fixtures and displays are your biggest branding opportunity.

Choose cohesive fixtures and display pieces that speak to your branding and coordinate with your product collections but don’t overpower them, like the successful looks below.

Invest in fixtures and display pieces that are in line with your brand and aesthetic. (Source: Pinterest)

Your displays and fixtures play a large role in crafting your store’s entire look. (Source: Decorist)

Your displays should be versatile and speak to your brand. (Source: Sonoma Magazine)

In addition to choosing displays and fixtures that enhance your brand, you should also select ones that enhance your products. Different products are better suited for different kinds of display strategies. For example, a clothing store will likely want to have hanging space, whereas a pottery store will likely want to stick with shelving and tables.

Additionally, your fixtures and displays must be able to handle products’ weights and sizes. Harder and heavier items should have sturdy and tough shelves, whereas lighter products can use floating shelves or furniture pieces.

These chic racks are not distracting and allow the pieces within them to stand out. (Source: Pinterest)

Tables and hanging displays are easy to update and do not take away from the store’s goods. (Source: Cherry Creek North)

A versatile display wall makes it easy to show off tools and swap in new items as they arrive. (Source: Blue Prop)

Many manufacturers offer retailers low-cost or free specialty display fixtures designed to highlight their branded lines, like the one pictured below. These make great speed bumps or outpost display units for those on a tight budget. Your product line reps can tell you if they’re available, plus provide merchandising and display advice.

While you’ll likely want to splurge on your permanent fixtures and displays, you can opt for these free or low-cost displays for seasonal, temporary, and new products and point-of-purchase (POP) impulse displays.

Talk to your suppliers to see if they offer free POP displays. (Source: THIMM)

While your store layout should accommodate shoppers’ natural behaviors, you can also use your layout to control customer flow and create certain behaviors. Speed bumps are a great way to slow your shoppers down, get them to engage with your products, and drive your sales.

They help draw attention to surrounding products and create more customer interest. For example, at clothing stores, a cluster of mannequins by a table display will make customers more inclined to stop and look at the mannequins and subsequently explore the offerings on the table. Or a paper store might place a table of cards in the middle of the store, where shoppers will stop and look at all the options.

Speed bumps can look like anything from table displays to focal points to temporary POP displays. The thing that makes a design feature a speed bump is whether it causes people to slow down and engage.

This mannequin creates a speed bump where customers will stop and explore. (Source: Business Insider)

Your speed bumps should go in areas where there are not a lot of other displays; thus, there is low engagement. They are not typically fixed and can move when you better understand your customer flow and where those low engagement points are in your space. Play with different positioning and use an integrated POS system to track the effectiveness of your speedbumps.