Designing a Café/ Store Layout - Understanding Customer Journey
- Juhi Santani
- Oct 10, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 3
'We are different.", says every retailer/ café brand.
And they are 100% correct. Each brand has its own customer base and the unique experience they wish to build, a.k.a. customer journey on all their customer touchpoints viz the website, the kiosk, shop-in-shop, store or café.
As a store/café designer, how does one map the customer journey that forms the basis of the bubble diagrams that eventually drive the store/ café layout? (click here for reference)
The answer in a nutshell - observe.
Observe how your customer behaves.. Map how the customer moves. What s/he picks up, what s/he asks for, what s/he eventually buys.
Where does one do this Customer Journey mapping?
In the stores of the competition brands.
In the brand's own stores (if they exist already)
As part of the 'Market Research & Survey' stage, we store designers get ourselves out there in the stores of the competition brands, and ask ourselves some of these questions.
Was the store easy to navigate?
How easily did I find what I was looking for?
What areas do customers visit first?
Are there parts of the store/café where people spend more time?
Are there 'dead' zones in the store that people tend to skip altogether?
Do people tend to get 'stuck' in some parts of the store, and get frustrated?
Remember that the brand team, especially on the shop floor, have precious inputs too, with regards to consumer behaviour that they may have observed, such as
the seasonality of their products,
what sells best when, in smaller or larger groups,
the average ticket sizes and footfall during the weekdays, weekend, festive season etc..
As one spends time observing the customers, certain patterns begin to emerge.
These patterns, along with observations on what the competition brands are doing right, and not-so-right, form the basis of the brand's 'Customer Journey' that a store design should facilitate.
In our upcoming editions of Retale Myth-ology, we move on to best practices with regards to actually deigning a store/ café layout.
Until then, keep observing your customer/ end user. You never know what precious insight awaits you.
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