First impressions

The entrance is the first opportunity to use the physical design of your store to enhance customer service. With the possible exception of a car dealership, all retail stores the customer encounters feature a clear entrance that the customer can identify from the parking area. In contrast, many garden center customers encounter an “entrance” that spans the entire front of the shopping area or multiple entrances. The results of this initial lack of direction are myriad and impact the entire shopping experience, including security.

By creating a single clear entrance, the store welcomes the customer into an organized shopping experience. The entrance sets expectations for the store’s personality, previewing the customer’s experience with structures, signage and graphics throughout the store. The entrance is a “hat” at the front of the store that says “Welcome!”

(Figure 1) This store had an existing building with a distinctive red roof that housed gifts and the cash wrap, and it served as the customer exit. This entrance mimics the store’s distinctive color scheme and leads the customer into the exterior sales area. The “red carpet” is achieved with paint.

The main entrance can either direct the customer into a building or greenhouse or into the exterior shopping space. Because we sell plants, I always recommend the main entrance to the shopping area be an exterior entrance that leads into live goods. Stores that are open year-round may need to plan for a secondary entrance for the winter selling season.

(Figure 2) This beautiful wooden entrance structure leads the customer into greenhouse space. The same structure is repeated inside as a connector between greenhouses.

(Figures 3 & 4 ) These drawings illustrate entrances in plan view. The first plan shows cart placement and the option for the customer to turn left into a greenhouse during the main selling season or right into a building during the winter selling season.

The second plan shows how the entrance and cart placement direct the customer onto the main runway that leads through the store to the cash wrap.

Consider these entrance features to enhance the customer experience.

Rain protection

Just as you prefer to be protected from rain when you go to your neighbor’s door, your customers appreciate covered shopping. Although you may not be able to provide covered shopping throughout the exterior shopping area (although the main walkways are certainly great candidates for covered shopping spaces), providing a covered entrance keeps carts and customers dry. A collection of umbrellas at the entrance is another customer service statement.

Slow-down display

Positioned within 10 feet of the entrance, preferably directly in front of the entering customer, the slow-down display is the first opportunity to wow the customer with the store’s most spectacular products. This display can be an environmental setting that showcases containers, birding products and blooming shrubs, annuals and perennials. This is one of the most important and changeable displays in the store. It should be fresh every week.

(Figure 5) This slow-down introduces customers to a variety of merchandise just as they enter the shopping area.

Shopping carts

The position of carts to the right or left of the main entrance provides the customer’s first directional cue to the main customer flow pattern of the store.

(Figure 6) These carts direct shoppers to the left of the entrance.

Entrance signage

Information the customer can use on the current shopping trip — like store specials, events and new products — should be at eye-level, like all other signage.

Staff contact

The entrance to the store is the first opportunity for staff contact. This is not a selling opportunity but a greeting opportunity. Research proves the customer likes to be greeted upon entering the store. If the cash wraps are adjacent to the entrance, the cash register staff can greet the customer. If the entrance opens into the exterior selling area, the person working the closest to the entrance can greet the customer. The secondary benefit of greeting the customer is security; research confirms people who are greeted during their time in the store are less likely to shoplift.

Security

A single entrance that directs the customer through the store and toward a single cash wrap area provides a level of security that multiple entrances and exits cannot afford. One of my customers, after resisting a single cash wrap area for many years, finally made the decision to create a single cash wrap space. During the first weeks of this new store layout, he was dismayed by a customer leaving the store with merchandise saying, “I paid at the other register.” I know you don’t like to think of your customers in this way; however, theft is a fact of retail that is worth every effort toward prevention, both for the benefit of your bottom line and the benefit of your customer/staff interactions.

Seeing the entrance to your garden center as a customer service tool makes it even more important to ensure the entrance meets all the criteria for an effective welcome and initial directional tool for your customers.

Judy Sharpton is the owner of Growing Places Marketing. Since 1994, Growing Places has provided store development services exclusively for independent garden centers and farm markets with a focus on site development, category development, staff development and branding. judysharpton.com