Have you ever noticed that if you walk into an unfamiliar supermarket to do your weekly shop it can take you twice as long to get your trolley to the checkout?

Our brains are capable of storing billions of bits of seemingly useless information; such as the location of the frozen food section, so that we can recall it in seconds when needed.

Many retailers and other customer focused organisations have used this fact and other information about how we think to make our shopping experience more enjoyable and in doing so have increased their sales.

Clothes retailers such as Next and River Island have their sections colour coded. Whilst food outlets and post offices cleverly feed their customers like cattle past their 'special offer' sections on the way to the cash till.

The retail industry is extremely competitive and in recent years the market has become particularly tough for the smaller groups and independents as their margins are squeezed and the customers are tempted away from the high street to large out of town shopping centres. As a result, these businesses are having to take a fresh look at how they do things and, in some cases they have discovered that by making some relatively small changes they are able to get better return from an ever reducing footfall.

SMEO can provide you with an objective eye to help you assess what messages you are conveying in your premises and as a result provide ideas on how you can;

• provide clearer messages to your customers
• make sales messages more consistent with promotional activities
• increase revenue by the exploitation of best selling lines
• make point of sale more cost effective
• identify any weakness in housekeeping that may have been overlooked
• match your point of sale with your businesses strategic position
• create themed or season oriented merchandising
• make more effective use of your available space