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Looking for some visual merchandising tips and tricks to revitalize your displays and drive sales? A lot of visual merchandising techniques concern the display products you can use and the aesthetic design of your layouts. But some of the most overlooked tips and tricks concern the underlying logic of your merchandising designs.

For example, one excellent tip which I stumbled across recently is this:

Use your visual merchandising displays to showcase products that your buyers want, not products that your buyers need.

This idea is quite simple; and if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Buyers who walk into your store for something they need are going to hunt it down and buy it. Obviously you want it to be easy to find, but you do not necessarily want it to be the first thing they see. If it is, they will probably grab it and go. You do want them to explore a bit and run across other products they might not otherwise have considered en route to the product they are going to purchase anyway.

To that end, it makes sense to show them what they want in your floor displays and in the store windows. It may be a product directly related to what they need or not; the point is that you want to draw attention to something which would otherwise be missed.

This is one of the retail merchandising basics, and yet it is missed all the time. Think about all the times you have seen really low-cost practical products prominently displayed in visual merchandising. Why are these products included in the displays? If they are on sale, that is one thing—but if there is no special discount or promotion, it would make a lot more sense to showcase a higher-end item.

Say for example you sell handbags, and you are accessorizing a mannequin. You have some designer handbags and some lower-end practical handbags. Which should you display with the mannequin? A lot of novice merchandisers grab the first handbag they see and display it.

But you should be leaning toward the designer handbags. Why? Because someone who needs a handbag will discover your selection of lower-end handbags anyway, even if they have to search for it. But if you display a designer handbag prominently, they might discover they want that one and spend more money. If you do not display it, they may maintain their practical mindset and skip looking at your designer section entirely. They will grab the low-cost handbag, check out, and leave.

In other words, the practical item is already a high-probability sale. The designer handbag is not. Displaying the designer bag will likely not reduce the chances of a handbag sale overall, but it will increase the chances of a high price tag item leaving your floor in a shopping bag—and that is what you want. Of course you should display at least a few lower-end items—you do not want to give customers the impression you are out of their price range.

You will get the best results with this technique if you pair it up with a promotion; nobody likes to lose an opportunity. So display your luxury items prominently, especially when you have a markdown. This should net you a higher profit margin than if you stick with displaying your low-end wares!