As more and more shoppers flock online to buy their new toasters, shoes, hedge trimmers and yoga pants, brick and mortar retailers face an increasing challenge: how to compete?
Don’t underestimate landscaping. It’s a powerful tool to bring shoppers to your door.
Landscaping is great marketing. It attracts customers with beauty. It makes the in-person shopping experience fun. It adds to ease and comfort.
How to get online shoppers off the couch and into your store?
Here’s a look at six great retail landscaping ideas.
Light Up The Night
One good reason to stay home at night and shop online from the recliner: it’s dark out there.
Banish that excuse by bathing your retail property in beautiful, professionally designed lighting.
Lighting adds an instant sense of safety and luxury.
It shines the spotlight on the prettiest features of your building, making it more inviting. And it encourages customers to leave the dark behind and explore your retail space.
Lighting also offers a sense of security, so visitors don’t have to worry about the trek from their car to your store and back.
Key areas to light: entrances, sidewalks, common areas, parking lots, signage and surrounding landscaping.
Test it yourself after dark: would you venture out at night to shop at your business?
Guide The Way
Landscaping is great wayfinding.
Professional landscaping around your signage automatically draws attention to it, with colorful flowers and interesting plants.
Landscaping can even help direct shoppers around your property. Hardscape paths and landscaped beds lead the way for pedestrians, and encourage travel between stores. Big pots of intriguing plants and flowers along the way beckon pedestrians to keep strolling.
Don’t forget skilled landscape maintenance. Well-maintained landscaping keeps branches from growing out into sight lines, so drivers and pedestrians can see where they’re going.
Good maintenance also keeps flowers, plants and shrubs from growing out of control, obscuring your signage.
When shopping is easy and hassle-free, customers are more likely to close their laptop and come check out the goods in person.
Create Relaxation And Fun
Add a beautiful, inviting common area to your retail property to encourage shoppers to relax and linger.
The more appealing and comfortable it is, the longer they’ll stay.
Shopping can be tiring. Provide a perfect spot to munch a tasty snack or sip a cold beverage, with umbrellas for shade from the hot sun.
Don’t forget the impact of colorful flowers — in beds, giant planters or both. They add beauty, interest and soften the edges of hardscape.
Want parents of small children to stay — and spend —longer? Include a fun playscape for kids to extend family visits. Make shopping a fun family event for your customers — a reason to get out of the house together.
Just Add Water
Add a water feature to your common area with a refreshing spray or a soothing gurgle. Moving water equals instant serenity for grown-ups and instant fun for kids. And water features add a high-end vibe to your space.
Consider a “pondless waterfall.” These recirculate water, like a fountain, offering the drama of a waterfall without the space or maintenance needs of a pond.
Add water, and you’ll add relaxed customers in no hurry to leave.
Attract Shoppers With Color
It’s impossible to ignore drifts of bright, attention-grabbing flowers. Greenscape has one of the best floriculture programs in the market, with talented, creative designers who know exactly how to create stunning beds and large-scale planters with flowers that wow.
We love showy tropicals — exotic bird of paradise, hibiscus, shrimp plant, elephant ears.
Enhance your signage with colorful lantana and begonias that attract attention but don’t grow tall enough to block the sign.
When customers venture closer to check out the blooms, they’ll be that much closer to spending.
Instant Intrigue: Add A Living Wall
At Greenscape Inc. we’re known for our innovative “living walls.” These impressive vertical gardens turn blank walls into colorful, creative works of art.
At Cameron Village retail center, people wander and browse the 500,000 square foot site to see the creative living walls, look forward to the next season’s designs and even pose with them for selfies. Landscaping as marketing.
Add them as living artwork to a blank wall, or we can create freestanding pieces for instant appeal anywhere on your property.
Boost Your Retail Appeal With Greenscape, Inc.
Make your property a go-to destination with creative retail landscaping ideas that not only lure shoppers in, but encourage them to stay for a while.
Couches are comfy, but the right landscape enhancements can create a sense of energy and intrigue you won’t find shopping from home.
We’d love to tell you more.
We’ve been meeting the full-service landscaping needs of commercial and residential customers in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Cary areas for more than 35 years.
We offer landscape management and lawn care, design and build services, irrigation, landscape lighting and more.
Call us at 919-552-7742 or fill out our online form to request a free consultation and learn how we can transform your landscape.
We can’t wait to hear from you.