Your counter sales-ready: displays, price tags and the spot next to the checkout
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by Verpakkingdeals.nl
5 min reading time
The meter between the checkout and the customer is where you can still increase your revenue per customer. Four things to get in order before autumn makes your store busy.
Most retailers spend weeks on their window display and five minutes on their counter. Yet, that last stretch — the meter between the till and the customer — is where you can still increase revenue per customer. Someone stands there still, has already made their choice, and looks around out of boredom. What's displayed there, and how it looks, determines whether something else gets added or not.
This is not a plea for a cluttered counter. On the contrary: the less there is, the better it works. Below are four things you want to get in order before autumn and the holidays make your shop busy.
1. Ensure everything has a price
It sounds obvious and it's the most common oversight. An item without a price won't be bought; customers rarely ask about it, they just put it back. For loose impulse items next to the till, this is extra painful, because the purchase decision there is a matter of two seconds.
When refilling, keep two consumables in mind. White price stickers for the MX-5500, 5,000 pieces cost €9.95, and a refillable 20mm ink roll is €2.95. Anyone who runs out of ink on a busy Saturday will be pricing with a ballpoint pen for the rest of the day — so always keep one spare roll next to it.
If you want to work with color, for example yellow for discounted and blue for new, then price stickers in 6 colors, 500 pieces for €2.95 are a cheap way to make your promotion visible without extra signs.
2. Give small items height
Small items lying flat on the counter disappear. The same item at eye level, in a rising display, will be seen. That's the whole idea behind a tiered display: you use vertical space in a place where you don't have an inch horizontally.
A transparent acrylic tiered display with 6 steps costs €34.95; there's also a version with 6 layers for €29.95. Transparent acrylic has one practical advantage over cardboard or wood: it doesn't draw attention to itself, so your product gets the focus instead of the stand.
The mistake you want to avoid: filling one display with a bit of everything. A tiered display with six different product groups reads like a bin of remnants. Six variations of the same item — colors, scents, models — reads like a choice. Change the theme every few weeks, so regular customers keep looking.
3. Choose impulse items that explain themselves
What's next to the till should be understandable at a glance and remain below a threshold amount that someone doesn't think twice about. In practice, this is often under €5.
For these types of items, it's better to order twenty pieces of three varieties than three pieces of twenty varieties. A display with depth looks deliberately chosen; a display with one item per variant looks like the rest have already sold — or worse, like no one wanted it.
If you sell loose items that need to be hung on a hook, you can make your own hanging cards with a T-shaped punch, 6 x 10 x 30 mm for €49.95. If you want to heat-seal products in bags for sale, you can do that with a manual heat sealer machine for €79.95.
If customers are waiting and you have space, a simple amenity is cheaper than you think: 150ml coffee cups, 100 pieces cost €14.95, or almost fifteen cents per cup.
Reviewing the setup in five minutes
Stand on the customer side of the counter and look. What do you see first? Does it match what you want to sell?
Remove everything that doesn't have a price, or price it now.
Tidy away work items — pens, receipt books, tape — out of sight. They belong on your side.
Limit yourself to a maximum of two displays. No one reads more than that.
Set a date in your calendar to change the theme.
What you gain with this setup isn't spectacular per customer — it's about a euro or two. But it's a euro or two from people who are already paying, without extra advertising costs and without extra space. With fifty customers a day, that adds up.
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