Layout Is a Sales Strategy

5 June

About 15 years ago, I worked in a boutique where we kept moving the same display fixture — a table, the kind you can reposition depending on the collection.

That week, we moved it five times.

It wasn’t the merchandise. It wasn’t the styling.
It was the shape of the legs — just odd enough to change how people walked.
They kept veering left and skipping the exact section we were meant to spotlight.

That’s when I started noticing layout not as decoration, but as something deeper.
Behaviour design.

I remember raising a eyebrow — that instinctive sense that something wasn’t working, even if we couldn’t explain why.
Back then, I didn’t have the words for it. But when you’ve worked the shop floor for as long as I have, you start to notice when design shapes behaviour — positively or otherwise.

Most people think layout is about flow.
Put the till here, the mirror there, a nice chair in the corner — done.
Nope.

In retail, layout is about control. Not manipulative control — but choreography.

When it’s done well, it slows people down without making them feel lost.
It creates cues, invites discovery, builds pace and permission.

Because humans — for all our nuance — are very predictable when it comes to what feels inviting.

So how do you design layout that converts?

You stop thinking in floor plans.
And start thinking in emotional momentum.

Where do people breathe?
Where do they naturally pause?
What’s visible, and what’s just out of view?

That’s where trust builds.
That’s where the sale begins — even before a word is spoken.

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Eunice
Founder, Studio Eight Seven Nine