11 Ideas from Cities to Inspire Your Retail Experience Redesign

The most frequent “user experience” we have is in the places we live. Most of the time this is a home or apartment in a town or city. Where we live shapes our lives. It dictates how we move from place to place, when we move, how much time it takes, and our emotional and mental well-being while traveling or arriving in these places.

People plan visits to cities that are walkable and have character (e.g., New York City, London, Amsterdam). There are other cities where people prefer to be in the privacy and safety of their vehicles rather than dare to take to the streets (Fort Worth, Irvine, and Scottsdale are a few that come to mind).

While there probably aren’t many city planners who read CustomerThink, I am willing to bet there are many others who are also at least partially responsible for retail planning.

People have been designing, building, and modifying cities and towns since humans planted the first crops. We can take many of the learnings from the art and science of urban design and apply them to customer experience and specifically to retail design. Let’s take a look.

1. Offer Variety

The famous humanist urban planning advocate, Jane Jacobs, encouraged “mixed-use” spaces that sow the seeds of nascent neighborhoods. Mixed-use areas are districts with short blocks that have residential dwellings as well as retail, commercial, and even industrial uses. They are the neighborhoods that have the small bodega and flower shop and perhaps not far away, a barber or nail salon next to residential housing.

This configuration makes it convenient for residents to walk to get a loaf of bread, go to work, or see a movie, but it also makes the walk interesting and engaging. If you have ever walked outside a giant wall to a windowless store for meters on end, it is not only boring. It also can feel unsafe.

Uniformity breeds boredom. Boredom drives a lack of engagement. Lack of engagement will make you poor if you are a retailer. Therefore, a variety of layouts is important. Repeated modular space that is cut and pasted for meters is boring.

Likewise, SKU variety is important. While financial types see an efficiency opportunity in reducing product variety (i.e., SKU “simplification”), this can kill a merchant if you don’t offer the unprofitable spicy mustard the customer shops for at your store while shopping for other things. You drop that mustard, and the customer will go elsewhere and take their money for their entire shopping trip. Offer a variety of goods and display them in unique and interesting ways.

2. Combine Old and New

Good city design has a good balance of old and new. Cities that plow under the old become sterile and boring dystopias (ahem Tulsa) whereas cities that preserve the old and integrate the new are attractive and fun to explore. If you have explored Savannah, Boston, Dublin, Rome, Barcelona, or almost any European city, you will find them wonderfully walkable and enjoyable. They combine the old charm and character of the city with the conveniences of the modern world.

While this might be more difficult to accomplish in modern retail, there are opportunities. How fun would it be to display, or even sell, old typewriters in a modern electronics store? Why can’t thrift stores and new apparel be combined under one roof? After all, you can buy a new or used car at a car dealership, why not vintage jeans and new ones under one roof? Combining the old and new creates character and history.

3. Build in Social Nudges

As social animals, people like to be with other people. If an exhibitor is sitting at an exhibition booth and no one else is there, it is unlikely other people will stop by. If there is a small crowd at a booth, it will naturally attract others. Old-school hustlers knew this and would make it a practice to purposely plant someone in the crowd during product demonstrations to look amazed and ask questions. This schill would attract others, like moths to a flame.

In urban planning, neighborhoods that are “gently dense” can encourage people to congregate. Chance encounters create a strong social fabric of belongingness. This is a shopper marketer’s dream. We want people to hang out and explore spaces in the store. “Dwell time” is encouraged, in that the longer someone hangs around, the more likely they are to pick up an item and put it in their basket.

Create physical spaces that encourage social interaction. Counters are great areas of congregation. Meat and cheese delis, bakery counters, and perfume counters are all great examples that encourage the formation of small crowds and social interaction with employees, which can further create brand engagement.

4. Induce Demand

City planners are oftentimes under immense pressure to reduce traffic. The knee-jerk reaction to traffic congestion is to widen roads by making more lanes. Unfortunately, this has been shown to have the opposite effect of relieving traffic by attracting more traffic to that roadway and ultimately increasing congestion. This concept of induced demand has substantial empirical support.

In retail context this can be used to increase or decrease traffic by adjusting the traffic lanes in the store. Walmart’s “Action Alley” is the main thoroughfare that winds around the store and is a wider lane than the normal aisles of the store. Shoppers subconsciously are attracted to this wider passage, attracting more traffic and providing context to shoppers that this is the main artery for navigating the store way.

5. Let There Be Light

Planners are obsessed with thinking about light in design, especially the sun. The misfortunate shopkeeper who belatedly realizes after signing his lease that his customers will be roasted at 4 pm every day will not have many customers at that time for long.

While city planners are more concerned with sunlight, retailers would be more interested in using light to make the retail experience more appealing. This underused tool in retail design can be used to great effect. Many retailers opt to create super bright settings under the belief that dark places are sad and lonely… and perhaps not safe. They are partially right.

We’ve all been to a dark restaurant with candles lit at tables. The dark and light create a sense of intimacy. Hundreds of people can be in the same ballroom, but for you and your significant other it’s just the two of you and, if you are lucky, an attentive waiter.

You can use lighting to showcase your products and services with the contrast of light and dark. Display your shoes like artwork at a museum. Make that cheese counter stand out by basking it with a brighter light than the rest of the store. Help customers determine where to walk or check out, by using light to guide them. While contrasting light will not work in all spaces, it can be shockingly effective in many.

6. Create Porches and Patios

Why do homes on the edge of lakes, rivers, and oceans command such high prices? Why do people value sitting at the “chef’s” table or a café table adjacent to the city street?

It’s because human beings love “edge spaces.” These spaces are close to large expanses but also offer shelter if needed. They are special places that likely have an ancient biological evolutionary imperative. They are places where we can easily take refuge (retreating to safety) but can also be used to survey the expanse in front of you for both opportunity (hunting) or threats (being hunted).

In retail design, you can use this principle as well. The store front of a café has more value with a giant glass window than conventional (or no) windows. COVID had the happy side effect of creating sidewalk seating in many municipalities that didn’t allow it previously. Take advantage of the premium (and many times free) space. Retailers with wide open doors will get more foot traffic into their store, than with that small door tightly closed. Use your “edge” space to generate engagement and attract customers.

7. Make it Clear

While it’s fun to get lost for some, for most it creates anxiety. Cities with good signage and layout make for happy visitors and happier natives who don’t have to deal with countless lost tourists.

The number one job for in-store signage is to provide clear wayfinding so customers can accomplish their tasks. Not only should signage be clear, but omnichannel tools should work well together. Oftentimes, UX designers frustrate in-store shoppers by defaulting the shopping application to “online shopping” when many use the application to locate items in the store. If the shopper is in the store, the shopper is trying to find something. Help them do that.

8. Make it Green

Using trees in urban planning contributes not just to the aesthetic, but also to pedestrian safety. Vehicles speeding down city streets are less likely to kill someone if they hop the curb and encounter a tree versus a person. There is evidence that “traffic calming” measures such as using trees close to the road can have the effect of slowing traffic. This is good news for retailers as well.

While we can’t all put trees in grocery stores, the use of biophilic design — design inclusive of nature — can have all manner of positive benefits. It is calming and evidence suggests it improves cognitive functioning. A local coffee shop Onyx uses this to amazing effect, making it not only a calm environment, but a local landmark drawing people.

9. Make it Useful

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s father’s key advice, and Arnold’s guiding force in life, was and is to be useful. When I worked in shopper marketing, we discovered that many customers wanted to be inspired and informed, not just offered high-value goods at fair prices.

My friend Jen Chau was fond of saying “We shouldn’t be selling a ham; we should be selling Easter Dinner.” I couldn’t agree more. In his book “Walkable Cities” by Jeff Speck, he cites that for cities to be walkable they must be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting. File this under “useful.”

Rather than selling cereal, sell breakfast. Instead of selling pizza, sell a football party. Don’t sell a car, sell the driving experience. Good retailers know how to create experiences not just hock stuff. These experiences are also useful by helping people better understand how to create new things easily.

10. Make it Curvy

Germany’s famous autobahn was created before World War II and was purposely created with thick concrete and sweeping curves. The concrete preserved the road for a very long time and the curves made it interesting. (Unfortunately for the Germans, these beautiful roads also facilitated the quick invasion of their country by Allied forces.)

So inspired by German roads, Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 which was the genesis of all our interstate highways today. Unfortunately, the Americans were more interested in cost savings and expediency, so they skipped the deep concrete and the curves. This created some of the most boring and lonely roads in the world.

The Germans knew that curves were important. They required the driver to pay attention. They also inspired curiosity as to what was around the next corner. Humans are attracted to curves. We like to discover, to explore, and to be surprised.

Furniture retailer IKEA uses curves and “what’s around the corner” to great effect, revealing whole living, eating, and sitting spaces at every turn with the opportunity for Swedish meatballs halfway through your shopping experience. It creates a fun exploratory experience with a sense of mystery at every turn.

11. Create Retail Neighborhoods

I once interviewed a young homeowner who said, “I want to live in a neighborhood, not a city.”

He wanted to know his neighbors and be part of a community. He wanted a sense of belonging and place. Jane Jacobs, and other progressive designers, talk extensively about the importance of creating designs that encourage the development of neighborhoods.

A few years ago I marveled at the design of Irish Pubs. They are designed not for drinking but for socializing. They feature spaces from private to semi-private to public. Instead of televisions like American bars, they are focused on social interactions. Humans are drawn to exclusive spaces like these.

I recently had the opportunity to visit Lucerne, Switzerland where Swiss grocer Coop Supermarkt employed a similar design in their layout. Instead of boring aisles of groceries with end caps, they set up “food neighborhoods.”

There were some main avenues through the store and then snuggled off into contrived oval areas with related goods. There was a pasta neighborhood, a dairy neighborhood, a meat and poultry neighborhood, and so forth. While employing some of the aforementioned retail design approaches (i.e., curves, variety, lighting) they also did an incredible job creating neighborhoods.

Pulling it All Together

While this is not an exhaustive list of urban planning concepts, nor can any one retailer employ all of them, they will hopefully inspire your next retail redesign. The most important principle of CX design is gaining true customer empathy and making the spaces safe, comfortable, useful, and interesting.

Physical experience design is best achieved by observing behavior, understanding customer goals and needs, and where possible designing spaces collaboratively. In the words of Jane Jacobs:

“[Cities] have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

All photos via Dave Fish except Autobahn and Action Alley (Wikipedia Commons)