WINDOWS THAT SELL- SHOPPOLOGIST REVIEW

Some observations while drinking a coffee in the Broadway mall - just off city centre, a strong fashion mall, mainly mid-market, with a sprinkling of more upscale stores. dotti is a national womenswear fashion chain owned by Just Group, and is experiencing strong growth. The core target market is the 25 year old working woman. Merchandise is reasonably priced, and of a reasonable quality. In the Broadway mall, the store is located on the top floor, in the specialty fashion precinct - its neighbour immediately left is Esprit.

I was struck by the impact the windows had on passing foot traffic. The store gets a disproportionate share of the passing traffic in a relatively quiet area of the mall, and leaves its far larger Esprit neighbour for dead. The contemporary fashion direction (return to hippies/60s era) was well demonstrated. The clear background to the display lends impact.

The window display was mirrored with key items merchandised at the front of the store (next to the security bollards). The video below also shows the importance- long understood by successful retailers - of strongly merchandising the 'facing' wall - that is the one facing the highest traffic flow - in this case from left to right.

The video shows about 2 mins of continuous running footage taken at approx 2pm - 2.15pm on a recent Thursday.

UPDATED: A BASIC NUMERIC ANALYSIS

• In the 2 mins of this observation, 24 consumers passed or entered the store, or 1 every 5 secs.
• Of these, 13 were from the left, 11 from the right side of the store.
• Of the 24, 17 (71%) were female, 7 male.
• Of the 24, a staggering 11 looked at the window (7 from the left, 4 from the right)
• Of the 11 looking at the window, 10 were female, meaning that 10/17 (59%) female customers observed the window.
• Of the 10 who observed the window, 7 (70%) went into the front of the store and examined the merchandise displays.
• Thus of the original 17 female customers (target market), 7 (41%) were converted into examining the displays at the front of the store.