Navigating one’s way around an unfamiliar place can sometimes be daunting. It often leaves individuals feeling disoriented and frustrated. It can be challenging to ask locals, especially if you don’t want to follow a salesperson into a store. This is especially bad for businesses in crowded business spaces where competition is always fierce.
To ensure your customers find your business easily, consider getting customised wayfinding signs that can be placed at busy places so that when customers come looking for your business, they don’t get distracted and know where they need to go.
However, an overly vibrant and flashy sign will do no good. It will come across as tacky and gimmicky. As a result, people might only visit your store sometimes. How can we avoid this? Today we will discuss seven best practices to ensure your wayfinding signs win whenever a customer comes looking for your business.
Best Practises That Will Make Your Wayfinding Signs More Effective
1. Make it easy to relate to: Your wayfinding sign should be recognisable immediately. Ensure consistency in brand colours, text font, and logos to immediately make your signs strike the right chords. By doing so, your business creates markers that are easy to spot. To do so, develop brand compass guidelines highlighting the colour schemes, logo, and text font to use.
2. Colour combinations to use: Colours used in a wayfinding sign play a vital role in creating a brand-specific visual memory. For example, red and yellow instantly remind one of McDonald’s; white, blue, and orange remind us of Greggs; and yellow and blue remind us of Ikea. Choose a colour palette that is easy to remember. Avoid adding too many details and text. The key is to keep your sign simple and easy to memorise. Your logo should have meaning.
3. Keep it simple: An overly complicated sign may seem like a riddle that your customers might want to avoid solving when trying desperately to find your business.
This creates a negative customer experience, eventually making customers opt for straightforward, easy-to-find businesses. Try to say more in less time using simple, everyday words and symbols with a universal meaning.
4. Use visual elements: Symbols and shapes are easier to understand than cumbersome sentences. For example, washbasins can be represented with a simple sink symbol, and washrooms for men and women can be shown using symbols and colours. Using colours and symbols to direct people to their destination is smart and effective.
5. Draw a connection: All wayfinding signs should follow a path that connects one point to another. Carefully placing these signs ensures that customers are in your store without losing track of where they are headed.
6. Strategic placement: These signs will be no good if they aren’t placed where they can grab users’ attention. For example, if the initial sign is placed in the parking area, the second sign should be placed at the entrance of the business space, while the third sign should be placed near the storefront. Make overhead signs, place handing signs at eye level, and place signs at junctions.
7. Find inspiration and adapt: Pay attention to your surroundings and find wayfinding signs that inspire you. Identify the factors that draw you towards it. Is it the colour combination? Or the text’s font? Or is it the placement? Analysing your competitors ensures you can find gaps they could be missing and include them in yours.
Parting words
Wayfinding signs ensure your business can grab the attention of potential customers and direct them to it. These designs keep brand guidelines in mind to create brand recognition and resonance. However, be sure to use elements that are specific to your business. Ensuring strategic placement is vital to getting the most out of your sign.
