Visual Merchandising uses visual impact and visual senses to increase the interest of consumers and potential consumer groups to achieve the purpose of promoting products or services. The original intention of the concept is to achieve the purpose of marketing. It is a method of combining display technology and visual presentation technology with a thorough understanding of commodity marketing, and working together with various departments to provide commodities to the market for display and sale.
As a marketing technique, visual marketing is a visual presentation, and it is also an intuitive and visual visual experience. Originally originated in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, brands (or merchants) convey product information, service concepts and brand culture to customers through a series of visual presentations such as their logos, pictures, colors, advertisements, windows, and displays, so as to maximize the connection between products (or services) and consumers, and ultimately achieve sales and influence the cultural construction of brands.
In the era of e-commerce, visual marketing is the most intuitive and basic marketing method. Which product a buyer will click on and which store he will enter depends on whether the product pictures and advertising posters can attract the attention of consumers. Therefore, if you want to increase the conversion rate of online stores, you must do a good job of visual marketing. The primary purpose of visual marketing is to reduce the communication cost of content. Its impact on consumers and online stores is mainly in the following aspects.
(1) Attract consumers’ attention. Online store visual marketing is an important measure for e-commerce companies to enhance their competitiveness. In order to perfectly present products, brands, and cultural concepts to users, sellers must reasonably arrange text, color, images, layout, functional modules, multimedia, etc. when designing the page, so that the highlights jump into the consumer’s field of vision, thereby achieving an intuitive visual impact.
(2) Stimulate consumer interest. In the sales process of online stores, consumers often make judgments based on visual information to like or dislike, and ultimately decide whether to buy. For consumers, bright colors, unique styles, and fashionable and novel images often attract more attention and thus become interested in them. Therefore, the visual marketing strategy should clearly convey the content that the online store wants to express and avoid cumbersome and weird designs.
(3) Stimulate consumers’ desire to buy. A store without visual marketing will lack vitality and vigor. Even the best products will appear bland and unremarkable. It will also easily cause visual fatigue in consumers and make them lack the urge and desire to buy. Through visual marketing, products of different categories can be matched together to create and present a sense of danger for consumers, thereby guiding consumers’ associations and becoming a catalyst for consumers to generate a desire to buy.
(4) Guide the trend of fashion consumption. The frequent changes in consumer demand determine the inducibility of demand. Visual marketing can guide and promote the resonance between products and consumers’ emotions. Online store operators can cater to this emotional consumption psychology of consumers, carefully design the online store page, convey the meaning and value of products in life, and spread the good image of products and brands to consumers, thereby guiding the consumption trend.
(5) Increase store traffic. For online stores, visual marketing is the key to increasing traffic. In abstract online stores, visual marketing is the main means to attract consumers, and the quality of visual experience is directly linked to consumers’ desire to buy. Nowadays, e-commerce platforms and online stores are everywhere, and the products sold are all kinds of goods. Consumers have more choices. This requires better store decoration layout and product pictures and text details than others to attract consumers, prolong the time consumers stay in the store, thereby promoting consumption and even making consumers become “return customers”.