People step inside this container, and it tells them things. If everything’s working right, the things they are told grab their attention and induce them to look and shop and buy and maybe return another day to shop and buy some more. They are told what they might buy, and where its kept, and why they might buy it. They’re told what the merchandise can do and when and how it can do it.
Every zone is a collection of zones, and you’ve got to map them out before you can place a single sign. You’ve got to get up and walk around, asking yourself every step: What will shoppers be doing here? How about here? Where will their eyes be focussed when they stand here? And what will they be thinking about over there?
Each zone is right for one kind of message and wrong for all others. A sign that takes twelve seconds to read in a place where customers spend four seconds, is just slightly more effective than placing putting it in your garage.
It becomes a very Zen like experience because if you simply look and don’t move, you’ll see things that are otherwise invisible. After five minutes you’ll see things you missed after one minute, and after ten minutes you’ll see things you missed after five.
The fact that a minor alteration can bring a major improvement should come as no surprise. After all, science is by and large the study of small differences. Critical truths are discovered that way. Charles Darwin went about measuring the length of bird’s beaks, which is pretty small work even by our standards. But from his studies came a fundamental shift in out theories about living things and why they thrive or fail. Darwin’s main finding sounds like common sense, too – the idea that successful organisms are the ones that best adapt to their environment. In stores, something similar happens, except that in retailing, it’s the environment that must adapt to the organism.
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