Store hour signs are too small. Store owners try to make do with those open/closed signs, but how often does your favorite upscale restaurant even have one? How often do you find a post office with a neon pink sign telling you they're open? I thought not.
What's the problem?
Here at ZURB, we solve business problems through design and strategy. That includes all you brick and mortars out there: you have a fundamental problem that frustrates people over and over again. You have lost opportunity and no way to recoup.
See, here's the deal. If I'm driving by your store, I need to know if you're open. If you look closed, there's no way I'm wasting my time on the off chance you're closed. Tell me you're open, tell me you want my business. As business owner, you need to petition potential customers to take a chance and try your products. Your store hours, just like your products, help to lure customers in.
But what's a store to do?
Well, you could get one of those flashy neon signs and put it to good use. That solves the problem of whether people know you're open now, but not everyone uses them. And if everyone did, they're drown each other out.
Maybe the answer is larger store hours, hours so big they dwarf even your store's name and sign. Maybe the answer is just "looking open." You can't bet on customers remembering your hours. There are a lot of people out there with money ready to throw at you. How are you helping them to do that?
Get people in the door
Honestly, I'd love to see a store that has hours so big you can read them from two blocks away. It's important to do all you can to make potential customers walk through your door—how else will you get business?
So, what are you doing?
Mark wrote this on in Sparks, Business and Startups. It has 17 comments.