By Eric Fairbanks
The window display is often your best chance to make a good first impression. The window display gives walk-by traffic a chance to see what you sell and how you sell it. It is often your first chance to brand—to create emotional association with your retail store in the mind of your potential customer.

A good window display intrigues, seduces, entertains, and invites. It’s most important to maximize the opportunities in your window displays. Install large display windows. Back them with walls so people focus on what’s in the window and not what’s behind it. Your display windows can do more to attract new customers than any single design element you can place inside the store so “don’t scrimp and always be consistent.” Consider your window display your “silent salesman.”

Don’t be afraid to take risks with your window display. A creative window display will differentiate your retail store from the competition. If you can entertain with your window display, people will start talking about your retail store, and that’s invaluable advertising. There are a lot of ways you can design a great window display, but you’ll want to build it around a product or theme. A random collection of unrelated product confuses the customer and your brand. If you are featuring fall clothing, don’t put the bikinis in with the sweaters; which leads us to another point: Keep it simple. Don’t try to do too much or sell too many different products. That’s not to say you can’t cross merchandise, which is a good idea, but, again, keep your window display uncluttered. If possible, carry the theme or look of your window display into the interior store displays.

A creative window display will differentiate your retail store from the competition.

You’ll want to change your window display regularly. Keep it new. It depends on the foot traffic, but once a month is a good rule of thumb. Lighting is also key. Track lighting gives you the flexibility needed to illuminate the ever-changing environment. Use the lighting to create a mood and spotlight individual product. Keep your window display clean—dust regularly.

The simple rules of product display apply within the window. Stack or pyramid product. Use a low table if necessary. Vary heights and the depth at which product is placed. Keep everything stacked neatly.

If your retail store is in a strip mall or your main drive-by traffic is that literally—motorists—you need to go big with a graphic display in your window. A large poster-size or bigger image will draw attention and attract customers from far away. You can’t get subtle in this type of window display—say it loud and say it proud. Bold lighted signs, such as neon signs, are a good idea.

On the absolute other end of the spectrum, is a very new trend toward “windowless” storefronts. Instead of window displays, the storefront is covered with panels that hide the store’s interior and entice the walk-by traffic by creating an air of mystery. The jury is still out on how effective this approach is, but apparently Apple and Abercrombie & Fitch believe in it. Given the right market, location, and brand, this might be a productive way to go for your storefront.

Remember to walk outside the store and look at your display often as you are installing it. Look at it with your customer’s eyes, see what they see. Also, don’t forget to take into account the architecture or setting of your window. Say you sell dinnerware and you want to display a table setting on a table, make sure that the window isn’t too high to put a table in and display the china on it. If the window is raised and you put a table in there and then set china on it, it won’t do you any good if all they can see in the display window is the table legs and profile of the dishes! In that case, get creative, use pedestals of a proper height, or spread a table cloth directly on the floor and do your place settings flat on the floor, with dramatic lighting, or mount the tablecloth on a back wall and set the “table” on the wall!

Consider hiring a professional window dresser to make your storefront the best on the block. Professional window dressers earn a good living, and for great reason, so don’t be too surprised at the initial quote.

The bottom line: Every effort you put toward improving your window display will be paid back ten fold.

Maybe George Orwell had it wrong. In his novel 1984, he depicted the unwilling masses controlled by the omnipotent Big Brother. But this story in the San Jose Mercury News (free registration may be required) shows that in 2007, the masses are more than willing.

Pretty neat. A digital billboard flashes personalized messages to anyone driving or walking by who carries a Mini Cooper key fob. How’s that for a status symbol? The Mini Cooper is a little car but its marketers are thinking big. They know that Mini owners are passionate about their vehicle. So the Mini people contacted 4,500 owners and offered them the key fobs in exchange for some personal information on a website.

The Mini owners rolled right in to the promotion, and now find ways to impress their friends when driving around town. And you can be sure the Mini people are using the data they collected to market to current and potential owners. I wonder what Orwell would think of their willingness to hand over personal data?

My hat’s off to the Mini marketers for really thinking out of the box on this one. The technology has been around for some time. But this is the most aggressive use of it I’ve seen aimed at boosting egos. And when you can give that kind of boost to your customers, you’ll be in the driver’s seat when it comes to loyalty.

Anyone who knows me knows my three main passions in life are family, business and surfing. A close fourth is surf art. It’s woven into the décor of my home and office. But I’ve had to search far and wide to find the high-quality prints and photos that really stand out.

My web team, fortunately, shares my passion for surf art–specifically art inspired by surfing and waves. They also were having a difficult time finding really good surf-related art. The offerings we found online were the usual assortment of unframed surf posters, photos and sketches. So we decided to go for it and create an online gallery of surf art that we’d be proud to own or give as gifts. The result: WaveridersGallery.com.

We started by contacting emerging and established artists whose work we admire. Those who shared our enthusiasm are now showcased on the site. It’s all for sale, mostly signed limited-editions, framed or unframed. We also offer surf-themed books and even surfboards from a master shaper.

As you can tell, we’re very pleased with the results. I hope you’ll visit WaveridersGallery.com to see what I’m bragging about.

What can you take away from our experience? Everyone has their passions. It’s how you indulge them that sets you apart from the pack. We dived into the online gallery business with little knowledge of the art world but supreme confidence that we would learn along the way. We put our online-commerce skills to good use, met some great artists in the process and were passionate about building a site that stands above the competition. We even got a little surfing in along the way.