The 10 Rules of Successful Experience Design
By Jaime J. Izurieta
Founder, Storefront Mastery
January 7, 2021
Every entrepreneur wants to be the next big Founder. Capital F, big, Silicon Valley-type Founder. The privilege of sitting on the other side of the screen while typing this for you comes from risking it to become a founder many times in the past.
Founding a band, a museum, a city agency, an architectural practice and a city has left tremendous lessons to teach others. The first one is that knowledge compounds. Things you learn that may seem random and useless will come back to help in the future. Wisdom arrives when you realize that knowledge compounds. You eventually start making notes of every new, seemingly menial thing you learn. Then you become wiser. Up to this point, it’s still not possible to say you actually know something until you have taught it to someone else. Finally, knowing something is not the useful part. The curiosity, the ability to make connections and link random facts and boring bits of knowledge: those are the ingredients of creativity.
The life of a business owner is mostly consumed by dealing with taxes, payroll, permits, bookkeeping and other back-office activities. These tasks can be very similar for restaurants, antique shops, hair salons or any other business.
It is the front-office activities, the public facing part of the business that make them unique and help them stand out. That includes the ability to build friendships with customers and create a community of friends, loyal followers and steadfast advocates. It requires an eye to identify worthwhile partnerships along the supply chain that can add tremendous value to the business model and help them fulfill their purpose.
Another important element is the painstaking work to bring the most valuable products and services to their customers. Most owners invest time in those activities. What is usually left out is how the community building, strategic partnerships and product selection shape the experience when they work together.
Since back-office activities vary little from one industry to another and from one business to the next, they are easily standardized, so there are many available toolkits. Design, on the other hand, requires personalization, responds to the specific needs of each business and is usually based on the personality of the owner. It is one of the hardest tasks to carry on as a DIY project, and a key component of the in-store experience.
These ten rules for creating successful experiences have helped store owners make tremendous impact on their business, neighborhood and community by relying on the design of their storefronts.
Create a vision. Connect with the original inspiration to open the business and set a path for the coming years. This will guide the foundational story and inspire the community
Stage it well. Customers seek experiences more than just products these days. An unforgettable storefront that appeals to each of the 5 senses will create memorable moments
Get in character. Aligning every aspect of the store, from design to service to stock with the vision will help the message be better understood by everyone
Let people sit. People are naturally inclined to take a seat when it’s offered. Free, comfortable seating outside a store will attract others and increase foot traffic
Be transparent. Besides just using the storefront glass to design a display that makes people look inside, transparency is about showing the business’ values in the design, in the service and the brand
Control the path. The way people travel through a store defines how they feel, what they see, and where they stop. An easy to follow path from sidewalk to cash register will invite customers to be performers in a play and create tremendous engagement
Brand it. A coherent graphics system applied to every aspect of the business, from letterhead to invoices to sign to in-store notifications will add consistency and amplify the message
The principles have been developed after years of owning a small business and serving them from the private consultancy and also from the public sector. They can help any business up their game and become unforgettable to their community and essential to their customers.
If you’d like to find out more, you can find The Ten No-B.S. Rules For Successful Storefront Design at mystorefront.design. Jaime is the founder of Storefront Mastery, a creative agency that guides downtowns, main streets and the small businesses they serve to find their purpose, develop a vision and translate it into unforgettable customer experiences that improve engagement and sales. For more information, follow Jaime on Twitter @izurietavarea, and Storefront Mastery on Facebook and Instagram, or visit storefrontmastery.com