6 Display Tips to Increase Holiday Sales
Retail is in the details, especially during the holidays. Small details may not seem so important when the thermometer reads 75, but they make all the difference in the world when you have a store full of impatient shoppers on December 15th. Your holiday goals include increasing awareness, building foot traffic, and encouraging impulse buys. Ready to update your Holiday 2025 Things to Do List? Let’s go!
Choose a theme and carry it through the store. Silver & Gold? Home for the Holidays? Santa Paws? Whatever theme you choose should put customers in a happy mood to spend. So, set your windows to pull customers into the store, play holiday music even if it drives you crazy, and holiday-ize your dress code.
Located approximately 10’ inside the front door, speed bump displays build an instant first impression. Their job is the same as the speed bumps in the parking lot: to slow you down. These displays create the first perception of what shoppers can expect to find while perusing your sales floor. Use them to tell product stories, feature new arrivals, and cross-merchandise holiday items with those carried year round. Change your speed bumps weekly and zhuzh them daily.
Build on the holiday theme with props that tell or enhance the product story. Think mannequins, Santas, snowmen, faux snow, garland, flowers, tabletop fixturing, baskets, galvanized pails, crates – anything that will help even the most basic of merchandise stand out and make shoppers smile.
Holidays are made for Cross-Merchandising. You can increase your average sale by displaying complementary items side by side. A customer shopping for a holiday collar might also purchase a coat or snow boots if those items are merchandised together. Anytime you cross-merchandise you encourage impulse purchases that help increase your average sale.
Too many stores are undersigned, and that’s a problem because signs sell. Did you know that 70% of purchase decisions are made right on the sales floor? Proper signing can be a big help with those decisions. Add signage that highlights a product’s features or encourages shoppers to pick it up and try it. It’s easy to change how your signs look during the holidays with fun papers, print colors, and text.
Encourage impulse buying at the cashwrap. Shoppers should never stop thinking about products, so set an enticing display of holiday gifts on the wall behind your cash wrap. Placing displays of low-cost, high-margin product on and within reach of the cashwrap will help, too. The goal is to encourage customers to keep shopping while they wait to pay for their purchases.
Well-planned holiday displays allow you to express your creativity while optimizing the square footage on your sales floor. When the dust settles, take note of what worked, what didn’t, plus ideas for improvement next year. These notes will come in handy when it’s time to plan Holiday 2026.