At this time of year, making your window display stand out is paramount. With every retailer on the high street desperately fighting for attention, you need to step your own foot into the ring with a dazzling Christmas window display to draw shoppers to your business.
A great Christmas window display has the ability to entice shoppers, to stop them in their tracks, engage with them and raise brand awareness. While your window displays should always showcase your brand’s unique personality, Christmas is the time when this effort needs to be quadrupled so you can compete with every other retailer on the high street trying to stand out. So, here are our top tips for creating that perfect Christmas window display this year:
Select a Theme
A big problem with window displays, particularly Christmas ones, is that they can get too busy. There are so many different aspects of Christmas you can focus on that it’s easy for a Christmas window display to become messy and incoherent. Having a clear, identifiable theme is the best solution to capturing the attention of passers-by and ensuring your display doesn’t stick out in their minds for all the wrong reasons.
Pick one, maybe two Christmassy aspects and stick to that. The easiest way to create a theme is to use one that relates to your products and services. A book shop might construct a Christmas tree out of books, a shoe shop might use helpful elves constructing shoes in their window. Whatever theme you go for, you’ll do yourself no favours trying to cram too many ideas into one display. Stick with one distinct theme, and shoppers will take notice.
Pick a Focal Point
Like any interior designer would say about a room, there needs to be a focal point, something that really draws the eye and gets noticed; everything else around it simply serves to accentuate this one focal point. Using the book tree example again, this would be the clear focal point of the display. That means that there can’t be anything else in the display trying to steal the spotlight. The worst thing you could do in this scenario is stick a giant inflatable Father Christmas in the corner next to the book tree; whilst indeed very Christmassy, it doesn’t exactly do anything for the brand other than draw attention away from the main aspect of the display. Once you have your focal point, additional elements should only draw focus to this.
Plan Your Display First
Creating your Christmas window display will be infinitely easier with a plan. Sketch your idea down on paper and have a look at what the final product might resemble. Gather feedback from others to see how it can be improved. Even if you’re not much of an artist, having something visual to look at will make the process more streamlined. It’s much easier to cross out mistakes and re-draw them than it is to physically move components of a window display around.
Consider a Window Painting
If your ideas start to get a bit too ambitious, or costly, there are other alternatives to physical displays. Having a large Father Christmas or reindeer character in your window can be difficult, they can take up a lot of space and will need to be stored away once Christmas is over. A great alternative to a physical display is to have a window painting. There are no limits to what you can have painted on your window: a smiling Father Christmas, an elf using one of your products or even just some smattering of snow. It’s a great way to bring the Christmas elements to your shop front without the hassle of physical elements.
You can paint the window yourself or hire someone to do it for you. Done properly, the windows can be easily washed and the painting cleaned away at the end of the Christmas holidays.
Utilise Vision Shutters
When the day ends and you close up shop, it can be a shame to hide your wonderful Christmas display behind security shutters. Whilst incredibly useful for protecting your assets, they do come with the drawback of hiding your display when rolled down. However, you can invest in vision shutters to remedy this problem. Vision shutters utilise the protection and security of normal roller shutters, but with the added bonus that they have slats that can be seen through. So, your Christmassy display can be seen when your shop is closed, whilst also being kept well-protected.
