GOOD BOOTHS GONE BAD #18: Intervention

A reader just posted a plea for help on booth layout.

He set up a U-shaped booth at a recent show. Unfortunately, if a peek at the small sample of goods displayed at the top of the “U” didn’t capture people’s interest, they walked on.

He’s now thinking of a table across the front of the booth with “bits of this and that”, samples of everything he does. He’s dreading another booth redesign.

Okay, Tom, put down the pen and step away from the graph paper.

It’s time to look at how people act in your booth before we decide whether a different layout would work better.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with either layout, properly done. But the same things can go wrong with both.

In a nutshell, I would take a good look at three things in a booth redesign:

Can your customers get into the booth–mentally and/or physically?
Can your customers shop without pressure?
Can your customers easily see your best work, at its best?

Twenty (or so) Questions time!

Can your customers get into the booth–mentally and/or physically?

Could shoppers easily get into your booth?

Sometimes a U-shaped layout creates a bottle-neck at the front of the booth, especially if the display tables are too deep. Many craftspeople use those low, wide tables that are almost 3 feet deep. Place these around the perimeter of the booth, and you may end up with a central space only four feet wide. Not enough room for customers to move in! See this essay in the series for information on the butt brush phenomenon.

Did the front tables force people to stand out in the aisle? There are a lot of distractions out there! I would pull the tables at the legs of the “U” in a little, so people come into the booth a little.

Do you have enough signage to engage people as they look at your work? Are the prices clearly displayed so they have an idea if they can afford it?

Can your customers shop without pressure?

Where were you standing in the booth? And what were you doing?

Were you standing in the middle of the booth, staring out at the aisle? This always looks like the artist is guarding the booth. Not good vibes for shopping!

Were you standing someplace where you could watch your browsers constantly? I hate that! Every single guy did this to me at a recent craft fair I visited. I felt like a rabbit in a beagle’s doghouse. Not Snoopy’s doghouse, either.

Guys tend to stand with arms folded. Or with hands in pockets. Both tend to signal “I’m bored!” Women shoppers know this stance well. It is the “bored husband” stance. And we don’t like it. It takes away the fun of shopping. Ouch!

Where you leaping (figuratively) on people as soon as they came into the booth, forcing conversation on them before they could even start browsing?

Or (just as bad) totally ignoring them?

One of the most effective sales tips Bruce Baker has to offer is how to look busy in your booth doing business-appropriate activities.Try doing something a shopkeeper (because that’s what you are at a show) would be doing–dusting, pricing, arranging, restocking, etc. Simply let people know you are available for help IF they need you.

Then people can relax–and SHOP.

(See this collection of essays on booth behavior for more information.

Can your customers easily see your best work, at its best?

What did you display look like? Tell me you didn’t have EVERYTHING YOU MAKE laid out evenly on tables that were waist-high. (Actually, I hope you DID because you can easily fix that for next time!)

If the dichroic glass jewelry wasn’t pulling people in at that show, could you have switched something more enticing out there on those front aisle tables?

Can people easily see what you make? If it’s tiny, and only displayed on tables, try a large-format photo/poster of your work–a beautiful jury shot, an image of a model wearing the work, an environmental shot of the product in an appropriate setting.

This gets that information (“This is what I make”) to potential customers even across the aisle. (This also helps if you are thronged with buyers, and other browsers can’t even see into your booth.) (BTW, that is such a good problem to have, isn’t it?)

Now, about the idea of putting a table across the front of the booth….Here’s a fun exercise. Go to Flickr and search for “craft fair booth”. You will find hundreds of booths with that table-across-the-front-of-the-booth layout you’re thinking of trying.

Here’s what I noticed in almost every single image:

) The tables are invariably those standard folding tables everyone uses at craft shows. They are TOO LOW and TOO DEEP.

Even if a customer sees something they like at the back of the table, if they can’t reach it, they will not try to pick it up.

Go look at a fancy jewelry store in your home town. Note the height of the actual display surface of their cases. It’s higher than your dining room table, right?

) Every single seller is committing the #1 energy drainer in a show booth.

In almost every photo, the seller is SITTING DOWN.

It reminds me of seeing friends at a restaurant. One of you is sitting down, looking up (hungry!), and the other is standing there, looking down (suddenly aware of how hungry the diner must be.) The energy is weird.

Worse, the vendors are sitting down facing directly into the aisle. Every single customer has to endure the pressure of eyes upon them as they shop. (You can almost here their thoughts of “please please please buy something!!!”) It’s awful.

Raise your tables. If you must sit, get a higher chair, so you and the customer are on the same eye level.

And sit angled, and be busy, so people can approach your display and browse without feeling your watchful eyes on them.

) The tables are flush with the aisle.

There is no place where people can “get off the aisle”. They are standing in the aisle, open to every distraction of every booth around you. They are being jostled by the crowd behind them.

Get them IN your booth. Create an environment that engages them.

) There is always TOO MUCH STUFF.

And there is either NO display–just a jillion items laid out on the table.

Or there is TOO MUCH DISPLAY–so many cute baskets, fancy displays, patterned tablecloths, stacked boxes, etc., etc., etc., you can hardly tell what’s for sale and what isn’t.

All those subtle variations in your designs that are so obvious to you, the myriad color choices, are not obvious to your customer. It just looks like too much stuff.

Or even worse, it is all different. It looks like the artist has NO FOCUS.

The eye cannot settle. The customer cannot find that one special thing that might call to them.

They move on.

I started to link some of these issues to the appropriate essay in my GOOD BOOTHS GONE BAD series. But there were too many! I think if you have time to search the “category” box on my site for “booth design”, you will find almost all of these topics addressed more fully.

I want to say again, all of us make mistakes. My booth tends to be visually dense (a euphemism) and I struggle with this all the time. In fact, having only a three-hour set-up time at my next show is forcing me to streamline my offerings.

But I have managed to create a total environment, which helps. IF the work interests a customer, there is plenty to keep her engaged and entertained.

Until she finds that perfect piece she simply must have.

Don’t give up, Tom. You are doing the right thing–seeing what’s not working, and thinking about doing something different. Just focus on WHY it’s not working, and I believe you will come up with a way to do it better.