Article: How to perfect your Retail Choreography signage with nudges

Behavioral economist Richard Thaler and his partner Cass Sunstein, in their marketing thesis book ‘Nudge’ explain that a nudge is; a subtle cue or context change that pushes a user to make a certain decision, without forcing them to.

Nudge theory suggests that consumer behavior can be influenced by small and, at times, creative suggestions and positive reinforcements that drive people to make better decisions for themselves without restricting their freedom of choice.

“There’s no such thing as ‘neutral’ design. Small and apparently insignificant details can have major impacts on people’s behavior.” — Richard H. Thaler

How to use nudges

Simple arrow shapes and images that show a customer what to do can help to serve as nudges.

Perhaps our examples of famous nudges will inspire some effective and engaging signage content that drives your customers to the right actions.

1) A creative way to nudge people to recycle through re-contextualising basketball hoops above bins.

2) Flies painted on urinals in Amsterdam airport acted as simple cues that significantly increased bathroom cleanliness.

3) Using arrows to point customers in the right direction while articulating that taking the stairs burns calories drove more customers to take the stairs.

How to use nudges to drive customers to action

Simple arrow shapes and images that show a customer what to do can help to serve as nudges.

For example footsteps or arrows that lead to the sign you want customers to approach.

One of the most effective nudges we’ve seen is placing an icon of a phone in hand scanning a QR code to clearly show customers what they should do. Our clients saw QR code scan rates double when they implemented this.

Download our full signage guide here

Creating powerful Retail Choreography signage is an effective way of driving customers to schedule appointments, join virtual queues or to check-in for contactless click and collect orders.

The formula for signs

The image here shows our formula we use for creating effective contactless click and collect signage that drives customers to check-in.

Here are some examples of effective signage using our formula:

We’ve created guides on how to create signage for your:

Appointment booking software

Virtual queuing software

Click and collect software

Retail Choreography solutions in general