How to Make Your Business COVID-Safe Without Compromising Aesthetics
Aesthetics play a critical role in running a business. Whether your business operates online or through a physical storefront, looks matter. Your business needs to appear clean and organized, and be aesthetically pleasing to your employees and customers. If your storefront is cluttered and difficult to navigate, many of your customers will feel agitation on a subconscious, or even a conscious, level and you won’t see many sales.
Currently, the world is experiencing the COVID-19 crisis. At this time, businesses are required to uphold certain safety standards for their employees and customer interactions. The new requirements can mean big changes for businesses that aren’t set up to accommodate the new requirements.
If you’re required to make changes for COVID-19, and you don’t want to compromise your aesthetics, here’s how to have the best of both worlds.
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Use glass dividers instead of cheap plastic
Nothing can ruin the aesthetics of your business like using cheap plastic dividers to separate your employees from your customers. To maintain an upscale aesthetic inside your store while maintaining safe practices, use glass screens instead.
In addition to providing a better aesthetic, glass screens are more durable, easier to clean, last longer, and are harder to scratch. That means you won’t have to worry about replacing them after a few months of getting scraped up accidentally by customers.
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Hire a professional graphic artist for printed signs
You’d be surprised at how beautiful a professionally designed sign can be compared to something typed in Microsoft Word and printed at home. Professional graphic designers take great care to use beautiful typography, perfect white space and margins, and other design techniques to draw a person’s eyes to the right spot.
If you need to print signs for your patrons to know where to stand, where lines start, and which way to walk down one-way aisles, hire a graphic designer.
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Design your digital signage intentionally
Digital signage is a good way to guide our customers safely around your store, but make sure you design your messages and images intentionally.
For instance, while you could use a giant screen to display your company logo alongside your new store policies, that’s probably not the best use of screen space. If you want your customers to comprehend the rules on display, it’s best to display those rules prominently without any distractions.
When designing digital signage, be intentional with where you place each element you display to your customers. Make sure each screen is designed to maximize comprehension. Making your digital signage aesthetically pleasing will help increase comprehension, but make sure you don’t overdo it; a little bit of design goes a long way.
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Get the proper signage holders
If you’ve ever walked into a store that had posters taped to the window, you know how tacky that looks. Don’t be that business. Get the proper signage holders or the type of signs you need to post. For example:
- Use suction cups on windows rather than tape
- Get A-frame sign holders to post notices outside about things like mask and hand sanitizing requirements
- Use retractable line barriers attached to posts to guide the flow of traffic and utilize the sign holders on each post
- Mount all digital displays instead of leaning them against the wall. If you can’t mount them, place them on flat surfaces angled properly to capture attention
By using proper sign holders, you’ll maintain a good aesthetic in your building even when your signs have to be placed in high traffic areas.
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Spell check your signage three times
Most people won’t notice small typos. However, some people will notice big, embarrassing typos, small typos, missing spaces, and font inconsistencies. To those with an eye to see these things, small mistakes can appear huge. For instance, say your sign says, “Form a line startng here.” Some people will be put off by the misspelled word. They’ll wonder how such a short message could have gone to print with such an obvious spelling mistake.
Spell check all of your signage at least three times. Run your signage by at least two other people before printing. Most importantly, if you discover a typo, reprint your sign. Don’t ignore the typo or try to correct it with a permanent marker.
Aesthetics are important- How to Make Your Business COVID-Safe
They say looks aren’t everything, but when you run a business, aesthetics are critical to your success. Make sure you don’t compromise your store’s aesthetics while you’re making things safer for your customers.
