A Retailer’s Guide to Winning Point of Purchase (POP) Displays  

Ecommerce is the leading platform for product sales, but the customer journey includes many stopping points along the way. Following shopping trends and understanding when and why consumers make their purchases helps businesses know where to strengthen their brand presence. Point of purchase (POP) displays boost brand visibility and are great sales conversion tools—even for products customers never planned on buying.  

Meeting Your Customers Where They Are  

If you take a five-year snapshot of how people search for products and what’s involved in completing a sale, there are commonalities across generations. According to HubSpot, consumer purchasing behaviors start with social platforms, driving customers to learn more on their mobile devices, while appreciating AI-enabled product recommendations. 

You might be wondering, what happened to retail stores?  

Each year, global data and business intelligence platform Statista dives into consumer shopping habits, noting trends and behaviors.  

In 2023, the company broke down how Gen Z engages in shopping experiences: 

• 44% went to online stores 

• 40% used search engines, and 

• 35% headed to brick-and-mortar stores.  

As of 2024, 37% of U.S. online shoppers chose to shop brick-and-mortar over online stores to avoid paying shipping fees. By including point of purchase displays at physical retail stores, you give more customers the opportunity to get to know your brands through touch, feel, scent, or taste—real product experiences compared to what online shopping can provide. 

Point of Purchase Displays Put Products Front and Center  

While omnichannel businesses focus on creating a compelling online presence, showcasing products at physical locations brings customers closer to the brands they love, without asking them to do any work.  

Plus, point of purchase displays put products front and center to consumers at a time and place where they’re already in search of a purchase. Even if your customer is in-store to check out another product, a retail point of purchase display could get them to reconsider what they originally had in mind, giving your brand a chance. 

Product returns can also speak to the advantages of mixing online presence with brick-and-mortar product displays. Some consumers prefer the use of both before completing the shopping cart process, giving them added assurance that the product they envision online is similar to what they experienced in a physical location. 

Although purchasing power of the future lies in virtual engagement, retailers can have a stronger impact by including onsite point of purchase (POP) displays. 

What Is a Point of Purchase Display 

If you’ve ever taken young children with you to the grocery store or big brand pharmacy, you know kids are POP display magnets. It could be the way a display is placed within the store, its shiny colors or hard-to-miss design, grabbing the attention of anyone who happens to cross its path —which is the whole point.  

A good POP display would scream at you if it could (and some do with audio or video messaging) to stop you in your tracks and gain your interest. But there’s more to it than that. 

The Psychology Behind POP Display Success  

Shopping is a therapeutic experience, releasing brain chemicals that make us feel good. In turn, a point of purchase display can temporarily turn on those feelings, by tempting us with a product experience.  

Solid point of purchase displays can also persuade people to move forward with a purchase or purchase more items than intended.  

Point of Purchase Types  

Creativity given to a product’s packaging can also be complemented by a point of purchase display. And with the many POP options available to retailers, finding one to meet your brand’s evolving needs is part of the fun.  

POP display options include: 

Temporary displays – ideal for seasonal products or featured promotions. Affordable, popular, and can be freestanding, have endcap displays, or dump bins made of cardboard. 

Semi-permanent displays – have a longer in-store presence, from 90 days to a year. These displays offer a lot of latitude in size and versatility, for countertop use or aisle-wide, and work as pop-up shops too. To support its uses, materials could involve metal, wood, plastic, glass, and heavier cardboard. 

Permanent displays – serve as foundational tools for in-store design and can last from 3 to 5 years if they’re taken care of. These displays are like fixed assets, maximized by rotating in temporary or semi-permanent displays too. 

Digital displays – bring products and customer experiences to life. This POP display props product, like the others, but also has a digital monitor playing a dynamic story through a slideshow or video. 

Robotic displays – provide a long-lasting in-store customer experience. This kind of display works off a robotic arm connected to a box, activated by motion sensors. The arm moves the product within the customer’s view, while broadcasting product details from a recording. 

How to Build an Effective POP Display  

Designing an effective in-store display is like owning a small business—you’ll wear a lot of hats. Sure, you want to draw traffic to your product and convert that into sales, but you have to make it about the customer too. How? Create memorable brand impressions enabling customer retention.  

The display

How can you distinguish your brand from all the others in-store? In a sea of products, it comes down to capturing customers’ visual interest. Take the expected and add something unexpected—irregular shapes, sizes, or colors that give your brand a little extra, while keeping product easily within reach. 

The messaging

If you don’t have a brand book or sales brief for your product, create a list of your ideal customers with details on their consumer preferences. Once you really know who your product caters to, you can begin to write the point of purchase display messaging. Use the KISS method (keep it short, simple) and easy to remember.  

The placement

POP displays can look different in-store and, depending on where they are placed, will affect the customer experience. Will the design and messaging be just as impactful from a display that’s six feet away as it is at 12 inches? It’s helpful to test POP display placements from various points in the store and consider how location affects the customer experience.  

The experience

Big box stores like Costco and Walmart know the value of interactive point of purchase displays, and their customers are eager to explore and participate. This experiential marketing could include free samples or product demonstrations. And by adding a QR code to the display, shoppers can revisit your product and receive other offers long after they’ve left the store. 

But there’s more to building the right POP display to fuel positive customer responses.  

How to Get Point of Purchase Displays In-store  

Just like logistics have a heavy hand in getting your product to your customers, it also impacts POP design and delivery.  

WSI Warehouse and Logistics West Coast Director of Operations, Maria Madrigal, has experience with POP display design and fulfillment, and can speak to its successes and challenges. She’s been involved in the building and distribution of food and apparel POP product displays, and knows what customers overlook in the beginning can bite them later. 

“Apparel POP displays use cheap materials, cardboard for the foundation, which was okay until the customer wanted to add flimsy metal hooks, ripping the display during transit. It isn’t just about the completed piece, but what’s going to happen when it’s shipped and delivered,” Madrigal says. The displays were going to multiple stores, she recalls, but the design wasn’t uniform. “And the colors were too light, so it didn’t stand out in the store.” 

However, the point of purchase display created for a food-based customer represented how to do it right, she added. “The design had bold colors with black and white messaging that was easy to read. These were seasonal displays made from cardboard too, but they added corner boards making it stronger and impossible to bend,” Madrigal says. 

A Retail POP Display Expert Can Help  

Something many brands don’t consider, according to Madrigal, is that cheaper design materials may cost them more in warehouse labor and fulfillment resources. “The displays have to be shipped in boxes and properly secured. Depending on the size and complexity, it might require extra dunnage which adds more time to get it packed and ready to ship.”  

Madrigal says when POP displays require additional care, fulfillment may involve removing product from the display, re-kitting, and sending it as a bundle. Once the store receives the package, the manager or product representative can scan the barcode on the box(s) to know what pieces are inside.   

For non-perishable items, “It’s also better to plan ahead, build out multiple point of purchase displays, and store them in warehouse locations so they’re ready to go when you need them,” Madrigal suggests. 

To learn more about how a retail point of purchase (POP) display can expand your business, just ask a WSI product fulfillment and logistics specialist.