Back-to-school displays are an important retail tool for helping brands promote sales of school products and more. They are seasonal displays that showcase relevant products during the important back-to-school retail season. These displays, whose prime time is the summer months, are important for introducing new, novel and essential products to families as they get ready for another school year.
Shoppers demand convenience and accessibility. Back-to-school displays must make it easy for shoppers to find the items on their school lists. Vibrant, fun designs engage shoppers of all ages. Retail displays are an effective way to build awareness and excitement around products.
What Are Back-to-School Displays?
Back-to-school retail displays are designed to attract shoppers to engage with a brand, purchase a product or try a promotion. They often feature enticing designs and eye-catching colors that provide functionality to hold products and serve as an effective marketing tool. Most are temporary and constructed of corrugated cardboard. Click here to learn more about temporary displays.
Different Types of Back-to-School Displays
Creating the optimal back-to-school design means considering what kind of displays will work best with the products you intend to showcase. The best designs are specifically designed and engineered for the product — make your campaign unique and stand out. Here are popular types of back-to-school display ideas used to market school products:
- Entryway: This display is placed at the store entrance to grab customers’ attention as they enter. They usually feature bold designs and strong messaging to draw shoppers in.
- Stand-alone: Also known as a freestanding display unit (FSDU), this display offers unmatched versatility. It can be placed anywhere in the store and typically makes products easily accessible.
- Dump bin: A dump bin is a large container that holds a large quantity of goods. It works especially well for smaller items like pens or novelty stationery. The best high-capacity dump bins feature windows, so the shopper can see the product as it’s shopped down.
- Window display: This display serves the sole purpose of bringing more foot traffic into the store by attracting passersby. It is typically used for exciting promotions or interactive displays.
- Endcap: These displays sit at the end of the aisle. They are especially beneficial for promotional offers or new products.
Why Are Back-to-School Displays Important?
If you are a retailer, the layout of your back-to-school merchandising, including the displays you use, can facilitate customer purchases by improving their shopping experience. These displays help reinforce brands being sold, increase sales and organize products to encourage customers to peruse and buy. Displays are vital for the success of your store during the second-largest retail season, according to NRF. For brands, great back-to-school displays help get your product noticed and placed into shoppers’ carts during this high-traffic shopper season.
Back-to-school displays help companies leave a positive and lasting impression on customers. They also help the brand establish an identity that stands out from competitors. An effective display can even persuade customers to try a new product for the first time.
This competitive advantage is especially beneficial in the crowded school-supply category, where private-label products compete for shoppers’ dollars. A display with an attractive design and ease of use can help a brand stand out by offering a more convenient and thoughtful shopping experience.
This season is also one of building successful routines. A great back-to-school display for a healthy snack, personal care item or another product can help parents set their children up for success. Back-to-school displays are also particularly useful for encouraging impulse purchases. Research shows that attractive displays trigger impulse buys and boost visual appeal.
Budgeting Effectively
For many merchandisers, budgets for visual merchandising — especially for POP marketing — have been holding steady or increasing over recent years. Merchandisers justify this spending because of the extraordinary benefits that come from these displays. Proper marketing gives brands a life and vitality that can’t be achieved by simply stacking items on shelves.
Regardless of how much you have budgeted for your in-store visual marketing, a little can go a long way in terms of facilitating sales. With e-commerce as another potential outlet for shoppers, brands and retailers utilize messaging on their displays to drive shoppers to their mobile websites or apps, many times with QR codes. This enables shoppers to view ratings and reviews, learn more about products and potentially find items not in the store.
Despite the availability of shopping online, in-store marketing continues to be incredibly important for driving back-to-school sales. Deloitte’s 2024 Back to School survey highlighted an increasing number of customers shopping at more retail formats. There was a jump from 3.9 in 2023 to 4.7 retail formats in 2024, stressing the importance of investing in in-store marketing. The survey also found that 50% of parents would shop for themselves during back-to-school shopping, highlighting the scope for cross-merchandising success.
Factors to Consider With Back-to-School Displays
Visual merchandising can be a tall task — here are four mistakes that companies typically make:
1. Not Using the Right Displays
Bland displays become another part of a store’s everyday experience, which means they can get lost in the everyday. They do not command attention because they have become familiar and seem like part of the store’s layout. These can be permanent racks that lack relevant seasonal messaging or very basic temporary displays that do not stop the shopper on their normal trip mission.
Your marketing materials can become overlooked and uninteresting if they never change. The Path-to-Purchase Institute found that temporary displays increased sales by 23.8%, whereas permanent displays brought only a 19% increase. As seasons come and go, customer needs change. By highlighting products with seasonal or temporary uses, you attend to customers’ needs, and you make the shopping experience more convenient. The back-to-school season gives you the opportunity to draw attention to your office supplies, school-appropriate clothing, lunchbox items, electronics and other materials and accessories students need as they return to the classroom.
2. Ineffective Store Layout
Simply using temporary displays or back-to-school signage will not necessarily increase your sales on their own. Identify the areas in the store that get the most traffic and the highest visibility to carefully decide how to target that space. Areas near the register can be highly effective because customers are standing and waiting in line — which means they have plenty of time to check out the products around them. This is a great opportunity to promote products that customers buy on impulse, especially food and drink items or those extra accessories that personalize a student’s gear.
End cap displays also have a higher rate of sales. Thirty-seven percent of merchandisers say that end-of-aisle displays increase their sales, so take advantage of these spaces. End caps provide visibility for new products, create opportunities for branding and invite customers to check out the other, similar products in the associated aisles. Great Northern Instore helps you identify the high-impact locations in your store and optimize those areas. We utilize Visual Attention Software to analyze how designs cut through the clutter at retail.
3. You Have Too Much Going On in Your Displays
We know that shoppers like having options, but too many options makes the decision much more difficult. People naturally avoid displays that are not aesthetically appealing, so a cluttered area may drive them away. Choice paralysis may overtake the customer and discourage them from purchasing an item.
The rule of three is an effective way to satisfy the need for variety without overstimulating the customer. Showcasing similar products in a display creates cohesive marketing and solicits the sales of every product — for example, if a customer is looking for notebooks, they likely will be in search of writing utensils, erasers and/or folders. Grouping these items together highlights their cooperation in the same environment. Displays that follow a theme or show products that accessorize each other also encourage customers to buy more.
Great Northern Instore helps you organize your merchandise in a way that makes sense to you and your customers. Based on the products you sell, we can create a custom design for your displays to ensure that every product is aligned with its accessories and showcasing the merchandise to its fullest capacity.
4. Your Display Is Too Complicated
Temporary displays should be easy to manage. Large, bulky or heavy displays are difficult to make temporary if it takes too much labor to assemble and fill them. Additionally, displays that require special accommodations — such as access to an electrical outlet — create an unnecessary hassle. A lightweight, simple setup minimizes the time you spend trying to figure out how to establish your visual marketing and gives you flexibility to adjust it later. Retailers greatly appreciate simplicity so their team can focus on helping their shoppers.
Great Northern Instore prioritizes simplicity. Our expert engineers develop designs that are easy to assemble and pack, while matching your vision for an impactful display in the store. Our displays are easy to stock and maintain, making them simple for you to keep up with during the campaign and remove at the end. We can also pre-pack displays, making your job easy with their turnkey process allowing you to reap the benefits of an effective back-to-school campaign that optimizes your space and showcases your products.
How to Succeed With Your Back-to-School Displays
Back-to-school displays that attract attention help draw in more customers as well as build brand loyalty and awareness. Here are three important steps to create the most effective retail displays:
1. Become Knowledgeable
It’s important to gain a deeper understanding of retail displays. Study what techniques get better results over others, and consider conducting a market analysis to gather more specific data and information. You can also work with a reputable partner like Great Northern Instore to create back-to-school displays based on consumer insights to give your company a competitive edge.
Great Northern Instore has over 60 years of experience working with retail displays. We have worked with leading retailers and are well-versed in the requirements for displays in those stores. Our over 100 graphic designers, structural designers and engineers have years of experience in concept creation and development. With a strong team, we can assess what kinds of back-to-school displays are best for you and the types of products you are aiming to showcase.
Great Northern Instore has experience working with large retailers. We have created back-to-school campaigns from start to finish with cohesive displays and signage. We can also design multipurpose bins that allow customers of all ages to access their merchandise as they search for the perfect school materials.
2. Prioritize Sustainability and Quality
Research shows that 92% of customers are more likely to trust an environmentally conscious brand. As a result, it is crucial to create back-to-school displays that are constructed from both sustainable and high-quality materials. Doing so can help increase your brand reputation in the eyes of today’s customers, who are increasingly focused on quality.
Great Northern Instore also has expertise in working with a variety of materials to ensure that your back-to-school displays function as you need them to. The primary material for our temporary displays — like your back-to-school displays — is corrugated cardboard made of 60 to 90% post-consumer waste. Our in-house capabilities allow us to design and fulfill projects with great efficiency and quality every single time.
3. Measure Your Success
Once you have set up your display, it is vital to have key performance indicators that show how successful the campaign is. Measuring your success helps you see how effective the display was in increasing engagement, sales and brand loyalty.
Great Northern Instore highly prioritizes your satisfaction with our products, and we allow you to measure the success of the displays put in place. Our Great Northern Instore Vision AppTM allows you to track your success by managing data collected. The app aggregates the retail execution data into a dashboard, allowing you to track down to the store level.
You can see what the displays look like in individual stores and understand how your back-to-school displays are impacting your sales. Because your data is accessible in the palm of your hand, you can see it anytime and anywhere. The convenience of the app allows you to keep tabs on the relationship between sales and your return on investment.
This app also allows you to see what works and what can be improved upon. Because we highly prioritize your relationship, we want to ensure that we create products that do not simply meet your expectations but exceed them. Our design team can work with you to truly optimize your displays and placement, so collecting the data to analyze performance helps you curate a back-to-school design that truly works for you and your business.
Optimize Your Back-to-School Campaign With Great Northern Instore
Great Northern Instore has 60 years of experience providing custom displays that match the wants and needs of your retailers by tapping into their innovative entrepreneurial knowledge. We work with you to ensure that your back-to-school displays fit your vision and optimize sales.
Great Northern Instore offers turnkey solutions and prioritizes matching vision to reality. With our innovative team of designers and commitment to high quality and service, we can help you optimize your back-to-school displays just as we have done with other retailers and brands. Our proven excellence in the industry makes us a great option for creating custom displays that bring products to life. Your business can be another success story, and it all starts with you.
Our wide-ranging capabilities, ranging all the way from design to product fulfillment, allow us to relieve the stress and labor demands from you and your workers. By applying collected data to your store, we help you reach maximum capacity and continue striving for the best results. To begin the process of back-to-school displays, you can call Great Northern Instore at 855.693.6272 or start a conversation on our website.
