If you own a physical or digital space, you know how important it is that people have a positive experience when they visit. It’s like welcoming a friend into your home! You want them to like the wallpaper and notice the vase you spent ages choosing where to place. Not only is it about your reputation but you also hope they’ll want to make another visit. For those that manage large areas, it’s the returning visits that will boost spend in your area. So, the visitor experience is crucial!
As it’s so crucial, we write a lot about how you improve physical and digital spaces. It all comes down to the quality of your wayfinding, but we know it can be difficult to get it right. So, we’ve made a top five list of the most important areas to consider for improving the visitor experience.
Success starts with strong branding! This is where your space finds its name, personality and design. Branding is what grabs the attention of visitors. How the visual elements fit together to create the ‘feel’ is what makes a person decide if they want to stay.
There’s no better way to make a town or city more memorable than through cutting-edge branding. The benefits of place branding extend to visitors, tourists, residents and staff. Places will become much easier to locate and the overall place satisfaction and experience will increase. Similarly for your website and social channels, well designed branding is what gets the hits and the sales!
Does your branding have that ‘WOW Factor’? If you’re not sure, it might be time for a rebrand!
People like to be immersed in a space because we’re always searching for an escape from the mundane routines of life. When visitors can experience a digital and physical space in a new way their level of connection increases dramatically. A great way to achieve this is through interactivity!
In a physical space, it’s important to use digital elements to utilise interactive information. The best way to figure out how to use interactivity in your area is to put yourself in the mind of the consumer and think about how their journey could be made more enjoyable. This is all about knowing your area users and how best to engage them. Interactivity has seen the rise in digital navigation and the inclusion of augmented reality and artificial intelligence too!
You can also include interactive elements that link to dynamic information like live weather updates and travel information around your town or city. More ways to share a little extra love and consideration for your visitors.
If a space hasn’t been designed with legibility and accessibility at the core, it can cause a whole bunch of problems down the line. Not only is it detrimental to your brand’s reputation but it can mean that people can’t actually use, let alone enjoy, your physical or digital space. When developing a user-friendly wayfinding system, it’s crucial that all information is accessible to everyone, including those with a physical disability, visual impairment, or a language barrier.
Another area which has a direct impact on the reputation of your brand is consistency. Consistency translates to the dependability and trust that you want visitors to develop towards your brand through your physical or digital space. A great way to ensure consistency is through creating Wayfinding Guidelines and a clear Signage Family. You should monitor the system, look out for any issues and update any necessary information.
During the holiday season, you can expect a large increase in pedestrian footfall as well as motorised traffic for physical spaces. You can also expect this for digital spaces, especially if you’re selling a product that would be great as a gift. It’s crucial to have versatile wayfinding to be able to easily adapt it to fit the occasion. Utilise all the occasions! You can update your look for summer events, Christmas, Easter, special national holidays, sporting events, and local occasions… the list is endless! This can be done with physical signage or digital design that can be altered and themed to naturally boost the overall experience.
We hope our top five areas to consider for improving the visitor experience have been helpful! If you want to know more about any of the areas, scroll back up and click on the link to head to other related articles. You can also get in touch with our team who will be very happy to talk you through some physical and digital wayfinding ideas!