CONTENTS

1 INTRODUCTION

2 WHAT IS STORE FLOOR PLANNING?

3 WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF FLOOR PLANNING

What is its objective / purpose?
What are the financial and practical benefits?

4 STEPS TO CREATING THE PERFECT STORE FLOOR PLAN

Drawing up your store floor plan
Deciding on the appropriate amount of space for each category

5 WHEN TO UPDATE YOUR FLOOR PLAN

Changing the space allocation of your categories
Moving your categories around in-store

6 HOW DOTACTIV APPROACHES FLOOR PLANNING

A high-level view of how to build, import and analyze a floor plan in
DotActiv’s software
INTRODUCTION
WELCOME TO OUR GUIDE TO FLOOR PLANNING
In the first section, we take a brief look at the definition of floor planning,
explaining its functions and what it allows you to achieve at your stores.
Following that, we look at its purpose as well as the financial and practical
benefits of implementing a data-driven floor plan.

If you’re ever hesitant about implementing a floor plan and are instead
interested in winging it, you only need to look at the benefits to persuade
you otherwise.

Of course, you don’t want to stop there. Understanding the purpose of a

floor plan and knowing its benefits should spur you on to create a floor
plan that works for your stores. And that is what you’ll find in the next
section as we dive deep into the process of creating the perfect store floor
plan. It’s not as complicated as it may seem.

Mind you, building and implementing a floor plan is one thing. You also
need to maintain it so that it always performs optimally. When it comes to
the question of updating your store floor plan, you need to consider why
you want to upgrade them. Then you should factor in that there are also
two different types of updates you can make. We look at both.

Lastly, if you’re interested in floor planning, we take a high-level view of

how you can go about building, importing and analysing a floor plan in
DotActiv’s Enterprise solution.
 As far as retail concepts go, store floor planning is one of the easiest
to understand. That’s because unlike a term such as retail analytics,
for example, the explanation can be found in its wording.

Here it is: floor planning, in a retail environment,

describes the entire layout of your store at a category
level. In other words, it’s a visual representation or retail
blueprint of where and how to position your categories
in your store. By taking a big picture view of your stores,
you'll also often hear it described as macro space
planning.
WHAT IS STORE
But that is not its only function.
FLOOR PLANNING?
Along with taking a macro view of your store, your floor
plan also allows you to determine how much shelf space
each of your categories should receive. To ensure you
allocate the correct amount of space, it considers the
overall sales contribution of each of your product
groupings.

We’ll get into the different store sales data to consider in

more detail a little later in this Ebook. For now, it needs
to be noted that you should’nt only use your sales data to
determine how much space to allocate to any given
category.
 Any discussion around the purpose or objective of floor planning will result in a conversation
about multiple goals. That’s because it has more than one aim.

In a nutshell, these goals are:

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE To please your customers with a logical product flow;
OF FLOOR PLANNING? To reduce floor congestion during peak shopping
hours;
To maximize the selling potential of your retail space.

That said, you can’t achieve either of these goals without also achieving all of them. Each feeds
into each other.
 Please your customers: To do this, you need to provide them with a shopping
LET US EXPLAIN experience that they will enjoy. In fact, enjoy so much that they will return time and
again. To get that right, you need to present your products in such a way that your
store is easy to shop.

By ‘easy to shop’, we mean you need to achieve a logical category flow that will keep
related departments and categories together, thereby preventing any customer
confusion when shopping. For example, Category A and Category B are side-by-side.
However, Category A is Sweets while Category B happens to be Dishwashing
products. To your shopper, that makes no sense.

It’s also more likely to happen if you don’t follow a floor plan. More importantly, it will
happen if you don’t implement a data-driven floor plan.

Reduce floor congestion during peak shopping hours: When floor

planning is done smartly, your stores won’t seem chaotic or overcrowded. Even
during peak shopping hours. With a data-driven floor plan you can avoid positioning
too many high volume categories too close to one another.

Since this time frame represents a great opportunity for increased sales, you should
do everything in your power to ensure your customers find your stores enjoyable to
shop.

Maximise the selling potential of your retail space: If you want to

maximise your sales opportunities, you need first to please your customers and give
them a shopping experience that will encourage them to return.
WHAT ARE THE FINANCIAL AND
PRACTICAL BENEFITS OF FLOOR PLANNING?

When it comes to answering the question about whether a floor

plan is worth implementing, let alone worth building, you only
need to look at the financial and practical benefits. As a side
note, the benefits also speak to the objectives of pleasing your
customers and making your stores more money.
FINANCIAL BENEFITS:

MAXIMISE THE SELLING POTENTIAL OF YOUR RETAIL SPACE:

By apportioning the correct amount of space to each of your
categories, you ensure that you don’t waste any of your floor space.
By re-evaluating your retail data every six months - our
recommendation - you can ensure that your store floor plan
performs optimally.

GROW YOUR CATEGORIES:

A well-thought-out floor plan allows the various product groupings
in your stores to grow. That happens because you give each group
the proper allocation of space relative to their overall sales
contribution to your store. By doing this, you allow each category
the opportunity to grow naturally. That will, in turn, improve your
bottom line.

INCREASE BASKET SIZES:

By designing your floor plan in such a way that your customers are
encouraged to move through more of your store during their daily
or weekly shop you can increase basket sizes. By positioning high
volume categories strategically in your stores you end up exposing
shoppers to more merchandise which results in increased basket
sizes.
PRACTICAL BENEFITS:

CREATE LOGICAL FLOOR PLANS:

Since one of your goals as a retailer is to please your
customers, you need to find ways to attain that.
With a data-driven floor plan, you can position your
categories in a way that meets (and exceeds) the
expectations of your customer. A logical category
flow both maximises customer experience and
minimises any irritations.

REDUCE FLOOR CONGESTION DURING PEAK

SHOPPING HOURS:
No one likes to shop a busy store. It’s frustrating,
and there are instances where it has lead to many a
customer walking out of your store rather than
brave a crowd. By analysing category sales and unit
movement, you can design your floor plan so that
high traffic categories are spread out across your
store.
 A perfect floor plan for your stores begins with thorough
planning and ends with proper implementation. After all, a plan
is nothing without execution. That said, you shouldn’t
A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO implement a plan if there is no rational reasoning behind it.
CREATING A FLOOR PLAN
On that note, here’s a beginners guide to creating an effective
floor plan that will improve the shopability and performance of
your stores.
 The first step to creating a store floor plan is straightforward. You need to draw up a
plan for your entire store. Just to note, this is a bare-bones illustration. You don’t have
to worry about anything else other than getting down the essential details of your
floor space.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED TO KNOW:

You must know the exact size of your store. The last thing you’d
want is for your floor plan to indicate that your space is 100 square
metres when in fact it’s close to 80 square metres.
DRAW UP AN INITIAL This mistake can result in significant problems later on during
PLAN FOR YOUR STORE implementation. We are not merely referring to your overall space
in general but also the proportion of space allocated to storage and
retail space. For example, you could find yourself spending more
money on stock than you should, only to discover your storeroom
is too small to handle it all.

You must know and account for all of the fixed items in your store,
such as your doors, fixtures, fittings and even your till points. To
ensure that what is on your floor plan is a true representation of
your store, it's worth doing a floor walk.

A floor walk is especially helpful if you’re in the process of

overhauling your store floor plan and so the initial plan could be
outdated. It’s been known to happen. There could be an immovable
obstruction or additional fixtures that might not have been on your
original floor plan.
 Once you have drawn up your floor plan, it’s now time to decide on where to place each
department in your store. Just as importantly, you need to decide on the appropriate amount of
space for each category according to their overall performance.

What you need to consider when deciding on the appropriate amount of space:

SALES, UNITS AND PROFITS CONTRIBUTION:

To get a true understanding of how your store is performing, you shouldn’t only take
your total sales into account when allocating category space. You should also
consider your units and profits contribution.

DECIDE ON THE By only considering your sales, you’re viewing your store performance from a limited
APPROPRIATE AMOUNT OF point of view. Instead, you need to take a holistic view.
SPACE FOR EACH OF YOUR CATEGORY FLOW:
CATEGORIES The flow of your categories is critical if you want to please your customers. In this
sense, you must be aware of what is to the left and right of each of your categories
and whether or not it makes sense to your shoppers.

On that note, there is no excuse not to have a logical category flow. For example, you
wouldn’t want to put your Deodorants category next to your Chocolate category
because they don’t fall into the same department.

OVERALL FLOW OF YOUR STORE:

The front of your shop is usually reserved as a promotions area to stock those items
on specials and can be used to attract shoppers to your store and create impulse
purchases. Other departments such as the bakery (freshly baked bread) or flowers
(visual appeal) are placed near the front of a store to lure in customers.

Keep in mind that your category strategy also plays a crucial role in where you place
your categories and how much space each gets. If you aim is to boost sales in a low
performing category, setting it next to a high performing category could work.
 Creating a floor plan is not a set and forget exercise. It is
important to monitor the performance of your different
REPEAT categories and make adjustments accordingly on an ongoing
basis. By re-evaluating your floor plans, you’re actively
guarding against shopper frustration and potential losses in
sales.
 Changing your floor plan isn’t a simple or easy exercise. As we’ve
already noted in this Ebook, there are so many factors to consider. It’s
not just your sales and units sold that will influence a change. You also
need to consider your goals and understand if an update makes sense.
WHEN TO UPDATE
Since you’ll want to both please your customers and increase your
YOUR FLOOR PLAN sales, if an update meets those goals, it’ll make sense. That said, there
are two different types of floor plan changes. And each must be
approached differently.

Let’s dig into both below:

1. CHANGING THE SPACE ALLOCATION OF
YOUR CATEGORIES
HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU CHANGE THE SPACE ALLOCATION OF
YOUR CATEGORIES?
Of the two changes you can make to your floor plan, adjusting
the space of your categories is the simplest. That’s because this
change isn’t one that will confuse your shoppers. Your categories
aren’t moving around your store; you’re simply giving them more
(or less) shelf space.
So how often should you change the space allocation of your
categories?
A best practice is to update it every six months. That said, we’d
recommend you review it more often than that, updating your
floor plan on a seasonal basis as well as for any events or
promotions you may undertake during the year.
A word of warning though: in allocating more space to one
category, you will take away space from another. Of course,
that’s obvious, and it's unavoidable. So you should make due
considerations when making adjustments. For example, when
changing your space, ensure that you’re not taking space away
from one of your best-performing categories.
LIMITATIONS
TIME:
The amount of time it takes to adjust a store
floor plan impacts the overall productivity of
your store. You could easily find yourself
needing to close down a section of your
store while implementing an update. It’s best
to update your floor plan when the store is
normally closed ie at night for example.
COST:
The cost implication of changing the space
allocation of a category can, at times, be
pricey. You might find yourself having to
purchase more fixtures to fit all of your
products in your store. On the other hand, if
you change more than one category at a
time, you could disrupt shoppers. That’s a
loss of income. Mind you; any large changes
should be done after hours so that you
reduce the possibility of lost income.
 LIMITATIONS:
2. MOVING YOUR CATEGORIES
IMMOVABLE OBSTRUCTIONS:
AROUND IN-STORE If you are looking to update your floor
plan, you must be aware of any immovable
obstructions that could affect any
HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU MOVE YOUR CATEGORIES AROUND
changes you’d like to implement. If you
IN-STORE?
have already done a floor walk of your
store before signing off your initial floor
While adjusting the space allocation of your categories is
plan, you should know about this.
easy, moving your categories around in-store is difficult. In
fact, without proper planning, it can also be risky.
PLUG POINTS/ELECTRICAL OUTLETS:
It may sound strange, but your number of
It’s also why we’d recommend that such an update should
electrical outlets can be a restriction. It’s
be done once a year. At a push, you could update your
especially limiting if you want to grow a
plans every six months. Any more than that, though, and
category that needs refrigeration only to
you’ll work against the goals of floor planning, confusing
find that you don’t have enough plug
your shoppers.
points.
Of course, when built correctly, you’ll have a floor plan
SPECIFIC FIXTURES:
that speaks directly to the practical benefits: pulling your
Over and above any immovable
customers through your stores and reducing floor
obstructions are the retail fixtures you
congestion. As a result, you have your financial benefits
use in-store. For example, you may have
too.
specific shelving that you can’t move.
More than that, the shelving you do have
Just be careful of the limitations. Time and money are two
might not suit the products that you want
specific limitations, which will also affect any changes you
to place there. Since it’s best practice not
make to the space allocation of your categories. But it’s
to place unrelated categories besides
not the only limitations you face when moving your
each other, you’d need to make another
categories around.
plan.
 Before we continue, we need to point out that our floor planning software
HOW DOTACTIV APPROACHES and capabilities are only available as part of our Enterprise solution. You can
learn more about our plans and pricing here.
FLOOR PLANNING
HOW TO BUILD A BASIC FLOOR PLAN FROM SCRATCH USING DOTACTIV’S SOFTWARE

For the sake of this Ebook, we’re going to look at

how you can create a floor plan from scratch using
our software first.

Upon opening Dotactiv Enterprise, locate and click

the Space Planning tab. After left clicking on this
tab, you can click on the ‘New’ Floor Planning icon.

A Floor Properties window will appear, allowing

you to enter the dimensions of your floor plan.
That includes the Height, Width, and Depth. You
can also give you floor plan a name if you choose.

Once you've set the dimensions of your floor plan,

you can click ‘OK’.
HOW TO BUILD A BASIC FLOOR PLAN FROM SCRATCH USING DOTACTIV’S SOFTWARE

A canvas will now appear where you can start

creating your specific floor plan. The first step is to
build the walls of your floor plan. Under the Tools
ribbon, you’ll find a ‘CAD Object’ icon. Click on it,
and a drop-down menu appears, giving you a few
options from which to choose, including ‘Wall’,
‘Line’, ‘Gondola Block’ and ‘Gondola Block (By
number of drops - NOD). Click on the ‘Wall’ option
to begin drawing the walls of your store.

You can left click and drag down to create your

wall. Once done, right click to exit the drawing
function. A pop-up window will ask you if you want
to connect the last line you created to the closest
line.

For this example, you’d click ‘Yes’ and complete

the store layout on your floor plan. Just to note, in
the ‘Tools’ section, you’ll find a Snap Line Angle
checkbox. The box is automatically checked and
allows you to create lines at either a 45-degree
angle or straight.
HOW TO BUILD A BASIC FLOOR PLAN FROM SCRATCH USING DOTACTIV’S SOFTWARE

Next up, let’s create the demarcated

areas where you wish to place your
gondolas. Once again, click on the CAD
Object icon and navigate to ‘Line’. Just to
note, the Snap Line Angle checkbox is
also ticked for any small structures. You
can now mark the areas where you wish
to place your gondolas.

For easy navigation, you can hold your

right mouse button in and scroll forwards
or backwards with your mouse wheel to
zoom in or out. You can highlight the
specific item, hold your control key on
your keyboard and left click and hold to
drag a duplicate out of this area, so you
don’t have to recreate it from scratch.
You can then duplicate repeatedly until
you’re happy with your floor plan.
HOW TO BUILD A BASIC FLOOR PLAN FROM SCRATCH USING DOTACTIV’S SOFTWARE

Once done, you can set about adding your

gondola files to your floor plan. To do this,
find your gondola files on your desktop or
folder and drag and drop them onto the floor
plan.

From here, you can right click rotate your

gondola to place it in the demarcated area.

You’d now drag and drop all of your gondolas

from your store onto the correct area as you
please.
HOW TO BUILD A BASIC FLOOR PLAN FROM SCRATCH USING DOTACTIV’S SOFTWARE

Lastly is the ‘Open as Planogram’ option. After

highlighting a gondola placed in your demarcated area,
right click it and navigate to ‘Open as Planogram’ at the
bottom of your dropdown menu. It will open your
gondola as a planogram in a new tab.
 If you’re interested in updating your floor plan, you will
HOW TO IMPORT AN AUTOCAD DXF FILE begin as you did before. This time, however, once you’ve
clicked on the ‘New’ floor plan icon, you’d proceed to click
on the ‘Import DXF’ icon under the Tools tab on the left.

Here, you’ll be asked to direct the solution to the location

of the .DXF file. Once clicked on, a window titled ‘Layers’
will pop up. Layers can include, amongst other things, your
plumbing and electrical circuits, and so you’d want to
exclude them from your import. Once imported, you can
right click and hold to scroll out and locate your store in the
drawing.

Once located, it’s simply a matter of dragging and dropping

your planogram files onto your floor plan and then placing
them in the desired location.

Double-clicking on a planogram once it’s on your floor plan

will allow you to see various fields of information. This data
includes your store and segment detail as well as a financial
summary. Your financial summary includes the sales at
selling price of all the units of stock on the planogram as
well as the sales quantity and sales value at cost price.
HOW TO ANALYSE YOUR FLOOR PLAN USING OUR HIGHLIGHTS FEATURE

Once you have opened an existing floor plan and

populated it with gondolas, it’s time to click on our
Highlights button. You can find this function under
the ‘Tools’ ribbon.

A pop-up window will appear where you can select

the type of highlight you want to create. You can
highlight by almost anything including days of supply,
sales, unit movement and so on. You can either
create a new highlight or use existing presets.

For this example, let’s set up a Sales Percentage

Spectrum highlight, which will give us a visual sense
of what gondolas sell the most. Click on ‘New’ in the
pop-up window and give your highlight a name. Then,
on the right, you can select your Highlight type,
which in this case is Spectrum. In choosing this
highlight, you can customise the way you want the
colours to display, making sure to highlight the top
and bottom 10% of your products. Let’s say you mark
your top 10% as Red while you mark your bottom
10% as blue.
HOW TO ANALYSE YOUR FLOOR PLAN USING OUR HIGHLIGHTS FEATURE

Once clicking ‘OK’, you'll see a heat-mapped floor plan

specifically looking at Sales. In an example like this,
you’d want to place your Red coloured gondolas
towards the back of your stores to lure your customers
to move through your entire store. You can even choose
to place a Red gondola next to a Blue one to boost its
sales.

You can now go ahead and click on the Highlight button

again and do this same exercise to look at your Profit
Margins as well as Units Sold. Having a look at
Percentage Units Sold will allow you to improve your
store traffic during peak shopping hours.

As a result, you will be able to see if there is a cluster of

Red gondolas. If that’s the case, you can set about
moving them around to reduce floor congestion.

These may be simple changes, but they can have a

massive effect on your business as well as on the
experience your customer receives upon entering your
stores.
 DotActiv is a specialist category management firm. We provide
all-in-one integrated category software, which enables the
automation of data-driven product layouts, localised assortments
CONCLUSION and advanced retail analytics. We work with small retailers (less than
5 stores), large retailers (600+ stores) and suppliers.

Learn more here

(https://www.dotactv.com/space-planning-automation-software).