Complete Guide to Merchandising Audit Checklist

Merchandising audit checklists pave the way for your product navigation and persuade your customers to make a purchase. Merchandising audit checklist aids your customers to focus on products as soon as they step into the store and enter an atmosphere that has been specifically designed to attract the customer’s attention. The art of merchandise is a deliberate balancing act between brand messaging, aesthetic appeal, and product placement. However, how can companies be certain they’re striking all the correct notes? 

The merchandising audit checklist is a methodical technique to evaluate the success of these strategies, ensuring that every shelf, every display, and every click functions in unison to entice customers and promote success. In this blog, we will learn in detail about what is merchandising audit, the benefits of using merchandising audit checklists, how to build a merchandising audit checklist that is effective, its necessity and so much more. Continue reading this blog to understand why your business should also use merchandising audit checklist software.

What is a Merchandising Audit Checklist?

Businesses utilize a merchandising audit checklist to analyze and improve their merchandising strategies. It involves a wide range of elements, including product placement, pricing accuracy, visual attractiveness, and brand messaging clarity. Companies can methodically analyze their strategy using this checklist-driven technique, improve what is currently successful, and correct what isn’t working. This checklist guarantees that your brand’s narrative is communicated compellingly, inspiring that irresistible “I want this” emotion in every customer, whether it’s a physical store or an online platform.

The Benefits of Using the Checklist During Merchandising Audits

Wondering how exactly checklists help during merchandising audits? Let us take a look at the key benefits of using merchandising audit checklists. 

1. Keeping Your Merchandising on Point and EffectiveMerchandising audits are like your trusty organizer, ensuring things stay on track and of top-notch quality. Checklists guarantee that all the important tasks are ticked off the list. Say goodbye to wasting time – checklists provide a clear roadmap, leading to fewer mistakes. Make sure your merchandising plans happen on time and in full swing at every single store.
2. Checking the Shape of Your ProductsProduct Check: Snap pictures of products nicely arranged on shelves. Spotting Issues: Take shots of any product damage you come across. Shelf Status: Highlight low-stock or out-of-stock products. Findability: Note where customers can find specific items. Price Check: Keep tabs on product prices. Where do these pictures go? On the Taqtics platform where the management gets a dashboard with real-time visibility across all the merchandise operations that are being carried out in every store.
3. Ensuring Your Shelves Are Perfect Across All StoresEasy Access: Make sure products are within easy reach, not too high or low. Smart Display: See that all products are displayed neatly. No Hide-and-Seek: Ensure products are easy to spot in the right places. Good Look: Confirm there are no empty spaces on the shelves. Stocked Up: Shelves are full but not cluttered.
4. Nailing In-Store DisplaysStock Check: Keep those promotional displays full but not overflowing. Stay Consistent: Promotions should match the company’s plans. Right Spot: Promotional signs are clear and in the right places. Pricing Precision: Check if promotional prices are accurate. Opinions Matter: Get feedback from customers on promotions.
5. Sizing Up the CompetitionCheck Rivals: Document what your competitors are up to with photos. Who’s Stocked? Compare your product’s stock with your competitors’. Promo Insights: Find out what promotions your rivals are running. Neighbors in Sight: Know who your adjacent competitors are. Price Wars: Figure out how your prices measure up to the competition.
6. Making Your Merchandising ShineIt’s not just about doing things right – merchandising audits let you see the impact of your efforts. Successful brands stick to their standards, so crafting the perfect merchandising audit checklist is vital. The merchandising checklists during audits ensure that you do not miss out on inspecting any of the merchandising areas. This ensures merchandising consistency across multiple outlets and that makes all your stores customer-ready. 

How to Build a Merchandising Audit Checklist? 

A merchandising audit checklist helps in building a store that is directed proportional to growing sales and a loyal customer base. Building a merchandising audit checklist requires clear planning and identification of key audit areas. Let us look at a visual merchandising audit checklist to understand these aspects further. 

Visual Merchandising Audit Checklist

In a very growing and evolving competitive industry retail and restaurant demands the most flawless visual merchandising to build and expand their business. A visual merchandising audit is an organized and systematic approach to inspecting how your store and your brand are presented to your customers and potential consumers.  Here’s a sample checklist and what it includes for you to build or update your visual merchandising checklist. 

Store Information

1. Store Name:
2. Store Location:
3. Address:
4. Conducted on:
5. Date:
6. Prepared by:

Store Exterior

1. Ensure that the signage is visible to pedestrians and passing cars. 
2. Ensure that the store is up to date and visible. 
3. Ensure that the window display shows the current campaign. 
4. Check whether the mannequins dressed as per window guidelines and well styled.
5. Check the window displays and their alignment with the latest campaign. 
6. Ensure that the lighting fixtures are in working order and well positioned. 
7. Check whether the windows are well-lit, with products highlighted after closing hours. 
8. Make sure the landscaping is well maintained (if applicable)

Store Layout

1. Check the correct layout arrangement followed as per guidelines. 
2. Ensure to keep the display areas clean and well-maintained. 
3. Inspect whether the placement of fixtures encourages natural customer flow. 
4. Inspect the product placement and ensure it is logically grouped in adjacent areas. 
5. Final check up to see the products are well presented. 
6. Double check whether the products with large profit margins are put carefully in hotspots. 
7. Ensure that the POS system is up to date. 
8. Ensure that customers are able to easily collect advertising fliers and cards. 
9. Conduct daily maintenance checks to ensure that the store has good lighting and no burned-out bulbs? 
10. Conduct a final walk-through of the store to ensure the store is clean, hygienic and has a welcoming ambiance. 

Shelves

1. Check whether the store location and category blueprints line up with the store setting. 
2. Restock the shelves to capacity in an uncluttered manner. 
3. Define product areas to make it easy for customers to browse and find the products they are looking for. 
4. Ensure that the product packaging is in excellent condition. 
5. Double check whether all the items and products are priced correctly. 
6. Make sure to arrange bulky and heavier objects securely in the lower shelves.  
7. Assess whether the advertising on the retail display fixtures is simple to read and understand. 
8. Ensure that the calls to action on signs are clear. 10. Ensure that the promotions adhere to brand guidelines. 

Staff

1. Ensure that all the staff members have a professional appearance and easy identification. 
2. Ensure that the store team members receive proper product training. 
3. Inform the staff members aware of store best sellers. 
4. Check whether the staff members are familiar with the brand’s Top 20 products. 
5. Monitor to see whether the staff members exhibit active knowledge of USPs, new lines, and stock holdings. 
6. Train the staff members to communicate fluently and effectively with customers. 
7. Ensure that all the staff members are aware of their daily housekeeping responsibilities. 

Sign-Off

Final Comments:

Auditor’s Name and Signature

Who Should Use a Merchandising Audit Checklist?

Merchandising audits are used by different departments for different reasons. Here is a list of departments that can benefit from a merchandising audit. 

1. Retailers and Store Managers: The merchandising checklist helps the retailers and store managers to ensure that their retail store is well organized and the products are presented aesthetically according to the VM guidelines. 
2. Marketing Teams: Using the merchandising checklists the marketing team can check if the in-store promotions align with its marketing campaign strategy and guidelines across multiple stores. 
3. Operations Teams: Using a checklist, store teams can access the store layouts presented according to the guidelines with well-stocked products. This helps to efficiently manage in-store operations and improve customer experience. 
4. Brand Managers: The checklist enables brand managers to ensure consistency across multiple locations in product placement and other VM practices. 
5. Business Owners: The merchandising checklists give the business owners insights into the performance of all their retail stores. 

Therefore, Merchandising serves very important teams and departments to carry out their duties. This single checklist immensely benefits various teams to do their work more efficiently.

What does Merchandising Audit Checklist include? 

A complete tool for assessing and improving a store’s visual merchandising practices is a merchandising audit checklist. It covers a variety of topics, such as the store’s exterior, layout, shelves, in-store promotions, and the appearance and skill of the employees. A pleasing shopping experience, accurate product display, and brand consistency are all guaranteed by the checklist. To maintain standards, increase customer engagement, and promote corporate success, it is used by retailers, store managers, visual merchandisers, marketing teams, and others.

Why Use Taqtics to Manage a Merchandising Audit Checklist?

Taqtics offers tools designed specifically to create, manage, and monitor merchandising audit checklists on our platform. Here is a list of important benefits Taqtics brings to your table- 

Standardization: The set of guidelines and standards for assessing various merchandising factors is managed remotely across all stores with Taqtics. With real-time visibility, all your store teams adhere to the same standards ensuring every one of your retail stores is consistent offering the same great experience to all your customers. 

Organize: Taqtics helps organize merchandising audits with the help of digital checklists. The auditors need not carry bulk paper-based audit checklists. The data from each store will be saved safely and accessible anytime for review. With Taqtics, you can have all the important files stored in an organized manner and save all the files until you decide to delete them. This helps you to avoid damages that happen to traditional audit checklists. 

Data Collection and Analysis: Taqtics fetches all the data you enter into the digital audit checklist. Then you can download automated reports based on the audit information with just a click. These reports give details audit reports with data analysis and insights for every individual retail store. This helps the auditors to make informed decisions and identify trends and areas of improvement in a much less time-consuming and hassle-free manner for every store separately. 

Communication and Ongoing Improvement: Taqtics offers an organized system enabling the management to communicate audit observations and corrective actions to the store teams. The software platform also reminds the store team members to complete corrective actions on time with automated notification reminders with a dashboard for management to track the status of each store remotely. Over time, the merchandising strategies are improved and refined as a result of the insights gathered along with effective communication through employing Taqtics.

Other Retail Smart Tools: Taqtics has a lot of smart tools tailored exclusively for the retail in-store operational needs of your business. This includes digital training, assessments, quizzes, digital SOP checklists, live-photo features, attendance, notification reminders, and geo-fencing features to ensure your store teams are in the store while checking in and completing daily checklists. 

These benefits add to the overall success and consistency of multiple in-store merchandising operations. These are the core reasons why you need a platform like Taqtics embellished with all the smart tools needed for your stores. 

Why is Merchandising Audit necessary?

The best way to showcase products, uphold brand standards, and provide great customer service is to carry out a merchandising audit regularly. Retailers can discover areas for improvement, maintain consistency between stores, and improve their entire retail strategy by careful evaluation. Here are the top 3 reasons why a retail business should conduct regular merchandising audits. 

1. Compliance With Your Brand Standards 

As we know, there is no debate that your store and its store team members are the face of your brand and brand identity. Every brand has its own unique standards and brand policies that should be met on a daily basis to maintain the consistent look, feel, and service of all your retail business stores. Merchandising audits are very important so that you can maintain and strengthen your brand image by ensuring proper and continuous compliance with brand standards by your store teams. 

2. Merchandising Insights

Conducting regular merchandising audits will provide your management and visual merchandising team with informative and valuable insights. These important data can be effectively used to analyze the different aspects of your store to refine the merchandising process at your stores. This includes taking a closer look at your brand products, store design, product placement, and so on. Continuously working in this way toward improvement can help retail businesses increase customer demand, sales, and profitability. 

3. Competitor Analysis 

When it comes to such a competitive business industry, you need to keep your competitors closer in order to stay ahead of the game. Merchandising audits help your business management to gather valuable and insightful data that you can use effectively to conduct competitive analysis. With this analyzed data and information, your business can make smart and informed decisions on pricing, products, store layout, ambiance, and more and gain a competitive edge in the retail industry. 

Visual merchandising audits help to ensure that your stores across multiple locations offer the same look and feel while optimizing your stores with easy navigation, smart product placement, and excellent store presentation. Visual merchandising audit is an important necessity in the retail business as it ensures that marketing initiatives are in line with the brand’s objectives, resulting in increased sales, satisfied clients, and long-term financial growth.

Soumyajit