Retail space planning
CADS delivers accurate retail store design and space planning services to help manage and optimise layout and floor space across your retail stores.
Retail planning & space optimisationImportance of macro space planning
Why is macro space planning important? What are the benefits of macro space planning and what are the dangers of not doing it?
Scroll
The basics of retail space planning
Macro Space Planning plays an essential part of the retail space planning process.
The term macro space relates to your store layout, including the location of departments or categories within the store. It also encompasses their associated fixtures and the planograms attached to them.
Understanding macro vs. micro space planning
This should not be confused with micro space, which relates to the mix and positioning of products within those planograms. These planograms are sometimes referred to as POGs.
The process of optimising your store layouts for customer experience and sales performance is called Macro Space Planning.
To successfully plan retail space you need to get both your macro and micro space working together in harmony.
So, why macro space plan?
Isn’t getting the range and assortment right (the planogram part) more important? The answer is no. A successful macro plan makes it easy for your customers to find your products where they expect to find them.
By creating a great customer journey through your shop, you can deliver logical categories with sensible adjacencies. Comfortable aisle widths allow for uncrowded movement, while a considered ‘line of sight’ ensures customers can easily navigate the store.
Successful macro space planning helps shoppers quickly find what they are looking for, which ultimately encourages larger baskets and increases spend.
Are you reinventing the wheel?
Key principles are important.
- Do you know and understand your customer’s shopper missions? What are their typical reasons for visiting your stores and is your store laid out to facilitate these missions?
- Are your floor plans created using best practice principles to enhance the instore experience?
- Have you created a model store based on floor plans that work? This can be used as a starting point for laying out new shops.
- Is your macro space layout connected to your sales data, so you can analyse category performance in sales versus linear space? By knowing which categories are driving sales or are underperforming, you can identify and leverage opportunities to optimise sales.
Physical constraints and planning solutions
Physical constraints such as services, structural elements, and back-of-house requirements can make even the most carefully defined retail layouts difficult to implement. CADS Surveys’ Matterport and as-built retail store survey store measurements ensures planners can account for these constraints. They provide the real-world data needed to make executable, confident decisions.
Good macro retail space planning takes all these moving parts into consideration. It requires understanding when compromises can and must be made to deliver the best possible store layout for both customers and sales.
From plan to store floor: CADS Retail space planning
This is where CADS’ retail store and space planning expertise really adds value. By combining industry knowledge, practical experience, and a deep understanding of store operations, CADS ensures store plans are carefully optimised on paper. These plans are then fully prepared for seamless implementation in the physical store.
Supported by CADS Surveys’ precise measurements, these plans are fully deliverable in the physical store. This approach minimises risk, avoids costly rework, and maximises the commercial potential of every square metre.
Bridging strategy and reality with CADS expertise
Tools like StoreSpace® software, from CADS’ sister company StoreSpace Insights, further support this process by enabling planners to visualise layouts, manage planograms, and maintain consistency across the estate.
However, a tool alone cannot guarantee success – every store has its own unique constraints, which must be addressed through expert planning and accurate measurement.
Discover CADS' retail planning services
Optimise your retail store designs, layouts and floor plans with the help of CADS’ expert team.
Gain the resource and insights many leading retailers are already enjoying!
Tell me more!Using heat maps to optimise store performance
Once your store is open and trading, the aim of the macro planner is to manage space effectively and make adjustments as required. Rebalancing space ensures that category allocations align with buying choices and evolving customer trends, adapting the mix of category space to maximise performance.
Heat mapping is a key tool to fine-tune performance through the macro planning process. It can be used to inform answers to questions such as:
- Why does a specific category perform badly in a particular store compared with others across the estate?
- Which products are positioned in low-footfall areas or incorrectly grouped in adjacent aisles?
A heat-mapped floor plan provides visually engaging insights that spreadsheets alone cannot reveal. These insights allow planners to identify opportunities for improvement and test alternative layouts.
Applying insights to improve store layouts
By comparing underperforming stores to high-performing ones, planners can explore changes such as moving a high-volume category to an adjacent position, where the halo effect may boost sales.
This continuous, data-driven approach ensures that store layouts remain optimised and responsive to shopper behaviour. Software is available to assist with this. For example, the StoreSpace Store Insights retail data analytics module includes features like adjacency reporting to help inform smarter layout decisions.
Macro space planning is essential to transform key retail areas into revenue-generating zones.
Sharing the plan
Communication between head office and the team in store is also an important part of the store planning process. Two-way communication between the team that plans your stores and the team responsible for implementing the plan at shelf level is vital.
A common reference point ensures change requests are captured and a culture of adherence and compliance is maintained. This ensures that change requests to the original plan are captured effectively and helps establish a culture of adherence and compliance.
Successful retail space planning requires your micro and macro space to be working in harmony within the physical constraints of the store. By analysing category sales and profit data of individual stores against the model or comparable stores within your estate, valuable lessons can be identified. These insights can then be applied to drive improvements across the network.
Creating retail revenue-generating zones
Macro space planning is essential to transform key retail areas into revenue-generating zones.
Aaron Wright, Managing Director at CADS
Read more about how CADS can transform your retail space and drive sales in our insight article ‘Maximising high-impact retail space in UK stores‘.
How CADS optimises high-impact retail space
CADS helps retailers maximise high-impact retail space by creating expert store layouts. These layouts improve customer flow, category adjacencies, and product visibility.
By strategically designing layouts that make the most of every square metre, CADS enhances the shopper experience. This approach also drives sales and ensures operational efficiency across the store estate. Our approach turns retail spaces into high-performing, revenue-generating environments that work seamlessly in practice.
Continual macro space planning
Macro space planning is a continual process of optimising store layouts and ensuring the successful delivery of floor plans in-store. It also involves analysing resulting sales data to make sure your valuable and limited selling space is performing at its full potential.
With CADS, retailers bridge the gap between strategic planning and operational reality, turning ambitious layouts into efficient, shopper-friendly stores that work in practice. Contact us today to see how we can optimise your store layouts and maximise sales.
How can we help you?
Make the most of your retail space with our comprehensive range of services
-
-
Retail as-built surveys for store planning and estate management
Fast, accurate retail as-built surveys using HD 3D laser scanning — trusted by store planners, merchandisers, architects, and property teams for fit-outs, layout planning, and estate audits.
Retail as-built surveys -
Retail design services
Our sister company, retail design agency Prosper, provides the inspiration to turn your space into an engaging place and your store into an immersive shopping experience that will delight your customers.
Retail design
