Jack McKenzie
Last Yard
At a glance, creating shelf edge tickets may seem like a simple matter. Product, description, price. Done. However, creating a shelf talker that effectively and accurately communicates price to your customers is more complex than you might think. Just by making these subtle design changes to your tickets, you could more persuasively communicate price and more quickly engage your customers, potentially increasing their basket size.
Single pricing
In Australia, when displaying single pricing on your shelf talkers, the minimum total cost of the pricing must always be shown as a single figure, which is including all taxes and extra fees.
Note: Tickets in some countries, such as the USA, will show the price without taxes.
Two-price comparison pricing
One of the most commonly used types of talkers are promotional price tickets. These types of shelf tickets display comparisons between the current sell price and other prices, such as:
The standard, non promotional price – displayed as ‘Was’, ‘Now’, etc.
Wholesale price
The price of a competitor
Recommended retail price (RRP)
When using promotional tickets, the current single total price must be clearly legible and at least as pronounced as any other displayed pricing information. This ensures customers have the important price information available to them at a glance, and are then able to take a closer look at price comparisons if interested.
Tip: Try to keep consistent colours between various offer types – i.e. using red for Special, green for Everyday Low Price etc.
It is also important for retail owners to know that it is up to the business displaying this information to ensure it is not misleading customers.
If the comparative price is being displayed as a ‘Was’ price, that product should have been sold at that price before the sale commences.
This also applies to displaying dollar / percentage off savings. Stores must be careful when comparing the sale price to the RRP when the product has never been sold at RRP.
It’s a great idea to keep records to substantiate all two-price savings claims to keep the ACCC off your back!
Permanent price changes
Shelf talkers are also a good way of communicating permanent price changes to customers. Sale or Discounted pricing should only be available for a limited period, but if it’s longer-term, consider using a ‘Price Dropped’ or ‘Everyday Low Price’ style of ticketing.