Visibility Is Crucial for Brick-And-Mortar Stores

To succeed with any kind of brick-and-mortar store, visibility is crucial. One effective way of achieving visibility is by installing outdoor business signs. These signs help to make your existence known to possible customers, as well as direct those who already intend to do business with you right to your doorstep.

Making an Effective Outdoor Business Sign

When it comes to outdoor business signs, it’s essential to know what goes into making an effective one. After all, you’ll be making a big investment, as these signs can range from $1k – $10k or more. Therefore, before you spend money on such an expensive item for your store, it’s important to consider these eight factors:

1. The Right Wording

The wording of your outdoor business sign is crucial, and it’s best to keep the word count limited. According to advice from Intuit, your business sign should contain no more than 7 words. However, it’s perfectly okay to have less than 7 words, and it’s even preferable. But it’s crucial to avoid having more than 7 words if you want optimal results.

2. The Key Message Only

It’s not easy to include everything you’d like to mention about your store in just 7 words or less. However, with your outdoor business sign, all that needs to happen is to let potential customers know the location of your business and guide them through your door. Those few words on your sign only need to tell them what they absolutely need to know before going into your store.

3. Write It for People on the Move

Don’t forget that people will most likely be reading your outdoor business signs when they’re in a moving vehicle. Therefore, it’s crucial to limit the information on your sign as much as possible. After all, why risk losing customers by including unnecessary information that might prevent them from reading the most important parts, such as your company name?

4. Make It Consistent With Your Brand

Outdoor business signs should reinforce your brand, linking your signs’ appearance with your other communication and promotional elements, including advertising. That way, your logo, and other marketing items will stay consistent.

5. Consider the Font

When it comes to font selection, it’s best to use your normal font in your signage logo. However, this is only true if your lettering style is readable from afar. If not, it’s best to pick an alternative font that’s as close as possible to your logo and looks good in a larger format. There are many great choices for commercial signs, including Future, Bodoni, Helvetica, Grammond, and Frutiger. However, CommerceColor.com recommends not employing more than 2 fonts in one sign.

6. Capitalization

While some people may think that signs in all capital letters are more readable, research shows that they are actually harder to read than signs with a good mix of lowercase and uppercase letters. Therefore, it’s best to stick with title case formatting for your sign’s content.

7. Color Contrast

Color contrast is crucial in making your sign readable while remaining consistent with your branding and marketing efforts. Utilizing contrast is a smart idea, as some color combinations are more visible than others. For example, green on blue isn’t readable, but yellow on black is a lot more visible. However, the combination with the highest contrast and greatest visibility is black and white. It doesn’t matter whether you go with black lettering on a white background or vice versa.

8. The Focal Point

Creating a focal point on your sign is essential to capturing people’s attention and drawing them in. The key information on your sign should be placed in a prominent location that is easy to see and read. Keep in mind that people generally read from left to right and top to bottom, so placing your focal point in the upper left corner of your sign is a good idea.

Outdoor Business Sign Examples

Using outdoor business signs effectively can be a game-changer for your business. They can attract a live audience and put your brand and promotions on display 24/7. Choosing the right kind of sign requires strategy, planning, and some additional insight from experts. Here are some of the best outdoor business sign examples to get inspiration from.

3D Signs

These are excellent outdoor business signs that offer plenty of creative potential for bringing your signage ideas to life. They come in many different shapes, sizes, fonts, and colors, and can be customized to match your brand image.

Illuminated Signs

If you want to create additional visibility for your branding and make sure your outdoor business sign keeps advertising even during the night, illuminated signs are a great choice. They come in various free-form styles and can help your written messages reach a larger audience. Plus, they can double the power of your branding message when they glow at night.

Channel Letters

Channel letters are a cool option for illuminating your outdoor business sign. They can be placed on the wall or on a backing panel and create more depth with their 3D look that is further accentuated by appropriate lighting. This idea is commonly incorporated into commercial building signage and can be combined with other commercial signage-related ideas (illumination optional).