Effective Signage Placement Strategies for Maximum Visibility

Height and Signage Placement

With these basic guidelines in mind, let's discuss the optimum height placement for commercial signs. This will depend on various factors, such as whether the sign is visible to pedestrians and/or road users.

Placement requirements also vary depending on your business location – they will differ if your business is located inside a shopping centre, on the street, faces a busy road, or is near a highway.

Having said that, some general considerations apply in most cases:

In-Store and Point of Purchase Signage Placement

Despite the rise of online shopping, consumers continue to favour brick-and-mortar shopping, with in-store sales accounting for 84.6% of all retail purchases in the US. Strategically placed, engaging, eye-catching in-store and POP signage remains important for retailers. Key considerations for placement are high foot traffic areas such as entrances, checkout counters, or aisle ends; the natural flow of customer movement; proximity to related products or complementary items; engagement zones, immersive experiences, and larger dedicated displays for a single product or brand.

Signage Placement for Street-Level Visibility

For signs targeting foot traffic, eye-level placement is key. One of the principles of visual merchandising, which also applies to signage, is that eye level is buy level. However, if the sign is on a busy street with a lot of pedestrian traffic, you can also consider placing it slightly above eye level. And if other store signs block the view, you may want to angle the sign 45 degrees up or down from eye level and check if this makes it more visible.

Visibility can also be enhanced if the sign is placed somewhere pedestrians tend to stop or gather (for example, when waiting for traffic lights or near a public transport station). In any case, you want to remember that someone with average vision will see a sign clearly 20 to 23ft (6 to 7m) away assuming nothing else blocks their view.

Signage Placement that Caters to Drivers

If your business is near a busy road rather than on a pedestrian area, it’s vital to ensure that it's visible from a farther distance and that it is directly within the driver's line of sight for safety reasons. In this situation, scale is particularly important to determine how easily it will be seen. As a general guideline, every inch of letter height in a sign is visible for 10 feet.

Also, depending on where you’re based, local rules and regulations may apply to outdoor advertising, so check with your local authority or signage company.