What Makes Customers Actually Notice Your Business

Businesses pay thousands of dollars to rent a space in high-traffic areas and wonder why clients blow right past their open doors. The building is up, signage is in place, hours are posted on the door.

The business owner thinks everything is fine until they stand outside in their parking lot and realize their business is practically invisible from the street. What appears obvious from one angle is completely obscured at 45 mph driving past.

It’s not enough to have a sign, it’s about having the right sign in the right place with the right design at the right size, and most business owners either get one or more of those wrong.

Thus, a business has signage and technically abides by its contractual obligation to display signage but it might as well not because no one sees it until they are already inside searching for their destination.

Size is More Important than People Think

People have a hard time gauging how big is too big or too small. A small, tasteful sign may seem aesthetically pleasing at ground level, but from the road, it’s practically nonexistent.

In fact, people have about three seconds to spot a business, read the sign, and determine whether they will stop to enter or just keep driving. If a sign is too small to see from far away, it won’t even get that three seconds and instead finds itself ignored.

Industry best practices suggest that one inch of letter height is required for every ten feet of reading distance. Therefore, if someone wants someone to read their sign from one hundred feet away, they need at least ten-inch letters.

In reality, business owners always underestimate the distance needed to view a sign and while ten-inch letters may seem massive on paper before they’re affixed to a wall of a building, they’re far too small when people drive by attempting to read them.

However, bigger isn’t always better if it means decreased readability. A giant sign that’s plastered with information turns into visual clutter that the human mind scrapes over. Therefore, a specific size must be large enough to see from an appropriate distance but simple enough to read quickly. Achieving that balance is more difficult than it sounds.

Placement Makes or Breaks Visibility

A perfectly sized and readable sign means nothing if it’s in the wrong place. Businesses with signs positioned too high or too low or obstructed by trees and other structures probably lose hundreds of dollars a day without even knowing it. The ‘right’ placement depends upon traffic patterns, speed limits, and approaches from different angles.

In areas where traffic runs heavy, and commercial properties dot the landscape, quality signs in Orlando (or another local area) must consider visibility from neighboring businesses as well. A sign that may work fine by itself will be lost amongst dozens of other signs fighting for visual attention. Placement becomes even more necessary in competitive surroundings.

Corner lots have a strategic advantage since they can be seen from two directions but they must ensure signage is appropriate for both streets. Strip malls suffer from aligned signage placement, everything is lined up at even heights but that causes individual businesses to intermingle visually.

Slightly separating businesses from that alignment goes a long way in ensuring people actually see that sign in particular.

Lighting Makes Signs Visible After Dark

A sign can be seen in daylight but rendered invisible in darkness if proper lighting isn’t installed. One would think that’s common sense, but it’s not, as countless businesses leave money on the table because their signage only works during the day.

Backlit signs, spotlights, illuminated LED signage makes businesses stand out when everyone else goes dark.

The type of lighting used matters as well. Dim lighting doesn’t help; lighting must be bright enough so that people can read the sign from the street level, not just barely lighting it up enough for pedestrians to appreciate the name but dim enough that drivers have no clue what’s going on.

Even lighting must be consistent, a sign with shadows won’t be readable and looks unprofessional.

Some business owners are wary about lighting due to electric costs, but when calculated appropriately, leaving signs on provides more business than turning them off for all but a few hours overnight.

When one factors in extended visibility and additional hours of operation for businesses open later in the day or which rely on impulse stops, lights cost less than keeping them off.

Color and Contrast Help Grab Attention

Design elements go a long way regarding whether or not a sign even gets noticed. High contrast color choices, bright colors amidst white or black backgrounds get noticed far easier than muted colors that blend into a business’s aesthetic. Therefore the sign must pop, even if it means popping against its own background (building, sky, surrounding businesses).

Again, what looks good on a computer program may not necessarily work well in real life visibility conditions; earth tones may blend beautifully into a brick exterior but once placed next to other brick buildings or even outside amidst nature, they become camouflaged.

Sometimes a sign that’s more aesthetically pleasing is less visible, and business owners need to think about that.

Fonts also play into this issue. Elaborate fonts that require much letter recognition appreciation may look beautiful up close but become unreadable from afar or at high speeds. Oversized block letters become too plain for those who think their designs need some pizazz, but if it’s not legible? Who cares?

Clutter Reduces Visibility

Signs trying to do too much communicate nothing at all. Business name? Check. Tagline? Check. Phone number? Check? Website? Check? Hours? Check? Most drivers can’t digest such information in three seconds, so they give up completely.

The most effective signs communicate one or two messages with clarity: the name of the business and maybe the type of business it is. Everything else can go on secondary windows or graphics or different marketing materials.

This is hard for business owners because they don’t want to spend so much money on a sign if they can’t put everything that they want to say on it; however, signs that do everything effectively do nothing effectively. The businesses that get noticed are those that have simple signs with clarity.

Movement or Digital Components

Static images have limitations; moving ones do not. Digital displays offer changing messages and rotate multiple different pieces of information per display time frame with some motion to grab attention, or even simple elements (flags, banners) or dimensional letters (shadows) add visual appeal that static displays don’t have.

The downside is complication and costs associated with such displays. Digital components require power, programming and monitoring as well as maintenance; they’re costlier upfront and have more places to fail along the way where static images do not (as long as they’re designed well).

In competitive areas, for tourists who may pass by once or those businesses with many other competition nearby, it pays off; for others? It’s not worth it.

Local Decisions That Owners Forget

Every location has unique visibility issues: trees that produce leaves in spring but block signs for three months during summer; sun glaring at certain times of day that makes them invisible; neighboring businesses erected after signage was put up and now blocking sight lines. They also change over time; signs that looked fine five years ago might not look fine now.

Taking regular visibility checks from a driver’s point of view can assess those concerns before they’re costly; walking around the business shows how signage looks while standing still but driving actual routes of approach at different times of day assesses what customers actually see while approaching.

Ultimately what people can see during those assessments matters most, not how it looks from someone standing in the parking lot!

Conclusions About Getting Noticed

Visibility isn’t costly, it’s awareness! If business owners thought about their signs how customers approached them instead of how they would personally like them to be, then they’d understand that visibility takes precedence over cleverness, brand pitch perfection, and overall marketing strategy considerations.

The best signs are made for viewing and reading, not for appearances or creatively situated within their own spaces relative to their locations down the road! Bigger! Smaller! Brighter! More Colorful! Positioned Differently! All for Readability!

Businesses that get noticed reliably are those who made effort to create sustained readability from all angles, access all hours through lighting considerations and costings as well as simplified messaging with design elements based on functionality over visual appeal.

Ultimately having ANY sign does nothing; having a viable sign that lures customers through the front door is what avoids them traveling down the street toward the competitor with much better visibility!