Outdoor signs are essential elements that your business should take advantage of. It may sound old-school, but they are still useful in luring customers into your business. But to do that your outdoor business sign should be, for the most part, branded to attract customers in and aid in conveying the nature of the business.
As business owners, your aim or objective is to be remembered, understood, and seen. Both content and form are key to evoke or draw out the desired response from customers. The design of signage is conceivably even more essential than what the signage says. Ultimately, if you cannot read it, you cannot react to what the message is conveying.
In fact, according to a USSC (United States Sign Council) study, an individual driving forty-five miles per hour in moderate traffic on a four-lane street notices a sign and responds in 1.5 to 3 seconds. With all these in mind, you must do everything in your power to maximize the legibility and visibility of your sign. For a little help, here are a few important things to take into consideration.
Table of Contents
Location
First of all, if you want to make useful outdoor signages, location is critical. As such, place your signages as close to the streets as city ordinances allow. Ensure that it stands out from its milieu with regards to its color, size, and shape.
Also, be sure that it is free from hindrances like trees. Place it at an appropriate height for the kind of traffic passing by. To determine the best position or location for your business signage, consider driving past your business sign from all routes.
Endeavor to achieve optimum exposure to your target market. And road-test it by letting someone do a drive-by and notify you what your signage is all about.
Size
Aside from being easy to read and uncomplicated, your font must be large enough to be quickly legible and readable to all age groups. And this is where drive-by assessment is important. More importantly, do use mixed-case letters instead of all caps because all caps are more difficult to read due to their more uniform shape and size. All in all, you’ll need one inch of letter height for every ten feet of viewing distance.
Color
What color you use is vital to make your outdoor signs effective. In this case, you need to ensure that you pick contrasting colors, for instance, dark blue on white or black on yellow. As stated by the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, outdoor advertising can improve by 38 percent by using high color contrast.
But of course, you will need to think about the existing colors of your brand and the kind of response or reaction you are going for psychologically and physiologically. Hot colors such as red, yellow, and orange are, for the most part, considered high-responses hues.
On the other hand, purple, green, and blue are less invigorating but more soothing. Furthermore, white space is also important. About forty percent of the area of your sign should be left unclad to avoid visual clutter, which hinders readability.
Short But Sweet
Generally, the average person reads about two hundred fifty words per minute or roughly about four words per second. For that reason, you need to keep your sign as short as possible. Make your point concise and brief.
Ponder about what it is you want to convey, make it as short as possible, then edit your work, streamline it until all the flowering words are gone. And the real meaning remains. Ideally, aim for at least five words per heading with associated information below if needed.
If possible, save the other details in mind. You can say or talk it out with your customers personally. Here’s something you need to keep in mind, avoid abbreviations. According to research, abbreviations take about 1,000 milliseconds to read, which is much slower than the non-abbreviated rate of 250 milliseconds per word. Thus, refrain from using them unless they are integral to your message or virtually universal.
Sense of Urgency
Creating a sense of urgency is crucial, given that spontaneous buying account for about 55 percent of all retail sales. Time-sensitive promos entice people to stop and look, and most likely to buy. To help you formulate a useful outdoor business sign, you can contact any signage maker such as ShieldCo Art.
Takeaway
Outdoor business signs that can speak to your consumers can do wonders for your brand, increase revenue, and drive more sales. So, take time to reassess your current signage strategy and determine what you could do better. And once you know what you can do to make it better, do it. Do not hesitate. You can refer to the tips above on how to create effective outdoor signs for your business. These tips are some of the things that you need to consider when it comes to outdoor signs.
Alex is fascinated with “understanding” people. It’s actually what drives everything he does. He believes in a thoughtful exploration of how you shape your thoughts, experience of the world.