For many customers, a lack of clear signage can make for a frustrating customer experience – leading to lost purchases and harmful reviews. How can you help customers find their way around whilst improving safety and efficiency?

Whether you’re in the transport, events, or leisure and tourism sector, providing an organised layout with wayfinding signage is a great way of maintaining a pleasant, orderly environment.

Read on to find out how you can improve your layout using wayfinding products to create a safer and more enjoyable atmosphere for your visitors.

Improve your layout for greater customer safety

A well-planned layout is essential to ensure the safety of customers and employees alike, no matter your environment, venue size or industry.

The UK’s Health and Safety Executive puts audience circulation capacity and access to emergency exits high on its list for assessing site suitability. Therefore, creating a clear flow and understanding how visitors will move about your space is a must. 

Practical and innovative products such as wayfinding signage can be used to complement more traditional wayfinding products like barrier systems. They enhance how you direct customers, highlight designated routes and create waiting areas. 

Fitting onto existing Tensabarrier® queue systems, our banners can be used in numerous settings, for example as space dividers or security barriers. 

Tensator barriers have the added benefit of providing an additional merchandising opportunity. For example, you could use them to promote your event, cafe, retail store or gift shop while visitors wait in line. 

Providing either a permanent or a temporary solution, this is an excellent example of wayfinding signage that makes a strong visual impact. It’s also easy to install and dismantle, protecting employees’ occupational health in terms of manual handling. 

Tensabarrier® – key features and benefits:

• The safest retractable barrier on the market, with a unique braking system that prevents injury to bystanders by retracting 2.5 seconds slower than similar products
• Belt made from significantly thicker fabric than with other retractable stanchion products, meaning less degradation over time
• Optimum belt length, without sacrificing quality of webbing 
• Shorter height than other products on the market, to prevent people going over or under the barrier, and harder to knock over due to a lower centre of gravity 

Not only do wayfinding products encourage you to make better use of the space you have, but they help to make everybody’s lives easier and safer day-to-day.

Tensabarrier® allows you to enhance the space you have whilst reducing the risk of costly accidents. You can now browse our Tensabarrier® post and accessories range including post-top signage on our online shop.

Focal points increase efficiency in busy venues

Improving visitor flow in your space could help you increase efficiency, contribute towards greater customer and employee satisfaction, and even improve sales. Making your venue easier to navigate means you won’t lose retail sales when customers can’t find a paypoint, for example.

One way to improve flow is to create focal points – visually highlighting facilities like ticket machines or information desks so they can be easily found. In particular, the height of your wayfinding sign or banner becomes an issue when you’re experiencing large crowds. You might also have necessary obstacles – for example, retail stands – that could block a customer’s line of sight.

Tensator’s InQ-Totem™ is a wayfinding and signage solution developed to answer this problem. A highly visible and customisable solution, it’s ideal for organising large queue areas. It helps customers find the front of the correct queue easily, avoiding frustration. It can also allow you to display information clearly and can be attached to your Tensabarrier® queue system.

Need to plan for large numbers in your venue? Read our tips on crowd control for transport hubs. 

InQ-Totem™ – key features and benefits:

• Configurable signage solution designed to integrate seamlessly into queue systems
• Available in two standard sizes, but can be customised depending on the application
• Strong yet light aluminium structure secured to the floor via floor plate and bolt fixings
• Customisable aluminium panels, ready for your own information or branding
• Brushed stainless steel effect kick panel protects the base of each totem
• Built-in webbing cassette and receiver clip connects totems with Tensabarrier®

Get organised to create a seamless customer experience

These days, the customer is king (or queen)! Maintaining their good opinion can be so important to repeat business, not least because a bad experience can so easily make its way onto social media. Introducing wayfinding solutions in your venue can help create a calm, stress-free and hassle-free customer experience instead.

The InQ-Portal™ lets you add overhead signage either at the start, within or at the end of your queue. Similarly to the InQ-Totem™, this product helps to further organise large spaces. It identifies the designated waiting area, which can help you channel visitors safely (rather than needing to manage a disorganised and evolving free-for-all!)

It can also be used to display further information in an eye-catching way and in a place that customers are likely to see. 

InQ-Portal™ – Key features and benefits:

• Modular solution creates a defined entrance for your Tensabarrier® queue system
• Strong aluminium structure secured to the floor via four floor plates and bolt fixings
• Customisable foam board panels, ready for your own information or branding
• Both standard and custom sizes are available to suit your space
• Available with webbing receiver clips to connect to your Tensabarrier® queue system 
• Customise with an optional Tensabarrier® wall unit to open and close the portal

By providing an enjoyable and orderly experience, customers are more likely to remember your venue and want to return. Using innovative wayfinding signage to encourage greater customer loyalty in this way can help you stand out from the crowd! 

At Tensator, we provide bespoke consultancy depending on your unique needs. If you’d like help to find out how wayfinding solutions could improve your environment, get in touch below: