Explore a showroom yourself – or by a guided tour? 4 tips

Guided or Independently – How Shall Your Visitors Explore Your Showroom?

Decide whether you want your guests to roam and explore the exhibition on their own or whether you wish the experience to be a guided tour. If you decide on the latter, a tour guide/presenter should be present at all times and ready to answer possible questions or point out particular subjects or exhibits. This of course implies that said tour guide or presenter is trained accordingly and also prepares him- or herself for special or particularly important events.
In case of non-guided, unsupervised visits there are other pivotal factors coming to the fore: a clearly laid-out visitor guidance, targeted bundling of information, as well as self-explaining interactivity and information features. It goes without saying that, apart from the local language, all information should be available in English and other major languages as well. In that respect, don’t just think of captions and explanatory texts next to the exhibits but of your intro film and videos, too.

4 tips for visitor management in showrooms

1. The presenter alone doesn’t make a presentation: even with a guided tour, never underestimate the advantages that interactivity, dramatization, and surprise effects hold over static modes of presentation. They facilitate the creation of memorable touchpoints encompassing all senses. And what’s more, they also work independently from your visitor service staff’s performance and their current mood.
2. Design a room interior, not a website: any video lasting longer than 2 minutes is likely never going to see a visitor watching it through to the end. The same is true for long text passages. These “verbose deserts” suck the life from your room, drain your visitors of their time and energy, and let your business opportunities die on the vine.
3. Non-linear experiences open up valuable breathing-spaces: allow your visitors to choose their own individual path through the exhibition, one that is guided by their own needs and interests. This is going to make them much more receptive for the information you want to convey. However, prerequisites for achieving that are a clear and expedient bundling of information and the according orientation and guidance systems.
4. Small rooms in practice: for obvious practical reasons, small rooms are less suitable for non-guided/unattended visitor groups. In that case, a step-by-step course leading them from one station to the next is the better option.

Infographic: Guided tour vs. individual exploration of a showroom

This blog entry is an excerpt from our comprehensive whitepaper “Successful Planning and Realization of Corporate Showrooms – A guide from HOW to WOW”. If you would like to receive the whitepaper free of charge, please write an email with the subject “Whitepaper Showroom” to info@garamantis.com.