In the fast-moving world of retail, your store’s layout does more than guide customers, it shapes their experience, impacts their buying decisions, and directly influences your bottom line. Whether you’re a grocery store, pharmacy, health retailer, or convenience store, having the right store setup is critical to optimizing traffic flow, maximizing shelf space, and increasing sales. Store layout software is now being built into some innovative Point of Sale (POS) software systems. These offerings serve as more than just a digital blueprint, they include interactive, customizable tools that enable retailers to create precise floor plan and pair them with heat mapping functionality to uncover real-time insights into sales performance and inventory management.
Build a Layout That Reflects Your Store
When looking for store layout software, look for user friendly tools with a drag-and-drop interface and fully customizable elements. Visually build and adjust your retail floor plan to match your physical space. The software should include a range of configurable elements that reflect real-world retail structures:
- Customizable Shelves – These should support adjustable segments and multiple bin levels, ideal for accurately organizing product locations.
- Non-Retail Structures – Perfect for non-sellable areas like back offices, customer service desks, or till stations.
- Doors – Clearly mark store entrances, exits, and guide traffic flow throughout the layout.
Customize the store layout by changing the name, colors, font size, dimensions, and rotation angle. This visual approach not only saves time, but it also provides a clear, up-to-date reference that enhances communication across teams and helps store managers maintain an organized, efficient store environment.
Uncover Insights with Built-In Heat Mapping
Having store layout software built into the POS, users gain more flexibility and choices in how they visualize their inventory data. The most innovative store layout software products are adding powerful heat mapping features, which transforms your static floor plan into a live dashboard of performance metrics. You can assign products to BIN locations, and those BINs are tied to shelves in the layout, the system begins to generate heat maps that display critical data points like:
- Average Sales Per Shelf – See which shelves are driving the most revenue.
- Average Last Counted Date – Identify shelves that may need attention for inventory counting.
These heat maps provide instant visibility into product performance across the store. High-performing areas are easily identified, helping you make more informed decisions about product placement, promotional strategy, and layout changes. Underperforming sections can be reevaluated and repositioned, giving you the tools to fine-tune your store based on real-world behavior.
Make Data-Driven Merchandising Decisions with Store Layout Software
Retail success relies heavily on visibility and product accessibility. With store layout software with heat mapping capabilities, you’re not just guessing where to place a new item or display, you’re basing decisions on hard data.
For example, products with high turnover can be placed in premium locations to capitalize on customer interest. Slower-moving products in “dead zones”, areas customers consistently avoid, can be rotated, re-merchandised, or supported with promotional signage, better lighting or placed in more prominent zones. With data showing that in-store displays have a 10% higher recall rate than digital advertisements, you can test new configurations and measure their impact on sales over time. You can refine layouts and improve customer experience by testing small changes without overhauling the entire store.
These data-driven insights lead to smarter merchandising strategies, improved customer experience, and more efficient use of your sales floor.
Enhance Inventory Accuracy and Control
Inventory management is one of the most time-consuming aspects of running a retail operation. Missed counts or overlooked bins can lead to out-of-stock issues, overstocking, or shrink.
With store layout software, managers can easily see the last counted date for each shelf, helping ensure inventory checks are both consistent and comprehensive. This visibility makes it easier to spot any areas that may have been missed during recent counts and maintain tighter control over stock levels.
The result? More accurate data, fewer inventory surprises, and better replenishment planning.
From Layout to Growth Strategy
Store layout software doesn’t just help you visualize your store; it helps you run it better. By combining layout design, product-level sales data, and inventory tracking into one powerful tool, products like Star-Plus, give retailers a unique way to make their physical space work harder.
Whether you’re a single-location health food store or a multi-site grocery chain, this tool helps you:
- Streamline store planning and renovations
- Make smarter decisions about product placement and promotions
- Improve customer flow and in-store experience
- Maintain more accurate inventory counts
- Increase revenue by understanding what’s working and what isn’t
Ready to Optimize Your Store with Store Layout Software?
At Auto-Star, we understand the challenges that modern retailers face. That’s why we’re committed to providing technology that’s not only powerful but also practical. Our Store Layout Editor is one more way we’re helping you run a smarter, more efficient retail business.
Want to turn your store layout into a sales-boosting strategy? Book a free demo of our Store Layout Software today and start transforming your floor plan into a growth engine.
