Best Ways to Merchandise Your Hero Products

In merchandising, the 80/20 rule states that 80 percent of your revenue typically comes from just 20 percent of your product offerings. In other words, your hero SKUs deliver the results that move the needle.

Hero products are your flagship items that are popular with shoppers, drive sales, and shape how your brand is perceived. Knowing the impact of these products, it’s essential to be strategic when merchandising them on retail displays.

And because these goods attract foot traffic and dictate surrounding product placement, even small shifts in presentation can translate to measurable sales lifts.

But how do you effectively highlight best-selling hero products? Below, we detail ways to merchandise your top performers.

Focus on What Matters Most to Shoppers

Emotion outweighs logic more often than we’d like to admit. Customers don’t evaluate products like analysts. Instead, they scan for cues that signal, “This solves a problem I care about.”

Because of this, the fastest way to highlight your well-known SKUs or merchandising lines is to pair their function with a visual story that helps shoppers picture the outcome for themselves.

Take a high-end haircare brand for example. Listing the ingredient makeup of their new line of hydrating shampoos, conditions, and serums will move few people toward a sale. But retail displays designed with glossy water graphics and close-up imagery of silky hair help browsers connect the line’s promise to the result they want.

When merchandising your top-selling or newer products, prioritize what shoppers register first. That includes benefits, results, and problems solved. Make those values instantly clear, and the product earns attention before a shopper even picks it up to learn more.

Strategic Placement of Hero Merchandise

Showcasing a popular product, new line, or seasonal promotion goes beyond simply placing items front and center on a shelf. Effective hero merchandising relies on intentional store location, strategic cross-merchandising, and smart arrangement to communicate product hierarchy.

Shopper Pause Zones

Not every area of a retail store holds the same value. Some locations naturally outperform others for shopper attention.

In merchandising, these high-trafficked areas are called “pause zones” and they’re often found on endcaps, checkout counters, and feature tables where people stop more frequently.

These locations increase the odds your hero product will be seen by shoppers, generating more sales and brand awareness.

Reinforcing Hero Products Through Cross-Merchandising

When complementary products are cross merchandised alongside a hero item, it helps direct a shopper’s focus. Instead of showcasing one product alone, the retail display highlights how the SKU fits into a broader set.

This approach turns the hero product into a “foundation” piece. When customers see accessories and supporting merchandise nearby, the core product automatically feels essential.

Toy merchandising often employs this approach. A single Barbie doll promoted next to clothing or Hot Wheels cars surrounded by a variety of racetracks act as a starting point in the buying journey. In these cases, the accessories don’t compete with the hero item but instead reinforce it as the anchor.

Cross-merchandising doesn’t have to feel like upselling, though sales lift is a common benefit. It can simply help shoppers picture how pieces fit, with the hero product being at the center.

Isolating Your Hero Item

Conversely, there are scenarios where isolating hero merchandise is just as impactful.

In categories that rely on the perception of exclusivity, designing a display to feature only one product is a strategic way to make the item feel premium.

This is done frequently with luxury beauty items, jewelry and watches, or electronics with a single, clear value proposition like noise-cancelling headphones or a Bluetooth speaker. In short, these are standalone products rather than pieces of a larger ecosystem.

When merchandising high-end or exclusive SKUs, featuring them alone can create focus, which in turn influences how shoppers judge their value.

Mirroring Natural Eye Scanning Behavior to Position Hero Products

Studies show there are common patterns people follow when processing visual information. Those same habits show up in how shoppers take in retail displays as well.

The ‘Pyramid Technique’ is a merchandising principle that uses visual hierarchy to control where shoppers look first, second, and third. It works because customers subconsciously read a display like a triangle, locking onto the focal point at the top and then moving their eyes downward and outward.

And while the triangle establishes a clear vertical order, shoppers also scan side-to-side across the display. Eye movements in the Z-pattern and F-pattern show that our gaze typically sweeps from left to right before moving downward.

When your hero product sits at both the visual peak and within that first scan path, it naturally becomes the first thing shoppers notice.

Knowing this, here are a few practical rules of thumb when arranging your display to highlight your flagship merchandise:

• Place your hero product at the top center or slightly left center to be at the pyramid’s apex, where the eye naturally goes first.
• Align secondary items so they support a person’s typical gaze from left to right.
• Avoid any visual “cliffs,” or sharp breaks or gaps in your product arrangement since these can interrupt what your shopper registers.

Ryan Lepianka, Creative Director at Frank Mayer – Kiosks and Displays, puts it simply. “There are a lot of different methods to establish the hero in a piece of artwork. An in-store display really isn’t different from any other 2D, or 3D work of art.”

Visual Design Cues

Along with store placement and display arrangement, design elements can quietly pull attention toward specific products. These cues strip away visual noise around your hero item and give the eye a clear place to land. In short, certain design choices can guide a shopper’s awareness to a focal point.

Lighting is one of the strongest tools for this. LED lighting, backlighting, or soft spotlights can create a clear visual hierarchy by making key products feel brighter and more dimensional than the rest. We’re wired to notice light first, so the right lighting makes important products feel noticeable without the need for extra signage or other tactics.

Contrast is also a smart strategy. A light item against a dark back panel, matte finishes placed on glossy surfaces, or even breathing room around a product makes it easier for buyers to spot and process quickly.

Lastly, motion tools also earn a customer’s attention. Features like subtle animation, rotating platforms, soft light pulses, or even video loops generate interest. These elements spotlight your hero items without being overwhelming.

Used intentionally, these visual design cues not only add interest to your retail display but make it easier to promote your hero item.

Your Hero Product Deserves a Hero Display

Your brand’s anchor products do a lot of heavy lifting, so it makes sense to be strategic in how you showcase them on your retail displays.

In this case, the fundamentals will be most effective. Store placement, smart layout, visual hierarchy, and subtle design cues all work together to make the right products easier to find and impossible to ignore.

Ready to rethink how you merchandise your hero products in store? Our team can help you design a display program that brings them to life at scale. Let’s talk.