What Is a Planogram Template?
A planogram based template is a pre designed shelf layout that gives retailers a starting point for organising products. Rather than building a retail shelf layout from scratch, you work with an existing structure and adapt it to your inventory.
A lot of businesses start here when they first get into planogram software because it’s practical and doesn’t require advanced merchandising knowledge to get going.
What are the Key Features?
Here are the main features that you’ll find in a template for planograms:
Pre designed layouts
Templates come with ready made shelf arrangements for different retail categories. Whether you’re selling beverages, cosmetics, snacks, or electronics, there’s usually a layout that gets you most of the way there.
Easy customization
Templates follow a standard structure, but they’re not fixed. You can swap products, adjust quantities, or shift positioning without rebuilding the whole thing from scratch.
Standardized shelf planning
Using the same template across multiple stores creates consistency, which matters when customers visit different locations and expect to find things in familiar spots.
Quick implementation
Because most of the work is already done, a template can be up and running almost immediately. Useful during promotions, seasonal displays, or when you’re opening a new location and need to move fast.
What are the Benefits They Offer?
These advantages are the reason why businesses use them:
Saves time
Instead of spending days on store merchandising design, you take an existing layout and make the adjustments you actually need.
Cost effective
Templates cost only a fraction of what a fully custom planogram design would run, which makes them the sensible starting point for businesses watching their budgets closely.
Easy for beginners
Retailers without much experience in visual merchandising can still put together organised, logical shelves without needing specialist knowledge.
Consistent merchandising across stores
If you’re running several locations with similar layouts, templates keep the store merchandising strategy consistent without extra effort at each site.
What Is a Custom Planogram?
A custom planogram is built specifically for your business rather than adapted from something generic. Every shelf, fixture, product category, and customer shopping pattern gets taken into account.
The goal isn’t just neat shelves. It’s better sales through smarter shelf space optimisation and merchandising decisions grounded in how your actual customers behave.
What are the Key Features?
Here are the unique features that businesses can build in custom solutions:
Custom shelf dimensions
Every shelf is designed around your exact store measurements, fixture sizes, and available display space rather than an assumed standard.
Customer behavior analysis
A proper custom planogram uses sales data, shopper movement patterns, purchasing habits, and product performance to drive placement decisions rather than general assumptions.
Store specific layouts
Each location can have its own layout based on local customer preferences, available space, and the specific inventory mix that performs well there.
Brand specific merchandising
Businesses can highlight featured products, private label items, or promotional campaigns while keeping the overall brand presentation consistent.
What are the Benefits They Offer?
Custom solutions always come with several advantages
Maximum space utilization
Every inch of shelf space works harder, letting retailers display more products without creating the kind of mess that puts shoppers off.
Better product visibility
Popular products and high margin items end up where customers naturally look, which improves visibility and increases the likelihood of a purchase happening.
Higher sales potential
When retail shelf layout decisions are based on shopping behaviour rather than guesswork, customers tend to discover more products in a single visit.
Supports complex retail operations
Large retailers managing thousands of products genuinely need customised planogram design because the complexity of category management, promotions, and multiple store formats is too much for any standard template to handle well.
Planogram Template vs. Custom Planogram: Side by Side Comparison
Here is a quick table for a side by side comparison of both:
| Feature | Template | Custom Planogram |
| Setup Time | Fast | Longer |
| Cost | Low | Higher |
| Flexibility | Moderate | High |
| Ease of Use | Very Easy | Requires Expertise |
| Best For | Small Retailers | Large Retail Chains |
| Scalability | Limited | Excellent |
| Shelf Optimization | Basic | Advanced |
| Data Integration | Minimal | Full Integration |
Templates look like the obvious winner when you focus on cost and speed. But as a business grows, the advantages of a custom approach compound in ways that matter more.
When Should You Use a Planogram Template?
Not every retailer needs a fully customised retail planogram, and plenty of situations call for the simpler option.
Small retail stores tend to benefit most from templates. With fewer products, more straightforward shelf arrangements, a template provides structure without unnecessary complexity.
Startups also find templates useful early on. When you’re already managing inventory, staffing, and a hundred other things, keeping visual merchandising simple saves time and money.
New product launches are another case where a template works fine. If you’re introducing a limited range of products, there’s little reason to redesign the whole store around them.
Seasonal promotions work really well with templates too. Holiday items, back to school products, and special event displays can be set up quickly from existing planogram examples without a full redesign.
Retailers with tight merchandising budgets will appreciate that templates deliver organised shelves without expensive consulting.
And businesses without dedicated merchandising teams can let store managers handle adjustments themselves without needing specialist training.
When Is a Custom Planogram the Better Choice?
As businesses scale up, retail merchandising strategy gets considerably more complicated. Here are some examples by use case:
Large supermarkets
They manage thousands of products across dozens of categories and will quickly outgrow anything a generic template can offer. The variables are simply too many.
Multi Location Retailers
They benefit from customisation because each branch often has different customer demographics and different buying patterns that a one size fits all approach can’t account for.
Grocery chains
They lean on category management and cross selling opportunities. So, they need planogram design that’s responsive to their specific sales data. Small shelf placement adjustments can move the needle across hundreds of stores.
Pharmacies
Absolutely need carefully organised shelves where customers can find healthcare products quickly while meeting regulatory and brand guidelines.
Consumer Packaged Goods Brands
They frequently develop custom layouts to maximise visibility for their own products while strengthening retail partnerships.
Businesses Using Retail Analytics
Inventory data and customer insights become significantly more valuable when they’re feeding directly into shelf planning decisions rather than sitting in a spreadsheet somewhere.
A custom approach gives businesses across industries the flexibility to optimise properly while improving the shopping experience overall.
What Are the Pros and Cons of Planogram Templates?
Let’s take a look at both the advantages and disadvantages of planograms.
Pros
- Templates are affordable and accessible regardless of business size.
- They’re easy to edit so managers can update products without starting from scratch.
- Deployment is fast, which helps retailers respond quickly to promotions and inventory changes.
- Minimal training is required.
- They’re an excellent starting point for any business just beginning to take visual merchandising seriously.
Cons
- Templates offer limited flexibility for stores with unusual layouts or specialised fixtures.
- Sales performance may not be fully optimised because the layouts aren’t based on actual customer behaviour or store specific data.
- Because they’re designed for broad use, arrangements can feel generic rather than customized to your specific shoppers.
What Are the Pros and Cons of Custom Planograms?
With custom solutions, the pros and cons may be a bit different:
Pros
- Everything is personalised for your products, your customers, and your available space.
- Shoppers often find things more easily, which improves the overall experience.
- Better product placement creates more opportunities for additional sales and impulse purchases.
- Inventory management improves because products are organised more strategically.
- Custom layouts support category management in a way templates simply can’t match.
Cons
- Professional design and implementation require a rather heavy investment.
- It also takes longer to build than pulling a template off the shelf.
- Experienced merchandising professionals or proper planogram software are needed to maintain layouts as inventory changes.
- Custom retail planograms need ongoing updates to stay effective.
What Does it Cost to Invest in a Generic Planogram Vs a Custom One?
Pricing for planograms varies quite a bit depending on what level of customisation you actually need.
Generic Planograms
Free templates are available online and work as a basic starting point for small retailers or businesses just learning the basics of shelf planning. Flexibility is limited, but the price is hard to argue with.
Paid template libraries give you professionally designed layouts across different retail categories. You get more variety, but it is still affordable.
Planogram software subscriptions provide things like:
- Editing tools
- Inventory management
- Reporting
- Collaboration
Monthly costs have a different range for smaller businesses and larger organisations.
Custom Planograms
Custom planogram design services sit at the top of the investment range because you’re getting merchandising experts building layouts specifically around your business.
For retailers managing high product volumes, the cost tends to come back through better shelf space optimisation and stronger sales.
Looking only at the initial price can easily mislead you. A template costs less today, but a custom retail shelf layout could generate much better returns if your store is managing large inventories or running across multiple locations.
How to Choose the Right Option for Your Business
A few honest questions tend to clarify things pretty quickly.
- How large is your store?
- How many SKUs are you managing?
- What’s your actual merchandising budget?
- How many locations do you operate?
- Do you have a dedicated merchandising team?
- Are you planning significant growth over the next couple of years?
- Do you want sales data and customer insights informing your shelf planning decisions?
If most of your answers point toward simplicity and affordability, a retail template for planograms will likely do what you need.
If your answers lean toward growth and calculated decision making, a custom planogram will almost certainly give you better long term value.
What Are the Best Practices for Successful Planogram Implementation?
Whether you go with a template or a custom layout, how you manage it over time is what determines how much value you actually get. Here are some best practices that you should implement:
- Review sales data regularly to identify which products deserve better positioning.
- Keep shelves organised and browsable rather than cramming in as much as possible.
- Monitor compliance so staff maintain the intended layout consistently rather than improvising.
- Test different product placements and compare results before making permanent changes.
- Refresh layouts during seasonal promotions to keep displays relevant.
- Train your team so everyone understands why products are placed where they do, because when staff follow the merchandising plan consistently, customers get a more predictable and pleasant shopping experience.
A planogram should never be something you create once and forget about.
Conclusion
Both types of planograms solve different problems at different scales throughout retail.
Templates are a practical, affordable way to improve shelf organisation, and they’re ideal for startups, independent retailers, and businesses that need to move quickly. Easy to use, minimal training required, solid foundation for better store merchandising.
Custom planograms are built for businesses that need more flexibility, smarter shelf space optimisation, and stronger performance across more complex operations. They take more time and investment upfront, but they also unlock better product visibility, smoother customer experiences, and more room for growth.
The best choice comes down to where your business is right now and where you’re genuinely trying to take it. Starting with the right approach today makes building an effective retail merchandising strategy considerably easier as things grow.
