Access, parking and what customers actually need

Aug 29
3 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Introduction

A business takes a unit because the rent is competitive and the space works. It is on an industrial estate with no signage from the main road, parking for three vehicles, and an entrance that is not obvious from the car park.

The operation runs perfectly well. Customers arrive late, having driven past twice, or telephone from the road, or park somewhere they should not and return annoyed. The premises were assessed against cost and function, and the thing customers actually experience was never considered. Nobody made a bad decision; one perspective was simply absent from it.

1. Access, parking and what customers actually need is decided before you sign

The point at which it is fixable.

Almost none of this can be changed afterwards. Assessing it during the viewing, from a customer's perspective rather than an operational one, is the only opportunity you get.

2. Arrive as a customer would

The most useful test available.

Drive there following your own directions, at a time customers would come, and see whether you find it easily. Owners approach their premises from habit and cannot see what a first visit is like. Familiarity removes exactly the information you are trying to gather.

3. Count the parking honestly

Including at your busiest time.

Spaces available to customers, not to staff, at the hour when most people visit. A car park that is adequate at eleven in the morning and full at four is inadequate if four is when customers come.

4. Check what the signage position allows

Frequently restricted.

Whether you can put a sign where it would be seen, what the lease permits, and whether planning consent is needed. A unit that cannot be identified from the road creates a permanent problem.

5. Consider accessibility properly

A legal duty and a commercial one.

Step-free access, door widths, facilities and parking for disabled customers. Beyond the obligations that apply in most jurisdictions, excluding customers who cannot get in is a straightforward loss of trade.

6. Think about deliveries and collections

Both directions.

Whether a delivery vehicle can reach the door, turn, and unload, and whether that conflicts with customer access. Businesses discover that their largest supplier cannot deliver without blocking the entrance.

7. Check public transport and walking routes

Relevant for both customers and staff.

How somebody without a car reaches you, and whether the walk from the nearest stop is safe and obvious after dark. This affects who will work for you as much as who will visit.

8. Look at it in the evening and in bad weather

Conditions change the assessment.

Lighting, visibility, whether the car park is safe-feeling, and whether the entrance is obvious in the dark. Premises viewed on a bright weekday morning present very differently at five in December.

9. Fix what you can once you are there

Some of it is within your control.

Clear directions on your website with photographs of the frontage, a map link that lands in the right place, signage where permitted, and lighting. These recover a meaningful part of a poor location.

Ask new customers how they found the journey. They will tell you plainly, the answers are consistent, and it identifies the specific point — a missing sign, a confusing entrance, the wrong map pin — that is costing you the ones who did not arrive at all.

Conclusion

Assess it from the customer's side before signing, because almost none of it can be changed later.

Drive there following your own directions at the time customers visit, count usable customer parking at your busiest hour, establish what signage is permitted and where, take accessibility seriously as both an obligation and a source of trade, check that deliveries can be made without blocking access, consider how somebody without a car would reach you, view the premises in the dark and in poor weather, and improve the directions, map listing and signage once you are there.