The Shelf Planogram Visual Editor lets you create a realistic retail shelf environment for your Shelf Test. You can customize the layout of your shelves, arrange products, adjust product placement, and preview exactly what respondents will see when taking your survey.

Learn more about Shelf Test in our Lighthouse Academy course!

In This Article

• Before You Begin
• Terminology
• Opening the Shelf Editor
• Building Sections and Shelves
• Placing Products on the Shelf
• Finishing and Checking Your Shelf
• Pallet Fixtures: Structure View

Before You Begin

Start by adding and configuring your products in the Shelf Test question's answer choices. Each answer choice represents a product that can be placed on your shelf.

Make sure you've added the product images, names, prices, dimensions, and any other relevant product details before arranging your shelf. The Visual Editor uses this information to display and size products correctly.

Once your products are configured, click Arrange to open the Visual Editor, where you can build your shelf layout and position your products.

You can return to your product settings and make adjustments as needed.

Terminology

Opening the Shelf Editor

1. Add your products to the Shelf Test question, then choose a store and shelf type beneath the product list.
2. Click Arrange above your product list. The shelf editor opens.
3. On a brand-new question, the Shelf Editor opens with shelves already in place. You have full access to all controls from the start, so you can immediately begin editing the shelves and sections.
4. When you're finished, close the editor with the × in its top-right corner. There's nothing to save—every change is written as you make it.

The editor's header carries the same Store and Fixture dropdowns that sit beneath your product list, so you can change either one without closing the editor. The two places are the same control: change it in one and the other follows.

⚠️ Note: Switching to a fixture that holds fewer products warns you first and names how many placed products will be removed. Switching to the Ecommerce store removes the shelf entirely—respondents see a product grid instead—so Arrange isn't offered there.

If you have view-only access to the survey, you can still open the editor, browse the shelf, and open a product's card to read its values. Every control that would change the shelf is hidden. Arrange is also unavailable on a question whose configuration is locked.

Building Sections and Shelves

Start by customizing the layout of your shelving. You can add multiple sections, adjust their widths, and choose the number and height of shelves in each section. Available options vary depending on the store and fixture type you've selected.

Working with Sections

Use several sections to put different shelf heights, widths, or shelf counts side by side—a tall bay next to a short one, or a hanging bay beside a sitting one.

• Click Add a section to add one.
• Set Width in feet and inches. The arrow keys nudge the width by an inch in the inches cell, or by a foot in the feet cell.
• Use Manage sections to hide a section from the multi-section view, bring one back, or delete one. The last section can't be deleted.

For the best respondent experience, keep a Shelf Test to three sections or fewer. Wider shelves are harder to render on smaller mobile devices, and a very wide shelf is a long scroll for a respondent on a phone.

Adjusting Shelves

Hover a shelf to bring up its controls:

Sitting Shelves and Hanging Shelves

Every shelf is one of two styles, and you switch between them in the Style dropdown on the shelf itself. This is a different control from the Fixture dropdown at the top of the editor—Fixture sets what kind of unit the whole section is, while Style sets what each individual shelf inside it does.

Sitting shelves are available everywhere. Hanging shelves are the limited one: Only some store and fixture combinations offer them, and where they aren't offered, the Style dropdown lists Sitting shelf on its own. The fixture itself is still available—it's only the hanging option on its shelves that isn't.

Shelf and Section Limits

These are the bounds the editor enforces for each fixture:

A shelf is at least 4" tall and a section at least 1' 0" wide. Each store also sets a minimum for the shelving's total height: 12" for most stores, 10" at Publix and CVS, and 20" for counter refrigerators.

Placing Products on the Shelf

Your products sit in the Products sidebar on the right, each tile showing the product's image and name. Place them by hand, with cursor mode, or all at once with Auto-arrange.

Placing Products by Hand

• Drag a product tile onto a shelf to place a facing. Drop it between two facings to insert it there.
• Drag a placed facing along the shelf, or onto another shelf, to move it.
• Click a facing to select it. Click it again, or click its card icon, to open the Product Card without leaving the editor.
• Place the same product more than once to give it multiple facings.
• Use Search all products at the top of the sidebar to find a product in a long list, and Collapse product list to give the canvas more room.

Using Cursor Mode

To fill a shelf quickly, switch on Cursor at the top of the sidebar. Cursor mode lets you quickly add multiple products without dragging and dropping each one. Turn on Cursor, click the position on the shelf where you'd like to start, then select products from the sidebar to place them in that location. Press Backspace or press Backspace or Delete to remove the product.

💡 Tip: A product is as wide as its image makes it, scaled to the height you set in the Product Card. If a shelf fills up, widen the section or lower the product's height in its Product Card—facings never shrink to fit.

Arranging Products with Auto-Arrange

Auto-arrange automatically places products on your shelves in the same order they're programmed in your Shelf Test answer choices, starting with the first answer choice (A1) in the top-left position and continuing from left to right, top to bottom, until all products have been placed or the available shelf space is filled.

Use Auto-arrange when you want your shelf layout to follow the order of your answer choices. You can also customize how much shelf space each product occupies using the Fill style settings.

If you want to create a specific product arrangement that differs from your answer choice order, you can manually position products in the Visual Editor or use logic to control their placement.

1. Switch on Auto-arrange at the top of the Products sidebar. Each product tile grows a Fill style dropdown.
2. Set a Fill style for each product to say how much room it should get. Choose auto, a number of faces (1–9), a fraction of a shelf (1/2, 1/3, 1/4), or a number of whole shelves. The available options are automatically filtered based on what the current fixture supports.
3. To apply one Fill style to every product at once, use Set all to... With a search active, it reads Set to... (N) and applies only to the products you're looking at.
4. Click Arrange to fill the shelves.

What Auto-arrange produces is ordinary facings—drag them, delete them, or add to them. The whole fill is a single undo step.

⚠️ Note: Auto-arrange fills what you're looking at—the section you're on in single-section view, or every visible section in multi-section view. Hidden sections and sections out of view keep the facings they already have. If the arrangement would overwrite products you placed, you're asked to confirm first.

A few things to expect:

• Auto-arrange never runs on its own. Products you add afterwards stay unplaced until you click Arrange again or place them yourself.
• An empty product row—no name, no image—is skipped rather than packed onto the shelf.
• If some products don't fit the space available, the editor tells you how many: "N product(s) did not fit".
• The editor holds still for the second or so an arrangement takes, so an edit made mid-flight isn't overwritten by the result.

Finishing and Checking Your Shelf

With products on the shelf, set how they're spaced, preview the result, and clear any errors before launch.

Alignment and Price Tags

The alignment control at the top of the canvas decides how facings are distributed across each shelf. It applies to the whole planogram, not to one shelf.

Next to the alignment buttons is the One price tag per product toggle. Shelf-flex normally gives every facing its own price tag; switch this on and each product shows a single tag for its whole block of facings instead. The toggle is available under Shelf-flex, and off under Left, Center, and Right.

When a product has a discounted price below its regular price, respondents see a small red saving badge on the tag (for example, "-11%"). Walmart Rollback tags never carry the badge—the Rollback frame is the saving message there.

Undoing, Clearing, and Previewing

• Undo and Redo step through your changes. Each shelf, section, and facing change is its own step; an Auto-arrange is one step.
• Clear all removes every product from the shelves in view, after a confirmation. It leaves your sections, shelves, and product list alone.
• Quick preview shows the shelf as a respondent will see it, with the store's own styling, shelf framing, and price tags.

Fixing Errors Before Launch

The editor shows the structural problems it can help you fix as a strip of messages, with a one-click remedy where one exists:

• Too few or too many shelves for the store and shelf type you chose.
• A shelf shorter than 4"—the shelves involved are highlighted in red.
• Total shelving height below the store's minimum.
• A hanging shelf on a store and fixture combination that doesn't support one.

Problems that belong to the question itself—missing product names, text over the limit, images in an unsupported format—stay on the question in the Survey Editor, where their fields are.

Pallet Fixtures: Structure View

Club store pallets (Costco and Sam's Club) are built differently from regular shelving, so Arrange opens a structure view instead of the free-form canvas.

• Each rack level is drawn as two half-width shelves side by side—left pallet and right pallet—exactly the pairing respondents see.
• Hover a level to set its height and stacking, or to add and remove levels.
• Products are placed automatically. To choose Fill styles or redo the arrangement, use Auto-arrange in the sidebar—it opens switched on, because it's the placement path here.
• Choose how many pallets and shelves you want from the preset dropdown beneath your product list: Pallet + 1 display shelf, Pallet + 1 shelf, or Pallet + 2 shelves, each available as a single, double (2x), or triple (3x) run.
• On a pallet question built with several sections, the structure view shows one block at a time.
• Hanging shelves aren't available on pallets.

See Club Store Shelves Reference for how club products, images, and shelf order work.

Related Articles

• How to Program a Shelf Test
• How to Customize a Shelf Test
• Club Store Shelves Reference
• How to Bulk Upload Shelf Test Assets