Food delivery drivers circling the property, guests calling because they cannot find Building 12, and EMTs searching hurriedly for a unit number at night all point to the same problem.
The community is harder to navigate than it should be.
Small delays become daily frustrations. Deliveries arrive late, office staff field repeated calls for directions, and emergency personnel lose valuable time locating the right building.
Apartment signage is bigger than branding. When done well, it removes that friction by making the entire community easier to understand at a glance.
How Community Navigation Impacts Daily Deliveries
Everything from resident traffic to deliveries and vendor services put pressure on the property’s layout and general flow.
These days package delivery volume is far higher than ever before. Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index shows that as recently as 2024, there were 22.37 billion shipments across all major carriers. You can imagine how many of those were apartment complexes.
Delivery trucks have become ubiquitous in any neighborhood. An experienced driver may know the layout of a neighborhood or apartment complex well, having been through many times. There’s also enough turnover with delivery drivers, though, that planning around a new driver making their route is prudent.
There have even been stories of delivery drivers putting packages for an entire floor of apartments together in a pile near the stairs. While this is obviously not ideal, these behaviors are exacerbated by layouts those carriers perceive as tedious.
For food deliveries, there are some subtleties also at play. In various Reddit threads, Uber Eats delivery drivers share their frustrations with apartment complexes. One user states that, “unfortunately, most apartment complexes are nightmares.” Many maps apps, they explain, only take a driver to the entrance and not the unit. Consequently, they become very reliant on navigational signage.
Some of them mentioned that if, as a driver, a certain apartment complex has a reputation for being difficult to navigate, they’ll just skip taking orders that pop up from that property. For the person ordering, that can mean difficulty even getting a reliable delivery.
Pizza places, as another example, often rely heavily on the speed at which their delivery drivers can drop the food off and return for more orders. If the management at that restaurant notices that deliveries to a certain neighborhood are always slow because their drivers have a tough time, that may even lead to them narrowing their delivery radius to exclude it.
For the tenant trying to order food, that can mean a place they’ve ordered from for years suddenly isn’t in their delivery radius. If this happens too many times, that tenant may feel they live in a food desert. (Real personal example.) That affects the willingness to stay there longer term.
Emergency Scenarios and Building Signage
This is where directional signage is stressed the hardest. First responders being delayed trying to find the correct residence could jeopardize lives. The American Heart Association emphasizes that survival rates sharply decline when defibrillation and other cardiac treatments are delayed — even by a minute or two.
In fact, a K8 News story covered an interview with first responder Carma Butler. Regarding these kinds of delays, Butler said:
“When first responders miss your home because it is not properly numbered, that is time delayed if we don’t know where we are going. It is not easy to turn around buses, and EMS and fire trucks and some of our vehicles if we get on a narrow road, it is hard to get backed up and turned around to you.”
Butler also stated that reflective unit numbers help significantly, since many emergencies occur at night. The size and design of these numbers, as well as other directional signage, has very functional effects on whether a property feels thoughtfully planned or chaotic.
In some regions, this is even something that could get an apartment complex fined. In that article (speaking about Jonestown, Arkansas) property managers can be fined $25 to $100 for each instance of improperly displayed unit numbers that cause these complications.
Be Known As The Thoughtful Neighborhood.
We can help you avoid all of the above issues. Whether you’ve recently acquired a property or manage one that has used the same branding and signage for years, consider it an opportunity for a fresh navigational strategy.
We’re a team of passionate creatives that love solving these types of challenges.
Learn more about us here, or give us a call to speak with an expert today!
