The design and noticeability of alert sounds have been widely researched and reported, and not least, notification sounds are ubiquitous in both software and hardware product development. In an ongoing research project concerning the retail industry, we aim at designing short alert sounds that only grab attention from one group of customers, while others do not register the alerts: this particular aspect has to our knowledge not yet been studied. To establish design guidelines for such alert sounds, we conducted an experiment where test subjects would experience ordinary shopping activity including background music and an ambient soundscape in a virtual reality clothing store, but with added alert sounds. We tested, specifically, six differently designed sound alerts belonging to two classes: contextual-specific congruent sounds, and incongruent sounds that did not fit the sonic context. The results disproved our assumptions that incongruent sounds would outperform the congruent and thus in the context more anticipated sounds. The findings suggest that alert sounds can be designed with subtlety and still be noticeable and that customers will not necessarily be annoyed. We present here a first approach towards design guidelines for short alert sounds in a shop environment. Copyright: © 2021 the Authors.