What do you want to convey to your customers?

In previous blog spots I have told about why and where digital signage and self-service kiosks can be used. But the most important thing is actually what you wish to convey to your customers.

There is probably no one that understands your business and your particular store(s) better than yourself. From your own experience you know that at each location of the store there is something in particular that you wish to tell to your customers. What you want to tell decides what content to put on the screens in different parts of the store.  Using digital signage instead of conventional signage makes it possible for you to provide several messages using only one screen instead of a static conventional sign at the same location. One sign can serve a whole range of products that are related to a particular department in the store.

Digital signs are dynamic and you can easily present the “offer of today” and you can run campaigns on products that you have special reasons for promoting. This also means that you are free to convey different messages at different times of the day; on different days of the week and that you can prepare campaigns in advance. The answer to the question about what to convey to the customers, decides what content there should be on the screens and when.

Try to analyze what you want to convey using your existing ways of customer communication such as conventional signs, advertising and web. Where do these media run short when it comes to conveying the message to the customer? Probably you will get to answers that the static signs are not dynamic, advertising does not give you’re the result that you wish for and your web site does not have as many visitors it should have. A way to sort this out is to take the same messages and to expose them right in your store using modern means. Remember that the advertising space at your own premises is a valuable asset. Use this asset the best way by combining conventional printed signs and dynamic digital signs.

Probably you have already decided what you wish to convey to the customers in your advertising, signage and web. Now the trick is to adapt the same thing to digital signage and kiosks. The new dimension is time, you can decide down to the second what to convey to your customers.

When it comes to self service kiosks, they may be regarded as signs where the observer can ask for the content. Self-service kiosks can relieve the store staff from recurring questions and to relieve customers from queuing to talk to store personnel. You may want the kiosks to handle the frequently asked questions. When deciding what content to be used in a self-service kiosk you should regard the kiosk more or less as if a person had been standing there ready to answer incoming questions. What recurring questions are asked by the customers?

It is obvious that the more complex product, the more use of a kiosk. Especially for non physical products, such as online games, betting and travelling offers, self-service kiosks and digital signage can help you to convey the right message to the customers at the right time and location.

Digital signage and kiosks work together to convey your message to your customers. It is up to you to decide what you wish to convey.

The essence of digital signage and self-service kiosks is
to decide what you wish to convey to the customer.

Lars-Ingemar Lundström

Documentation and Training Manager, MultiQ

How to find the suitable applications for digital signage and self-service kiosks -Follow the customer’s route through the store

Try the customer’s route yourself to see where digital signage and self-service kiosks make sense, here are some hints.

In a store or in any public environment you can easily find several needs for information if you follow the customer’s path. This gives you important hints about where digital signage and self-service kiosks can be used in a successful way.

Starting outside the store you can affect the customer by screens in the store windows that display pull-in messages such as today’s irresistible offers. Next you can have welcome screens at the entrance (that may be combined with security camera images).

When entering the store there can be a “Welcome” screen with “Today’s offer”. This is also a suitable place to add images from security cameras. PVMs (Public View Monitors) with just security cameras are often located at the entrance to make visitors aware of the place having a surveillance system.  Why not use this location to have a combined PVM and digital signage screen?

In larger stores or in malls, way finder screens and touch panel monitors can help the customers to find various departments and products.

On top of general in-store TV channels that are adapted to different departments you can have POP (Point of Promotion) and POS (Point of Sales) screens placed next to individual products.

Web kiosks can give your customers in-store access to your web site or parts of the website. Even more efficient, are information kiosks that are designed for optimum in-store performance with touch panel monitors.

Customers standing in line in front of the cash register desks do not have much else to do than waiting. This creates an excellent opportunity for you to present your messages. By combining your advertising with a news ticker, stock market updates (in banks) or weather information, the experienced waiting time is reduced considerably.

At the cashier’s desk there is an opportunity to provide advertising that is related to what the customer has actually purchased.

Do not miss the opportunity to give the customer a “come Again” message as he or she leaves the store. Here you can inform about next week’s offers and you have an excellent opportunity to make the customer return.

There are lots of opportunities along the route of the customer. –Make sure not to miss any of them.
 

You can easily find more than a handful of applications for digital signage
and self-service kiosk along the customer’s route in a store.

Lars-Ingemar Lundström

Documentation and Training Manager, MultiQ

How to improve the shopping experience by creating an atmosphere related to the product?

How can digital signage be used to improve the shopping experience? Is digital signage just about advertising? No, much more than that, it can also add to the atmosphere in the store.

In the old days monitors used in stores were considered to be ugly, bulky things that were there just to provide some demonstration video of a product or to display security camera images. Today this is different. Now, digital signage, thanks to flat panel displays, can be used as a part of the decoration of a store or any venue. The fact that the monitors are thin and have narrow bezels means that the impression created by the monitor more or less only depends on the screen content.

It is important to remember that digital signage screens can be used to display other things than just commercials and slideshows with arguments on why to buy specific products. Digital signage can be used to relate to a particular environment or activity such as different kinds of sports or perhaps to fashion or other specific interests. This will affect the atmosphere. By adding sound effects and music, customer experience may be further increased.

You can use screens just to create a particular touch to a store. However a common way of using digital signage to add to the atmosphere is to mix commercial messages with video clips containing real action sports and leisure. This can easily be implemented into any kind of store. Sports such as golf, skiing and sailing are perfect examples. The content on the screens is intended to bring inspiration and catch interest. Using screens in portrait mode associates to traditional signs rather than to television.

Especially this strategy is popular in stores focused on a particular brand of a product.

All screens available in the store can contribute to the atmosphere. While not used by a customer, a touch panel monitor may show a “screen saver” that contain some video clips or other images that adds to the impression of the store.

The nice thing about digital signage is the atmosphere created by dynamic messages that can be adapted to the season.

Using digital signage to create an atmosphere can be used in many other areas than just in the sports, leisure and fashion businesses.  Using digital signage for decoration is highly underestimated.
 

Use the opportunity to let digital signage create an atmosphere
that is related to the particular brand or product.

Lars-Ingemar Lundström

Documentation and Training Manager, MultiQ

Why digital signage and self-service kiosks?

The first question that you may ask yourself is why should I invest in a digital signage or self-service kiosk system? Is it profitable? What does it add to my business? Is digital signage a good choice in relation to other ways of advertising? Will a self-service kiosk improve customer experience by reducing queues for the customers to get in touch with the staff in the store to ask product related questions?

Getting the attention and delivering the message to the right person at the right time   – That’s what digital signage and self-service kiosks are all about.

Catch people’s attention

Any location, where there are people, there is an opportunity to convey a message. Signage is a way to make use of this opportunity. Historically, static signs have been around for thousands of years. And for a very long time well-exposed locations have been used as advertising space. Today, such possibilities to affect people are more valuable than ever in the competition to catch people’s attention. 

The world is overwhelmed the ever increasing choice of information provided by commercial TV and the Internet. Therefore it becomes harder to reach to the customers using these media. Using physical spots where people pass through to expose the messages is a way to overcome these obstacles. Choice of information is less in the real world than on TV or when using your PC. This is what adds a significant value to the wall space in your store.

However, conventional signage has its limitations. The message is static and needs manual effort to be replaced. Replacing conventional signs is slow and you need to depend on the local staff or other people to do the job. Another limitation is the fact that the content on a sign does not adapt to the time of the day or to the person that is actually looking at the sign. To make best use of your advertising space it would have been desirable to be able to adapt the signs in such a way that the right content is shown to the right person at the right time. Digital signage and kiosks sort out these kinds of problems. Make it possible for you to use one of your most valuable assets, your advertising space, in the most efficient way.

Replace existing static sign with a simple slideshow

Content does not have to be very advanced. Just by replacing an existing static sign by a simple slideshow considerably increase the possibility to catch attention and to convey more information than the single sign. By adding a video clip with sound you increase the impact even more.

Some of the answers to why to use digital signage and kiosks can be:

• Your own premises may be the best place to advertise. Use digital signage and kiosks to make the most of it.
• You may have valuable advertising space in your premises that can be sold to others. Digital signage and kiosks are efficient and suitable means to do so.
• Avoiding printing which reduces costs and increase flexibility and decrease lead time for new messages.
• The signs can be controlled from anywhere you like. This is especially valuable if you have several stores or sites you want to control without being depending on the local staff.

In coming blog posts we will dig deeper into the possibilities of digital signs and kiosks. Also, we will take a closer look at how these signs can be used in your environment.

Do you make the best use of and leverage on your existing advertising space?

Lars-Ingemar Lundström

Documentation and Training Manager, MultiQ