How to Use Digital Signage to Improve the Shopping Experience

As technology matures, it becomes more affordable and as it becomes more affordable it transitions from being niche to being mainstream. Here, Display Technology explains how digital signage can help push forward your marketing strategy.

Turn wasted time into marketing time

Abandoned baskets are the bane of online retailers and there’s a similar phenomenon in the real world, which is possibly even more frustrating because it’s harder to measure.

If a customer is at the point of making a purchase but it isn’t urgent or essential at that moment, customers will consider the factor of time to decide whether or not it’s worth the final step. If your business is too busy for their tastes (and they don’t want to wait around in lengthy queues or slow checkout processes), then they’ll simply move along and you’ll lose the sale.

So how do you prevent customers from turning away? Turn waiting time into fun time for the customer and marketing time for you. What some businesses might not properly plan for is the placement of digital signage. Position your digital signage where it can be seen by waiting customers and use it to show entertaining and engaging content which also showcases your brand.

Encourage online engagement

Any online marketer will tell you there is value to being on social media; however, aside from raising brand awareness through your social channels, all businesses should have their own website and if you don’t already -- are you mad?!

Your website (and your twitter feed) can work just as well on a digital signage screen as it can a laptop, phone or tablet and if you’ve opted for an interactive touch screen display, customers can use your website right there in the moment to get to know your business better.

This is also a positive action, especially if you’ve placed your digital signage within your physical store or at an exhibition stall. If they’re already in a space where your products exist or staff are easily approachable, not only have you connected with your customer, your chances of receiving a sale or enquiry could increase.

If you’ve recently had a re-brand or invested in a new website and need some quick engagement to pick up sales and/or organic traffic, digital signage can provide you with some invaluable early traction by encouraging customers to go and visit your online platform. Obviously, you are going to need to offer them some sort of incentive to do this, which means your website needs engaging content.

Competitions are often a good choice as they have closing dates, which encourages customers to take action promptly. Small prizes can work very well; you can even offer promotional merchandise as prizes.

As a general rule, however, you’ll also want to have additional content for your customers to enjoy, ensuring your site doesn’t become a “giveaway” site.

Undertake accurate data collection

The importance of clean data has long been recognized and the implementation of GDPR has given it a whole new level of importance. Giving customers ownership of entering their own data into your system not only helps to keep your data clean, but also frees up human staff for other, more useful, tasks.