The Future of Shopping - How Digital Signage is Redefining Retail Experiences

Redefining Retail Experiences With Digital Signage

You've heard it everywhere – E-commerce is a booming industry and is growing exponentially. However, research shows that offline shopping still remains a crowd favorite. Nearly one-third of U.S shoppers find the need to feel and touch an item before bringing out their wallet.

This is big news for all retailers out there.

But here’s the catch.

What worked for your retail store decades ago won’t cut it now. Present-day customers expect seamless Customer Experiences (CX) when they shop. Interestingly, over 60% of customers say CX is even more important than price when they shop!

With this, how do you level up to give customers the retail experience they want? That’s where digital signage comes in.

Research shows that digital signage in retail is an effective experience provider, evoking aesthetically pleasing or decision-making cues in customers. Let’s see how you redefine retail experiences with digital signage.

Send real-time updates

Seamless customer experiences are a result of streamlined processes. A crucial part of a well-oiled operating system is effective communication. If your employees are aligned and clear about their roles, they’re more likely to perform more efficiently.

Using digital signage helps you communicate in real time with your employees. You can install display screens at workstations and counters to share real-time updates. These include shift schedules, best practices, and standard operating procedures.

One of the digital signage's standout features is its emergency notification system. During natural disasters and security threats, you can switch from your current signage to display emergency messages in seconds.

This way, you’ll alert both your staff and customers about safety instructions, best exit routes, and safety protocols to ensure prompt action. If your display network spreads across multiple locations, you can share the emergency alerts only to screens in affected areas to avoid panic and confusion.

Make shopping engaging and interactive

Interactive digital signage takes customer engagement to another level. Instead of flipping through outdated magazines, you can scroll through touchscreen displays, scan QR codes, and even use motion recognition to interact with the signage.

For instance, customers can look up the coffee table they’ve been eyeing on a simple-to-use kiosk. They can search through the catalogue, set appropriate filters, and enter appropriate search items to find what they’re looking for.

Besides the convenience, these self-service features also allow customers to shop at their own pace and self-serve on their terms. Research shows a growing trend in self-service demands, where 85% of Gen Z consumers opt for self-checkout when it's available!

Sync-up information automatically

Pricing in retail is dynamic. Most times, switching out pricing charts and labels can be a cumbersome process. It’s even more difficult for large stores and malls that spread across huge areas.

This is where digital shelf labels can help.

You can sync prices from your spreadsheets automatically onto your in-store labels. This ensures customers get up-to-date pricing information for sale items, fresh pieces, and combos. This saves them a lot of time asking for price changes or getting the wrong quotes.

These shelf labels also help you organize and manage stock information in your stockroom. For example, it can flash low-stock warnings and restocking updates to ensure systematic inventory management.

Enable cost-effective advertising

If you’re scaling your business, we know advertising is an avenue you’ve tapped into.

When creating an advertising campaign, your aim is to spend to get returns. But if you’re looking at traditional advertising:

• An average billboard ad for most US cities starts at $1500
• A feature in local magazines cost about $900-$1200
• Printed pamphlets vary according to design, paper quality, edits, and more

With these traditional methods, you spend a lot of money on just ONE ad — every new update costs more money and labor (which costs money, too).

That’s why the digital route is more affordable in the long run. Using the same screens, you can display ads strategically whenever you have ongoing campaigns. The benefits:

• Manage and adapt ad content according to customer response without additional costs
• Share sale announcements, new product launches, service upgrades, and more by simply scheduling the relevant content
• Play engaging promotional videos to encourage last-minute purchases during checkouts

Increase brand awareness

Brands using digital signage have observed a 47.7% in brand awareness. With vivid displays and eye-catching visuals, these dynamic screens are unmissable and stand out. They not only attract attention, but they also induce a high recall rate among viewers. The reasons why are because:

• Humans process visuals faster than plain text
• 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual
• Visuals with color encourage people to read text by 80%

That’s why digital signage is so effective in creating lasting impressions. Knowing this, you can now strategize to create more compelling visuals to ensure consistent and memorable visuals for your business.

With digital signage, you won’t have to worry about your signage having inconsistencies in font, style, color palette, and more across multiple locations. Using a centralized dashboard, you can share and manage your display content easily to ensure each screen reflects your brand consistently.

Over to you

With digital signage, you're set to transform retail spaces with a modern touch. As CX grows to be a crucial benchmark for businesses, digital signage is redefining the norm with dynamic customer experiences.

As retailers, embracing this solution means staying ahead and relevant, offering customers memorable shopping journeys. To get started, assess your current customer engagement strategies and identify where digital signage can add value (if you're yet to adopt it). You can then scour the market for a solution that best suits your needs. Finally, roll out a phased implementation success, and witness the results!

The future of retail is vibrant, interactive, and digital. Are you ready to be part of the revolution?

Ecommerce