Digital signage can take your customers’ retail experience from regular to spectacular, leading to tremendous benefits for your business. 

These benefits include increased sales, more foot traffic, highly engaged and loyal supporters, differentiation from competitors, and many more. 

For the customers, digital signage can help them make smarter shopping decisions, maximise their budget, and connect with a brand that “gets them!” 

Below, we explore 15 impactful ways digital signage can transform your retail store experience. We also briefly examine factors to consider when choosing a digital signage solution. 

As customers continue to shuttle offline and online, retail stores that bridge the gap between the two channels with interactive elements and digital signage will win. 

1. Assists in upselling and cross-selling

Have you ever shopped on Amazon and seen various recommendations, like the “Frequently bought together” suggestion? That’s the idea of cross-selling. 

Upselling entices customers to buy a more expensive but related product. It can be as simple as offering a customer a discount if they upgrade from a smaller size to the bigger size of a detergent or burger.  Cross-selling requires complementary products and, thus, some problem-solving to find the best combinations. 

When thinking about cross-selling and upselling, the best approach is to ask, “What products or services can we add to create more value for the customers?

For example, you can suggest products like face lotion and/or post-shave balm for men’s grooming and shaving products. 

There are many creative ways to use digital signage to nudge customers into making more purchases. You can play digital displays promoting goods and products that go together in popular store sections. 

You may also encourage customers at checkout. For example, a digital display may show upsell or cross-sell ads like potential add-ons and additional packages as the attendant scans a product during checkout. 

This way, the recommendation is personalised to the customer’s needs and purchase. 

2. Helps with queue management 

Using digital signage for queue management can help eliminate or minimise peak hours’ chaos. Customers will feel more valued and enjoy a better store experience with a less chaotic process.  

Those in the queue can see sequential ticket numbers or names on the digital signs placed in waiting or checkout areas of the store. 

These queue management systems often send real-time updates on the customer’s position in the queue via text, email, or even WhatsApp. 

This helps customers manage their time in the store well. Rather than wait in the queue, they may window shop around the store and probably add more to their cart. 

3. Increases foot traffic

The higher the foot traffic, the more sales you’ll likely make. While drawing repeat customers is good, attracting new customers presents an ample opportunity. 

This is even more important considering that foot traffic in the retail industry has yet to recover from the decline of the pandemic. Data from March 2023 shows that foot traffic to brick-and-mortar stores was still less by 8.1% compared to what it was in March 2019.

This data summarises that competition for foot traffic is even more fierce now. As such, it’s imperative to employ different strategies to win. 

Some of these strategies include implementing an omnichannel approach and using engaging retail digital displays to draw and lure window shoppers into your store. 

Window digital displays “pull” customers in. Here are a few ways digital signage draws more customers:

• Bold and eye-catching displays attract prospects.

• Digital signage increases your brand awareness.

• Window displays make your store appear modern, and some customers may simply choose your brand as a “means of self-expression and also as a lifestyle beacon.”

• Window displays can remind the shopper to get an item they ought to get. And with one positive experience, they may become long-term customers.

• The dynamic nature of digital signs makes your advertising fresh. 

• Personalisation allows you to reach multiple target audiences in a span of minutes. You can amplify back-to-school content as the school holiday winds up or increase the frequency of scented candles towards February 14th. 

Window digital displays can run 24/7 and attract potential customers even during closing hours. This makes window displays perfect for increasing your brand awareness. 

To learn more, read: Increasing Foot Traffic: How Digital Signage Draws More Customers.

4. Helps provide immersive and interactive in-store experience

We’ve mentioned how foot traffic has not fully recovered post-pandemic and how window digital screens can help funnel more people through your doors. 

However, that’s only one-half of the coin. The other half is ensuring customers enjoy their experience while in your store. Digital screens can also help with the latter.  

The MIT Sloan School of Management describes this as transitioning physical stores from just showrooms, but a place to experience your brand with about 15% of the shopping aisle dematerialised. 

Some of what may take this space are interactive digital screens for customers to do many things, mainly to receive guidance on what to buy. 

A primary case study of such use cases is virtual sampling stations. For example, Adidas’ store on Oxford Street in London features two digital “fitting rooms.” 

One of these fitting rooms can automatically detect the product the customer is holding and then provide more information about the product. The other room allows customers to choose a real-world environment and see how the products fit against different backgrounds. 

You can implement something similar but not quite immersive with QR codes, which take customers to videos or images of the products in action or to user-generated content and reviews. 

5. Fosters loyalty

Digital signs provide a great avenue to show customers some of your loyalty programs or channels. You can use signs to showcase and promote membership perks if you have one. 

Share all the perks attached to your membership club in a customer-centric way. That is, helping customers envision how the perks will benefit them. 

Similarly, you can encourage customers to sign up for your newsletters, follow you on social media, or download your mobile app. 

The key is to ensure there’s a reward for taking that action and there’s a sense of urgency. Customers naturally are reluctant to take action without asking, “What’s in it for me?”

You can use QR codes to facilitate the signup process. Encouraging multichannel participation is one of the ways to bridge the gap between your physical stores and your online presence, providing ways to engage customers even when they’re not close.

6. Increases customer engagement and dwell time

Unlike traditional signs, digital signs often trigger the need for a second look because of eye-catching content. More importantly, it also encourages longer dwell time because there’s more than one piece of content on each digital display. 

Dwell time is often associated with search engine optimisation, but the same theory applies to digital signs. 

Semrush defines dwell time as “the amount of time users spend on a page from the search results before returning to the search engine results page (SERP).”

With carefully curated content tailored to your audience, you can get your customers to pay attention to your digital screens actively. Thus keeping them engaged while waiting or shopping and spending more time in your store. 

The Wall Street Journal reports that encouraging customers to spend more time in your store can lead to a 40% increase in sales. As The WSJ summarised, “the slower customers shop, the more they spend.”

Make your customers spend more time in the store through curated content, trivia, brand history, etc.

It’s important to note that slow shopping can also arise from negative experiences. Customers may struggle to find their way around the store, untrained staff, poor aisle arrangements, etc. So, investigate slow shopping, which is not translating into sales.

You may also like: Top 15 Tips for Engaging Customers Through Interactive Signage.

7. Improves perceived wait times 

We’ve touched on using in-store digital signage solutions for queue management and how that can reduce wait times. You can leverage digital displays without queue management tools to keep customers occupied while waiting. 

Actual and perceived wait time strongly influence customer experience and satisfaction, hence why you should prioritise them. 

Per Trustpilot, “a totally satisfied customer contributes 2.6 times as much revenue as a somewhat satisfied customer, and 14 times as much revenue as a somewhat dissatisfied customer.” 

Playing digital content to customers while they wait can create the perception that the waiting time is fair and decent. You can share your brand history, ongoing projects, promotions, social media content, etc. 

In addition to leveraging digital signs to shape perceived wait times, you must manage expectations better. 

For example, it is essential to provide the customer with a reasonable timeline for how long it will take to bring out a product from storage. This will help them manage their time better. They can window shop in your store or step out for other reasons. 

Ultimately, the goal is to ensure customers don’t feel like they’re waiting more than they need to. 

You may also like: 15 Effective Ways to Reduce Perceived Wait Times (Explained!).

8. Improves customer service and reduces employee workload

How often do customers call employees to ask for information or the other? Plenty right? The questions can vary from what materials a product is made with to how to set up a product and much more. 

So, the employee comes and provides answers to the customer’s questions. However, there’s usually some friction to this process. 

Sometimes, the employee with the best knowledge is busy on another task, and the customer is also pressed for time. 

Digital screens can reduce the dependence on employees and increase customer satisfaction. It also has the added benefit of providing accurate and real-time information on a product. 

Customers can find out various details about a product, including inventory levels, pricing, ingredients or materials, reviews, energy consumption, ongoing promotions, and much more. 

9. Improves in-store navigation

Digital displays can also help customers find their way while shopping. Have you ever entered a big retail store and walked around multiple times, traversing the same aisle before seeing the product you were looking for? 

This often happens because you automatically expect certain products to be arranged close to each other, e.g., cereals and milk. However, some stores may put their products slightly differently or have more complex layouts, prolonging the customer’s search. 

Digital screens can provide easy-to-follow directions for customers to find their way around your store. 

There are also interactive kiosks where customers can enter the name of a product and receive directions for its exact location. 

Helping customers find their way removes another potential issue that frustrates them. 

10. Facilitates data collection and analytics

Some retail digital signage systems collect data as the customer interacts with them. This can vary from demographic data to dwell time and much more. 

While some of this requires sophisticated technology, you can still collect data via QR technology. 

For example, you can track people visiting your website from the store QR code to see if their behaviour differs from that of those who come through other channels. 

It may also help you understand your audience better as you can capture details such as phone type, gender, age, browser type, etc. 

These details can help refine your offers and digital signage content by taking assumptions out of the equation. 

For example, let’s say you find out that many of your customers use the Brave internet browser. This can mean many things, including that you have a tech-savvy segment in your audience and are more likely to experiment. 

You can leverage this information to create unique promotions and engagement tactics targeting this group. Moreover, you can outrightly create surveys for people to fill out using QR codes. 

11. Provides real-time updates

Imagine placing an order for traditional signage to communicate specific information in your store. Unfortunately, before delivery, the information is no longer relevant or accurate. 

Bummer! That’s time, effort, and money down the drain. 

The bottom line is that traditional signage is time-consuming and requires more resources to provide updated information. Digital signage, on the other hand, is known for its agility, allowing you to publish relevant, engaging, vital, and timely content your customers will find helpful.   

As the need arises or the prevailing circumstances change, you can respond quickly and push relevant information to all the screens in your digital signage system. 

12. Increases personalisation and targeted marketing

With digital signage, you can tailor each content to meet a specific customer preference or shopping habit. Personalisation and targeted marketing require data. 

It can be as simple as mining seasonal trends from your sales data or as sophisticated as using mobile apps and Bluetooth beacons to track previous purchases. 

Using the digital signage software scheduling feature, you can create content matching these seasonal trends and broadcast them at the appropriate time and day. 

For example, you may run motivational content about taking charge of the day and show coffee and breakfast sandwiches promos for a 9-5 audience in the morning. 

You may then switch to a “break a leg” message and show a happy hour promo for folks looking to wind down in the evening. 

For personalisation, you may link the sales software to your digital signage software such that certain products on the cart will trigger specific content. 

13. Saves cost

Although digital signage may have a higher startup cost, it’s more cost-effective over the long run. You can eliminate delays that the logistics of designing, printing, and installing traditional signage brings. 

Moreover, you can quickly remedy any error or inaccuracies in design or content with a few clicks, giving you peace of mind. Being able to schedule content also makes it easier to plan in advance. 

14. Strengthens brand image and awareness

Having your brand name, logo, and colours constantly in the face of your customers can shape your image positively, mainly when you publish high-quality, memorable content. 

Beyond your brand elements, sharing your brand identity, story, history, vision, and community projects can help create trust and a special connection with your customers. 

It would help if you shared your story using a unique and authentic narrative to create a compelling brand story. 

Customers who resonate and connect with your brand will buy from you and become strong advocates of your brand, helping you share your story with others. 

You must match the brand awareness efforts with a positive in-store experience as this transitions customers from occasional to habitual buyers. 

15. Boosts sales and revenue

Overall, all the ways a digital signage solution can revolutionise your retail store experience lead to one thing: increasing sales and profit. Loyal and engaged customers buy more. 

More customers through the door is potentially higher revenue for that day. The ability to display cross-sell and upsell promotions can also significantly add to your sales pool. 

You can subtly influence purchasing decisions even when the customer isn’t planning to get the product. Per this Retail Dive article, 84% of Americans reported having made impulse buys. 

People make impulse buys all the time, from the customer who buys an additional food item because they saw it on digital menu boards to the customer who got four units of a product despite planning for one because there was a buy one get one free promo.

Choosing the best digital signage solution

Every retail store is different and would have different requirements when choosing a digital signage solution. Some of the factors to consider include:

Your end goal and needs

The digital signage software you choose must match your vision and ambition.  You may only require a simple, no-frills solution to display promotions and brand videos, while another store will require a more sophisticated option. 

So, assess your needs and goals and tally the same against potential solutions. One essential part to note as you research a solution is the ease of implementation. 

Alignment with your industry

There are digital signage software specifically designed for specific industries. Furthermore, some are geared towards enterprise brands with more complex needs or towards smaller brands. 

You need to find that sweet spot where the solution fits your brand like a glove, industry, and size-wise. 

Potential for scalability 

Say your needs expand in the future. Can the software still accommodate your growth and increased expectations? So, prioritise solutions that you can stay with as your needs grow. 

Your budget

Budget matters. Your goals and the size of your digital signage ambition will determine how much you spend. 

For more details on other factors to consider when shopping for digital signage software, read this: Cost-Effective Digital Signage Solutions (Read This First!). 

Takeaway: Create memorable experiences, and maximise revenue opportunities with digital signage

Improve your retail store experience with digital signage, empowering your customers with engaging content and personalised interactions. 

By leveraging this technology, you enhance customer satisfaction, drive sales, and increase foot traffic. 

Seamlessly manage queues, provide immersive in-store experiences with interactive digital signage, and foster loyalty through targeted promotions and membership perks. 

Ultimately, digital signage is your key to revolutionising your retail store, creating memorable customer experiences, and maximising revenue opportunities.

Ready to transform your customers’ retail store experience with digital signage? Get Started with Luna Screens today!