Increase Foot Traffic with Digital Signage

Shopping has become an enjoyable experience for a long time now. Customers want to be entertained and emotionally touched. The emotional connection can be achieved with attractively prepared and interactive multimedia content on large digital display boards or monitors.

attract Walk-in customers in shopping mall
Walk-in customers in shopping mall

In this blog post, I have collected interesting tips for you on how you can use digital signage to increase the attention of your walk-in customers and contribute to higher sales in the long term.

What is meant by Foot Traffic or Walk-in Customer?

Foot traffic or walk-in customers are occasional customers who happen to stop by your store or bistro and may buy something. They are usually found in city centers or pedestrian zones, and they purchase the product of their interest in different stores. They buy spontaneously and often make accurate price and market analyses while they are there.

Potential customers, on the other hand, are not real customers and are categorized as a buyer of a particular product or service based on the results of market research.

There is also money to be made from walk-in customers, but no retail company will primarily want to attract only walk-in customers. Rather, the aim is to retain walk-in customers and use them to expand the existing customer base, who ideally remain loyal to the store for a long time. Digital signage technology is a possible measure to increase walk-ins.

The article on In-Store Marketing explains how digital signage also helps convert walk-in customers into repeat customers.

How to increase the attention of Walk-in Customers?

How do I draw attention to my business? How can I appeal to customers and what tips do I need to follow? Every retail store owner is looking for answers to these questions about to achieve sales increases through higher customer loyalty. In practice, the desire for higher sales can only be realized if special marketing language succeeds in attracting the attention of potential customers.

Those who wait for a miracle and hope that walk-in customers will come of their accord will fail miserably. In retail marketing, nothing is left to chance, and proven methods of digital signage are often used.

Public Image

According to studies on customer experience, it has proven particularly effective when customers are presented with exciting background information on products right where they need it. Digital signage marketing is effective even before the customer enters the store. A potential customer can make his or her first acquaintance with the store at a bus stop, where advertising for the store is broadcast on a digital display board.

The store window and the store entrance are also ideal for attracting more visitors through product advertising or target-group-specific advertising campaigns. Inside a store, waiting areas in front of cash registers and changing rooms are ideal for this purpose. In the product areas, customers can be encouraged to buy more through product application videos.

Milliseconds decide

The first 250 milliseconds are regularly the deciding factor in whether a customer will love or avoid a store. So, how can you convince the customer right at the first impression? How do I get the attention of visitors and increase foot traffic? The customer's first contact with the store, whether in the store window or the store entrance, must be perfect – external impressions are therefore essential.

Story-Telling

The focus here is on storytelling. The story that entices the customer to enter the store must absolutely continue in the interior. This story must not end abruptly due to a wholly different interior design, be it a color combination or staff clothing that does not match the exterior advertising. An attentive customer will immediately recognize this inconsistency and, in the worst case, leave the store again.

The Store Entrance

Digital signage solutions can be used in a variety of ways. Today, a broad portfolio of smart applications exists that can support retail in the store entrance area. These include the following digital signage applications:

  • Digital welcome display in the entrance area
  • display for social media channels
  • digital product information and pricing displays
  • Interesting and explosive facts around products on offer
  • interactive touch displays showing product promotions and price promotions

Small screens as sales table displays

Small 10-inch displays work particularly well as sales counter displays, presenting customers with product descriptions and useful content about items. At checkout counters, interactive monitors with touch capabilities can be used to provide customers with information about customer benefit programs.

Digital display panels are changeable and attract walk-in customers with constantly changing content and moving images. Customers are particularly receptive to moving images and get carried away by them. Monitors advertise offers or particularly interesting products in this way.

Shop Window Signage

The rules of window dressing are simpler than you think. Contrasting and atmospheric colors, as well as moving images, captivate passers-by and encourage them to buy products. Thanks to digital signage technology, any storefront can be made appealing and atmospheric. A digital signage CMS helps to promote popular products in the window display area in a flexible way.

The strength of digital displays lies unquestionably in moving images, thanks to which the attention of passers-by can be attracted. After all, conventional print advertising on billboards is not even noticed by potential customers and does not bring the hoped-for success. Once the attention of visitors has been captured, further mechanisms such as facial recognition can be exploited to create further product purchase incentives through the targeted placement of advertising content.

There are many other tips for successful window display. However, the combination of digital display screens with conventional window elements such as mannequins, spotlights, as well as decorative paper has proven itself in practice and can bring up to 30% more customers according to various studies.

Personnel

The long wait for the freelancer is a thing of the past thanks to digital signboards. Customers can quickly and intuitively access all the prices they are interested in, as well as product details, on digital signboards without taking up the time of a staff member. Your staff can finally devote their time to more important things and optimize sales, instead of revealing the same information to customers over and over again.

Thanks to the Internet connection, the prices on the interactive and digital price boards are always up-to-date and enable a direct query of the product stock if required. The advantages mentioned not only save time, but also bring potential savings in personnel costs. And if any information is not satisfactory, the customer still has the option of calling the nearest free specialist to the digital terminal for advice.

How Digital Signage support You to increase Foot Traffic?

Sell umbrellas when it rains. Digital signage fulfills this mantra perfectly with its timeliness and timely adjustments. Digital sandwich boards and displays with or without touch function draw the attention of walk-in customers in a variety of ways.

Whether through moving images, high-contrast and bright colors, or interactivity, the possibilities are endless. There are endless application possibilities to create purchase incentives for certain products or services.

An appealing and uniform design of the entrance area, the shop window and product area with digital signage solutions, as well as a carefully selected display of advertising content. This will lure passing passers-by into the store and encourage them to make a purchase.

In addition, digital signage can be seamlessly integrated into so-called smart retail techniques.

Conclusion

Digital signage is an extremely useful tool for sales promotion and customer retention because they generate a dynamic and memorable shopping experience. That's why digital display screens or terminals contribute more to the retention of walk-in customers, thanks to animated images and smart components such as face and gesture recognition.

Have you thought about enhancing the shopping experience in your store with an advanced digital signage application as well?

Further Information on the topic of Retail

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Gravatar Nikolaos Sagiadinos
Author: Niko Sagiadinos
Developer & Co-Founder SmilControl – Digital Signage
Visit me on: LinkedIn or GitHub

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