Traditional Signage vs. Digital Signage: How Does It Affect Your Customer Experience?

Not too long ago, the only choice for businesses that wanted to communicate with their customers was traditional signage like banners, posters, and vinyl adhesives. Today, digital signs have changed the way businesses communicate and pushed them to rethink the customer experience. While traditional signs display a single message and can only be updated with great time and effort, digital signs can rotate through multiple messages or advertisements to catch the attention of numerous target audiences. By now you see them everyday in banks, restaurants, and retail stores. 

However, many businesses still haven’t made the switch from traditional signs. As a result, customer messaging can remain stagnant for weeks or months. With digital signage technology more affordable and easy to implement than ever before, you might be considering adding it to your business.  There are multiple advantages to digital signage that companies use to increase their business and meet more of their customers’ needs.

Instantly Update Messaging

The ability to update signage as needed benefits both the customers and the business. Real-time updates can help spread important messages quickly to your customers. Restaurants can use real-time updates to highlight the manager’s special or other sales. An image of a milkshake or tasty looking salad can greatly influence customers’ decisions. 

Digital signs are especially useful during different stages of COVID-19 as safety messaging from local, state, and national health agencies constantly change. The ability to quickly edit signage while staying up to code is a time and cost-saving venture for businesses. Customers can quickly learn the necessary precautions needed to be inside an establishment the moment they step into your business. 

Share Social Media Posts

Younger customers active on social media are often looking for ways to increase the places people can see their posts. Restaurants, sports stadiums, and wedding venues use their digital displays to show the pictures fans have taken while enjoying their favorite sandwich or rooting for the home team. The use of hashtags makes posts easy to find and curate the content shown on digital displays. 

Adding customers’ social media posts increases engagement with customers at your venue and gives them a way to share what they love about your company. The ability to see themselves on a screen increases the likelihood of customers posting on social media, giving you a greater brand awareness regardless of whether their post makes it on the big screen. 

Automatically Scale Campaigns

You can increase the output of the campaigns created by your digital marketers with the automatic scaling capabilities of digital signage. Instead of retooling and resizing images for multiple sizes of signs, your ads can fit on any screen you wish. 

Add Sound To Displays

Digital signs are often displayed through televisions or other audio-enabled devices. Adding audio to your images is an innovative way to create engaging customer experiences. You can appeal to another sense of your customers instead of relying on their imagination only. There are numerous ways to enhance your displays with audio: customer testimonials, pleasing sound effects like sizzling or carbonation bubbles, and songs from popular artists. 

Although digital signs are great assets, they don’t run themselves. Displays and associated technology need to be managed to ensure they add value and don’t turn customers away. It may be necessary to hire a computer systems analyst to make sure displays are functioning properly and to troubleshoot any issues. 

Cleary Show Customers’ Orders

Too often, customers don’t realize there was a mistake on their order until after they receive their receipt, or worse, once they get their order. Besides the disappointment for the customer (even if it was their fault), this mix-up can extend wait times, disgruntle customers, and waste resources to remake the order. This can be avoided by using digital displays to clearly show what the cashier put into the computer, so customers know exactly what is on their ticket. 

Speak to Multiple Audiences With The Same Sign

Digital signage gives companies the ability to market more than one thing. Electronics departments use digital displays to advertise the newest movies, games, and gadgets to entice shoppers already in the store. Displays located in store entrances or checkout lanes can market to younger customers with celebrities’ endorsements while targeting their parents a moment later with advertisements about fitness classes or time-saving products.  

Save Costs

The costs associated with digital signage is dropping as technology advances. Digital signages allow companies to drop their contracts with sign and banner makers adding additional savings. Digital displays can be updated remotely as well, reducing the need for employees to change signs by hand. The ability to fit more ads into the same space allows companies to increase the efficiencies of their marketing efforts. The images used for digital signage are easily transferred to other digital sources like social media or billboards. 

Better Use Of Data

Digital signage is a great way to show a product’s features to customers. Rotating the highlighted features can help to determine which features most effectively convince customers to make a purchase. It also provides a new way to collect data. You can test the success of the language or images used on digital screens to determine their effect on the customer experience. Using different displays at different locations will give your marketers and data scientists the information needed to determine the best marketing efforts. 

Digital Signs Mean a Better Customer Experience

Even with their upfront costs of displays and set up digital signage is worth the investment for your company. It catches the attention of more customers and offers useful features that physical displays can’t match. Until augmented or virtual reality becomes viable for companies, digital signs will be the best signage option.