Before diving into the importance of your storefront and the creative tips you can do with your digital retail signage, you first need to understand a bit about retail growth.
As of 2023, researchers believe that global retail sales will experience growth of 3.9% and 29.3 trillion in total sales, which is less than their projection at the start of the year (4.7% to over $30 trillion). In fact, Retail’s growth has been on a downhill slope since 2021.
Customers’ shopping habits, preferences, and spending budgets are shifting along with economic changes. As e-commerce hits a milestone in 2022, retailers need to think outside the box to deliver their campaigns effectively to reach the right customers.
Essential & Creative Tips for Your Retail Stores
With the cost of living rising, customers’ spending behaviors shifted with growing preferences for brands recommended by influencers and stores that offer great shopping experiences. While stores are maximizing their online presence to drive sales for e-commerce, retailers should also consider the following creative tips to bring up their games for physical stores:
1. Keep Your Customers In Mind
Keeping your customers in mind might be a no-brainer, but many business owners overlook this basic. With rising inflation, customers are more cost-conscious and constantly seek ways to save. In fact, studies revealed that 69% of customers are eliminating non-essential spending completely. Moreover, customers are shifting to cheaper products over alternative options, including having more trips to discount stores.
What does this mean to retailers? It does not necessarily mean price wars. It simply means that while raising your average selling prices to combat inflation, you should also keep your target customers’ budgets in mind. After all, if your target customers cannot afford what you’re offering, you’re not getting any business.
2. Educate Customers Through Signage
Put your digital retail signage to use. Emphasize the unique nature of your products or services by educating customers to help them learn about the products or services. By helping your customers understand more about your products and offerings, you can ensure customers feel confident about their purchasing decisions.
One thing to note is that research revealed customers demonstrate an increased preference for brands that prioritize sustainability. For example, you can use digital retail signage to tell your brand’s values or your product’s benefits and unique qualities.
3. Give Your Storefront a New Look
The signage displayed at your storefront is among the first things customers will see. Therefore, you should spend some time to figure out how to make your signage appealing to stand out from the crowd. If you are still using traditional paper signage, think twice.
80% of customers decide to enter stores after seeing the digital signage. There are various ways to be creative with your digital retail signage. You can launch vivid new product campaigns, captivating seasonal ads, and membership promotions. You can also use your digital retail signage to promote brand awareness. Compared to traditional channels, 84% of retailers believe digital retail signage is more successful in creating brand awareness.
4. Lighting Is the Key
Many businesses overlook the importance of lighting. You may be surprised that your merchandise will appear more elegant and attractive to your customers with proper lighting.
Lighting is more than just a switch. You can use different lighting across your store to set the mood, create ambiance, and highlight your products. For example, use different colors of lights at your window displays to create an aesthetic and welcoming vibe. For the interior, use overhead lighting and spotlights to highlight your featured merchandise and capture attention.
5. Keep Your Store Tidy
No one likes to shop at a messy store. Customers often perceive a messy store as dirty. In addition, shoppers find it difficult to navigate through the stores with cluttered aisles with ambiguous shelf tags. Moreover, having an unorganized store raises customers’ concerns, which leads to them not being willing to shop in a store they don’t trust.
Keeping your store clean is more than keeping your customers happy. It also makes them feel safe and healthy while browsing through your stores. Therefore, you want to ensure your store is tidy and clean to provide the best shopping experience and motivate customers to re-visit repeatedly.
6. Capture Opportunities at the Right Time
As mentioned previously, customers now have limited budgets to spend. Therefore, retailers should have different tackle plans to launch the appropriate campaigns at the right time. Moreover, store owners should monitor their competitors and adjust campaigns to win over the target customers.
75% of retailers agree that sales-driven content initiatives such as promotions, product advertising, personalized content, and value adds are most likely to grab customers successfully. The question is: how can retailers maximize their possibility to capture opportunities at the right time? Here is how digital retail signage comes into play.
Digital Retail Signage Is a Must-Have for Retail
Digital signage is a proven tool to create a powerful impact for customers and allow retailers to launch various campaigns without hassles. 71% of customers reported that advertising on digital signage stands out more than online ads. Moreover, 40% of shoppers agreed digital signage influences their purchasing decisions.
Digital retail signage comes in many forms: LED, LCD, TV displays, or video walls. You can choose the best displays that fit your business. With digital retail signage, you can push any update to your signage from any device with an internet connection.
With the right total solution provider, you can also do the following:
- Schedule any campaigns in advance
- Display personalized campaigns based on the weather
- Adjust promotions and advertisements
- Push updates to all or selected displays with minimal delays
- Structure your playlists into a hierarchical system and share across all or selected locations
- And more!
You can learn more about NexSigns’ Digital Signage solution and connect with us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube to get the latest info on digital signage!