Over the last few years, the retail sector has transitioned from a product-centric business to a customer-focused industry. This means that customer experience has become the priority for many retailers. Across the world, organized retailers are focussing on creating a seamless, omnichannel shopping experience for their customers.
Research conducted by WBR proves that almost 80% of retailers believe that self checkout kiosks are crucial to enhance customer experiences. As a result, interactive digital kiosks, ranging from self-checkout terminals to interactive wayfinding devices, are increasingly becoming a part of brick and mortar store layouts.
Interactive self checkout solutions enhance in-person shopping by reducing the waiting time substantially, offering additional insights, optimizing time and employee efforts, and blending in the whole e-commerce experience within the store.
Not only do self checkout terminals greatly improve on time efficiency, they also allow for hyper personalised targeting to be carried out at a store level, while ensuring the sanctity of the overall brand.
Reduced Waiting Time
Checkout counters are usually bottlenecks in any retail environment. With the permeation of self service technology in the retail landscape, shoppers are increasingly preferring to go to stores that have automated checkout terminals. Self checkout terminals have been seen to significantly reduce waiting lines, leading to a better customer experience, eventually culminating in better sales.
Additional insight into the brands and products
Since we all know that brick-and-mortar retailers have limited space to display all of their inventories, interactive digital signage terminals can improve the retailers' in-store offerings by displaying products that may not be currently available on the stores’ racks. By creating a hybridized physical and digital shopping experience, retailers can maintain lower inventory quantities and more in-store product variety. Further, it can offer a unique opportunity to identify consumer needs and provide a highly customized experience as per each customer's behavior and past purchasing patterns.
E-commerce blended with an in-store experience
Retailers are now going the extra mile and putting in efforts to find interactive ways to engage with their customers and improve the in-store purchase experience. Creating a hybrid shopping experience-- one through which the physical store experience can integrate with that available online-- has become the focal point of many new retail strategies. A self-service kiosk turns customers into users enabling them to express their personal preferences and selections in a similar way they do online.
Providing a highly interactive and comfortable digital shopping experience in a physical store is often considered critical for success. As per the recent survey conducted by SOTI, it was surprisingly discovered that more than 60% of buyers preferred self-service platforms when procuring essentials. Theoretically, retail shopping can only be made more efficient and successful by using interactive tools, real-time data and integrated devices to deliver a hyper personalised experience to customers.
Why Endless Aisle?
Digital or endless aisles have been an effective way to reduce lost sales by offering a much broader product selection as compared to the physical display. Sometimes when an item or product is unavailable in the store, you can still make a purchase and have the product shipped directly to your address, or can get it collected from a nearby store. Self Service Terminals that are integrated with the online store thereby bring in the power and flexibility of e-commerce into brick and mortar ones.
These days beautiful and attention-grabbing interactive touch screens form a key component of store layouts. They have made it easier for customers to make online purchases, read product reviews, or locate an item in the store.
Some of the features of interactive terminals in the retail landscape include:
- Real-time analytics, data monitoring, and CMS.
- Motion or face detector to attract customers.
- Check information such as product reviews or feedback with barcode scanners.
- Integrate call to action with idle screens.
- Easy checkout options.
- Wayfinding: turn by turn directions to specific locations within the store as per the product or category.
The primary goal of creating a hybridized digital and physical shopping experience is to:
- Prevent lost revenue due to the unavailability of a product that the customer is looking for.
- Provide a delightful shopping experience with an innovative touch by creating brand awareness and building brand loyalty.
- Materialize in-store visits to strengthen online relationships.
- Procure more information about the demographics and customers' intent in the store by capturing data such as users' age and gender to provide a better experience.
Future of digital signage
Digital signage solutions can easily augment the in-store customer journey by adding value to customer experiences beyond the original intent to purchase. Now, even new and upcoming retailers can access next-gen technologies to entice customers, entertain them, and add value to how they search for and select products. But as with all new investments, retailers of all sizes need a robust content and delivery strategy to create more engaging, and loyalty-generating experiences in their physical stores.