Grab Your Customers' Attention with Graphical Customer Displays

Retire your outdated, two-line pole displays and really grab your customers' attention—and some additional revenue—with graphical customer-facing displays. These mini monitors integrate with your retail point of sale system. They not only display line-by-line transactions, but they can also display advertisements and promote upcoming events.

In addition to increasing customer satisfaction and improving ticket accuracy, they can also help drive higher profits and repeat business. You have your customers' attention on the screen—why not show them something they’re likely to be interested in?

Display advertisements on the mini monitor during idles times as well as while clerks are ringing up sales. Display one static ad, rotate multiple ads, or even add sounds and videos with a Flash animation. Ads can be loaded directly onto your point of sale workstations, or, in many cases, you can upload the ads to your server and distribute them to all workstations at once.

Grab Their Attention

Use customer-facing displays to advertise:

• New products
• New store locations
• Special offers
• Upcoming sales
• Online-only sales in your ecommerce store
• Customer loyalty program details
• Gift cards
• A new website or ecommerce store
• Neighborhood businesses
• Upcoming events

Get the Word Out

One of the most obvious ways to drive more sales is to display advertisements for specials that you are running in your store. It's a great way to spur impulse buys and to complement your paid advertising (TV, radio, newspaper, etc.) while directly targeting your most fertile audience—the customer standing right in front of you. The same holds true for getting the word out about hot new items you'll have available soon. You'll be rewarding your current customer base by letting them know first.

Many retailers also use the space to promote upcoming events, such as trunk shows, book signings, how-to clinics, or wine tastings. While you're probably using in-store signage or a newsletter to market it now, promoting an event on your customer displays will help drive even more traffic to it. And the best part—you're right there to answer any questions while they're fresh on your customers' minds.

Another common use for customer displays is to sell ad space to your vendors. Many vendors will purchase ad space from you so their name stays at the forefront of your customers' minds as they browse your store. Customers will associate buying that vendor's products from your store. If you sell ads to multiple vendors, use dynamic ads that rotate between them or their products.

Other retailers have found success trading ad space with non-competing businesses. As a retailer, you could find local restaurants that would be interested in swapping ad space with you. This would allow you to get your name in front of a completely new customer base. Swapping ad space with some of your town's cultural institutions may win you some goodwill from customers as well.

One very important thing to remember when purchasing new point of sale hardware is to verify its compatibility with your current retail software. Ideally, you should purchase everything—point of sale hardware and retail software—from one source. But if you have to purchase from multiple technology vendors, make sure that the customer displays are fully compatible with your retail software.

Customer-facing displays can be a highly effective tool for increasing revenues. Whether you want to promote discounts, new items, upcoming events, neighborhood businesses, or you just want to increase customer satisfaction and the accuracy of sales, customer-facing displays may be the answer for you.