A new study found that 54% of U.S. consumers now prefer shopping online over shopping in-person. This is a trend that could hint at impending trouble for brick-and-mortar outlets.
But what if you could appeal to customers who prefer online shopping with real-world offerings?
If you could replicate a customer’s digital journey in real life, you might see a significant uptick in interest from your target audience.
Thankfully, that’s not just wishful thinking. With digital signage, you can bring the best of online shopping to your retail stores to appeal to a broader base of customers.
Keep reading to learn how to get started.
The buyer’s journey is something that marketing and sales professionals spend a lot of time thinking about. But what is it, really?
Put simply, the buyer’s journey is the process that a buyer goes through before making a purchase.
That means the digital buying journey is the process someone goes through before making a purchase online.
If you understand the buyer’s journey well, you have much greater insight into what it takes to convert leads.
You can use this information to optimize your business processes so that there’s minimal resistance between your target audience and your products.
Ultimately, this can help you increase the number of sales that you get.
Experts tend to talk about a customer’s path to purchase in three distinct phases: awareness, consideration, and decision.
These form a funnel, which gradually pushes customers closer to purchase. We’ll take a closer look at each stage in this section to give you a better sense of what you’ll need to replicate in your stores.
Think of the awareness stage as the wide mouth of the funnel. It’s when a consumer is first aware that they have a problem they’d like to resolve.
They don’t understand the full scope of the problem at this stage. Rather, they’re starting to perform very early research to gain a better sense of what exactly they need to do to eliminate a pain point that they’re experiencing.
Next up is the consideration phase. At this point of the process, the buyer looks at potential solutions for the problem that they began researching in the first stage.
At this stage, a person isn’t necessarily comparing and contrasting solutions from different companies. Instead, they’re just trying to get a general sense of what’s out there.
Finally, we reach the decision phase. Here, buyers start taking a more serious look at specific solutions to their problems.
They may compare company reviews, reach out to sales reps and visit product pages on websites, among other actions. The customer finishes their buying journey after completing this stage.
You have to understand the benefits that customers get out of shopping online before you can replicate them in the real world.
So here are three things that you’ll want to be sure your in-person shopping experience has, in order to compete with its virtual counterparts.
Perhaps the biggest reason that 80% of Americans shop online is convenience. When you go online, you can get virtually anything that you want at any time of day from the comfort of home.
Of course, you can’t replicate that experience entirely in your retail store. But you can try to bring the principle of this type of convenience to your brick-and-mortar locations.
That could include making sure that you have enough kiosks so that customers don’t have to wait to use them. Or it might mean ensuring that you have everything a customer can order at a kiosk in stock.
However you do it, the key is just making sure that you make your in-person digital shopping experience as convenient for your guests as you possibly can.
Customers also generally enjoy a much greater selection online than they do in brick-and-mortar stores. That’s because online shops aren’t limited to keeping in stock only what they can stock on their shelves.
You can embrace this principle by ensuring that you have as many different products in stock at your physical stores as possible.
But it’s also a smart move to let customers buy things on your kiosks that you don’t have in stock at the moment. That way, you’re offering a real representation of the online shopping experience.
Customers also love to shop online because it’s typically much easier to perform research while shopping online.
With a few clicks, a shopper can read through testimonials, look up YouTube reviews and find all of the other information that they need to make a purchasing decision.
Many stores can’t match this, but yours can with a digital signage-based solution. In addition to allowing your customers to shop at your kiosks, consider also letting them do research.
It could help to make your customer’s buying journey feel more authentic to the one they have online.
Now that we know what a great digital buying journey looks like, let’s examine how to bring that experience to your store. Here are five steps to follow to get there.
Before you start designing what your in-store digital buying journey is going to look like, you need to know what your customers want. That is, you should know what they love about shopping online so that you know what you’re trying to replicate before diving into it.
The best way to figure that out is to ask your customers about their online shopping preferences directly. You may also want to perform market research to get a broader view of the preferences of the market segment that you’re targeting.
If you haven’t done so already, your next move is integrating your web store with your retail offerings. The goal here is to make the transition from online to brick-and-mortar as seamless as possible.
That could involve significant retooling of your online web store or minor tweaks depending on where you’re at currently.
Now you’re ready to choose the screens that you’re going to use to deliver this experience to your customers. You will likely need touch screens so that your guests can control their buying experience in your stores in the same ways that they do while shopping online.
The specific touch screens that are right for you could vary based on the industry that you’re in. For instance, a bar that wants to offer sports betting to its patrons may have different requirements than a clothing store.
If you’re not sure which type of screen is right for you, don’t be afraid to ask your customers! They’re going to be your best resource for this process.
Digital signage software is what powers real-world digital customer journeys. It gives you complete control over what you broadcast on your in-store screens and makes it super simple to make changes when you need to.
UPshow could be the perfect digital signage software for your store. It comes with a ton of built-in templates and the ability to make your own custom displays.
You can also update your UPshow displays through any internet-enabled device. So you don’t need to buy a ton of specialized equipment to get started.
Once you’ve set up your digital signage software, you can start giving your customers the real-world digital buying experience that you want. But don’t make the mistake of setting all of this up and then forgetting it.
The first iteration of a big change like this is rarely final. Instead, you will likely want to seek out feedback from your customers and track the performance of your digital buying kiosks over time.
This is important because it enables you to continuously refine your digital signage displays until they’re accomplishing the goals that you have for them. UPshow makes this easy to do.
Replicating the digital customer journey in real life can help your store stand apart from the competition. It could be just what you need to start driving the revenue increases that you’re after.
So why wait? You can take the first step towards accomplishing this by signing up for a free custom demo of UPshow today. We’ll show you exactly how we can help your store stand out with a comprehensive real-world digital buying experience.
Marketing is all about your return on investment. You want to spend as little as possible on advertisements to earn as much as possible in sales.
That’s why you should take a serious look at digital outdoor signs if you haven’t already. Research shows that every dollar spent on digital outdoor signs returns about $5.97––an ROI of nearly 500%!
We’ve put together this article on outdoor digital signage costs to tell you everything you need to know to get started with this rewarding marketing channel. Keep reading to learn more about digital business signs costs along with some inside tips and tricks on how to use them.
If you’re not familiar with them, digital outdoor signs can feel a little foreign. But they’re actually very straightforward. Here’s a quick overview of the most important things to know about them.
A digital outdoor sign can be any outdoor screen that shows an advertisement. For example, digital billboards, digital posters and standalone digital screens are all examples of digital outdoor signs.
Companies use these screens to engage their target demographic while they’re not already occupied with work or their personal lives. That’s one of the main reasons why this type of advertising has such a high ROI.
When it comes to outdoor digital signage, costs can vary significantly based on how large you want yours to be. Digital signage costs for a business can range from as little as $5,000 or as much as $200,000.
But, keep in mind, you don’t necessarily have to buy your digital outdoor sign. You also have the option of renting space on one if you want to advertise in a public location instead of outside of your business.
For example, the average outdoor business sign cost (monthly rental for advertising on a digital billboard ranges from $1,200 to $15,000. This may be a more cost-effective solution for you depending on what specifically you hope to achieve with an outdoor sign.
If you’re just getting into outdoor digital signage, you may be wondering if the outdoor digital signage prices are even worth it for your business. So here’s a look at why digital beats analog when it comes to outdoor signs.
Digital content is simply much more engaging than analog content. That’s because it’s often a higher resolution, which lets it make more of an impact on the space that it’s in.
The net result is that your target audience may form a more meaningful connection with your brand if you advertise with digital outdoor signs instead of analog ones.
Outdoor digital business signs also open up new avenues to express your brand’s personality in creative ways. For example, you can add things like animations and videos to digital signs. And you can rotate through several displays to tell more cohesive stories to your audience.
Another cool feature of digital media signage is that it’s much easier to update than its analog counterparts.
With a digital sign, you can make any changes that you want to your display on a simple internet-enabled device and then broadcast them to the sign instantly.
Compare that to the lengthy process of manually updating an analog display and it’s easy to see why digital outdoor signs are a preference for many companies.
You can also do more with a single screen when you go digital. You can rotate through multiple displays on a single screen so that you can do more with less.
Digital outdoor signs also let you integrate other types of marketing channels into your ads. For example, you can display something like a QR code on your digital outdoor sign to send people to your website or your app.
Another idea is to share your audience’s social media posts on your digital outdoor sign. This can be a really effective way to get more people to engage with your brand online.
Now that you know the value of a digital sign for a business, let’s take a look at how to set one up. Here’s a simple five-step plan you can use to add digital outdoor signage to your marketing plan.
First thing’s first. You need to decide where you’re going to display your content outdoors.
This could just be outside of your business if you’re going to purchase your own digital sign. Or you might be looking for an existing digital sign to advertise on.
If you’re looking to rent space on an existing sign, you’ll want to make sure that your ad is in a place that your target audience visits frequently.
For example, if your company targets professionals, look for outdoor digital signage space in an area where there are lots of professional employees out and about such as a financial district.
The next step is to figure out what type of content you’re going to share with your audience. There are a ton of different things that you can do here, so don’t be afraid to try a few different samples before making a final call.
You may even want to run your design ideas by a focus group made up of members of your target audience. Doing so could help to make sure that you get as much out of your outdoor advertisement as possible.
The next step is to pick a digital signage software that will bring your content idea to life. UPshow is perfect for this. It lets you choose from a number of easy digital templates or create your own idea from scratch.
You can also make updates to the designs that you create on UPshow from any internet-enabled device.
Now you’re finally ready to start sharing the ads that you create with your audience. Doing that is as easy as clicking a button on your digital signage software application.
Just because your ad is now visible on an exterior digital signage in a prime location, it doesn’t mean that your job is over.
UPshow makes that easier to do by giving you access to a host of useful analytical features. Taking advantage of these will let you know when you need to make changes to your ads to continue making the type of marketing progress that you want.
We can tell all about the most important benefits of outdoor digital signage. But coming up with your own ideas can still be tough. So to get you started, here are three amazing examples f how some big companies leveraged their outdoor digital displays to get people talking.
Google recently ran a campaign that showed how to create outdoor advertisements that are truly meant for the location that you select. The company placed the ads throughout London and showed Google search results for things to do in the summer.
The campaign was a great example of how engaging this type of advertising can be to an audience.
With this ad, McDonald’s showed just how creative you can get with digital outdoor signage. The world-famous brand didn’t even include any writing on this ad campaign.
Instead, it opted for a uniquely-shaped digital sign to impart the feeling of eating a McDonald’s hamburger to passers-by. It’s a really good example of how you can leverage digital outdoor signs to create advertisements that are truly perfect for your brand.
With this ad series, Bumble has provided another great example of what is possible with electronic signs for businesses. The popular dating app opted for bright, bold lettering that makes light of a tough situation.
Your brand could consider doing something similar with its outdoor ad campaigns. Telling a bit of a joke is a good way to capture the public’s attention.
Then you can include identifying features of your brand to tie the good feeling that someone gets from seeing a joke to your company. Bumble does this expertly in this campaign.
When you’re ready to get started with outdoor digital signage, UPshow has you covered with a wide variety of digital signs for your business. Our digital signage costs aren’t only cost-effective but they also give you complete control over your ads, allowing you to unlock the full benefits of this marketing channel.So why wait? You can take the first step towards getting started with digital outdoor signs by signing up for a free custom demo today.
Your customers’ experience at your restaurant starts with their ordering process. So if you want to make sure that you get off on the right foot with them, you have to optimize ordering.
If you’re not sure how to do that, no worries. You’re in the right place.
We’ve put together this article to tell you 5 things that could be holding your customers’ ordering experience back and 3 things you can do about it.
Let’s get into it.
The rise of delivery and online ordering has had a huge impact on restaurants in recent years.
But while it’s great to make that a priority at your restaurant, you can’t neglect your customers’ in-person ordering experience. Here’s why.
Cultivating loyal customers is one of the main goals of every restaurant. But one of the most-cited reasons for not returning to a restaurant is long wait times.
So you need to make sure that your customers aren’t waiting too long if you want them to stick around. That means it’s important to identify and eliminate your bottlenecks until none remain.
If your restaurant’s ordering process is slow, everything else slows down as well. And that could have a very real impact on your bottom line.
There’s a lot that goes into determining how a customer feels about your restaurant.
If your ordering experience is confusing, unenjoyable and a general bother, it could give new customers a bad taste before they get to experience your food.
Before diving into what you can do to optimize your ordering experience, it’s worth reviewing what goes into making this part of your restaurant great.
Here are the three big factors to keep in mind while thinking about your ordering experience.
When someone goes out to a restaurant, they do so because they want to have a good time. What they don’t want is to waste a lot of that time standing in line waiting to order.
So one of the first things you want to think about is how to make your restaurant’s ordering experience as efficient as possible for its customers. Do that, and you’ll be well on your way to optimizing this part of your establishment.
In order to deliver an optimal ordering experience, you also need to make sure that your menus are clear. If they’re not, customers will struggle to make a selection.
This could result in them not getting the type of experience that they truly want at your restaurant and could lead to longer lines as well.
Digital menus can help a lot with this––more information on them later.
At the end of the day, ordering at your restaurant is something that you generally don’t want your customers to even pay attention to. It should be convenient enough not to infringe upon their enjoyment of your business.
So make sure that you’re doing what you can to make the ordering process as convenient as possible for your patrons.
Now that we know what sets a great ordering experience apart from an average one, here are 5 things that could be keeping your restaurant from getting there.
One of the most important aspects of creating a positive ordering experience is ensuring that your guests can read your menus.
If it’s difficult for a person to see or understand your menu from a distance — or even up close — then that person is going to take longer to order once they get to the front of the line.
Your staff is going to have to answer their questions and clarify your unclear menu. This makes the ordering process more of a bottleneck, which drags down the overall restaurant experience that you provide to your guests.
More than just words, it’s also important for your customers to be able to visually see what you’re selling. If they can’t, then they may be more indecisive about what to choose, which could bring up wait times.
Similarly, if a customer can’t see pictures of your food, they may have more questions about its size and ingredients. This is another factor that can make the ordering process more difficult for your other guests.
Waiting in line is never fun. So if your customers have to do a lot of it when they visit your restaurant, they may start looking elsewhere the next time they want to get a meal.
So if your lines are longer than average, consider adding staff to the schedule during peak hours. Doing so could be just what you need to fix the problem.
In today’s age of convenience, many people prefer to order their food in advance so that it’s ready once they arrive at your restaurant. If you’re not doing this already, you could be negatively impacting your customers’ ordering experience in two ways.
First, a customer who only has a small amount of time to eat at your restaurant may go elsewhere if you don’t let them order food in advance.
Second, by not allowing customers to order in advance, you increase the wait times at your restaurant since everyone has to wait until getting there to place an order.
Paper menus can also really bring down your restaurant’s ordering experience. Customers frequently misplace them and may even throw them away inadvertently. When you run out, it can seriously slow down your restaurant’s ordering process until you’re able to refill them. It’s also time-intensive and expensive to update or replace them as you adjust your menu.
The factors shown in the previous section could be bringing down the quality of your ordering experience and thereby reducing the enjoyment that customers get from visiting your restaurant.
If you think that you’re struggling with some of these problems, don’t worry. Here are three concrete steps you can take today to fix them.
One of the easiest ways to fix a subpar ordering experience is by going digital. Digital menus are powered by digital signage. They’re made up of television screens, digital signage software and a media player.
Digital menus are a better option than traditional ones for a few reasons.
First, they let you display your restaurant’s offerings on high-resolution screens. This can make your menus clearer so that everyone in line can easily see what you have to offer.
Additionally, digital menus are much easier to update than physical ones. That’s because all that it takes to do so is making a change in your software instead of having to print out an entirely new menu. This gives you more flexibility to always offer the dishes that your customers like best.
Another great strategy is giving your customers more ways to order. This includes online ordering, mobile ordering and potentially even self-ordering inside of your restaurant.
Self-ordering kiosks reduce your reliance on staff to give your customers a smooth ordering process. This can help minimize your downside risk in the event that your restaurant gets very busy.
You can use digital signage to set up self-ordering kiosks. UPshow’s software is perfect for this. It’ll let you swap effortlessly back and forth from self-ordering stations to advertisements for your company and even live streaming entertainment.
If your ordering experience isn’t where you want it to be, part of the reason for that could be that your processes around ordering aren’t yet ideal.
For example, maybe the layout of your restaurant is such that when people go up to order, they haven’t actually gotten a chance to look at your menus yet. This could bring up the average amount of time that it takes to order a dish significantly.
It’s also possible that staff members who take orders have other responsibilities that are pulling them away from customers. This could be worth looking into if you often see guests standing at the cash register waiting to check out but no employee available to help them.
If you’re serious about optimizing your restaurant’s ordering experience, then investing in digital signage is one of the best things that you can do to accomplish that.
UPshow’s digital signage software is perfect for restaurants. It makes it incredibly easy to create engaging digital menus, self-ordering kiosks and share high-quality pictures of your offerings, among other things.But don’t take our word for it. Sign up for a free custom demo of UPshow today to see exactly how much your restaurant can benefit from it.
Your bar isn’t complete without its TVs. Traditionally, television screens have kept customers engaged by broadcasting content that they care about.
But are you getting as much out of the TV in your bar as you could be?
Nowadays, there are tons of unique things that you can do with a television screen to deliver a better experience to your customers.
Keep reading to get some inspiration and to find step-by-step instructions for transforming your bar TVs with digital signage.
Maybe you haven’t thought much about the TVs in your bar. But if not, you really should be. If you use your television screens optimally, you could see meaningful upticks in both customer engagement and sales.
That’s because TVs entertain. And when people at your bar enjoy themselves more, they tend to stick around for greater amounts of time.
The longer that people spend in your bar, the more that they tend to spend on drinks and food. So there’s a very direct correlation between how much entertainment value you offer your customers and the amount of money that you get from your average patron.
Gone are the days of only being able to use the TV in your bar for cable television.
Here are six new things that you can do with your TVs to keep your audience more engaged:
In 2020, about 232 million people in the United States watched streaming entertainment on their devices. That’s a massive number — especially when you consider that the entire U.S. population is 330 million.
Given the big appetite for this type of content, why not start showing it in your bar?
Instead of displaying the same boring broadcast channels, give your consumers what they really want in the form of live streaming entertainment.
Sports and bars go together like a hand in a glove. If you’re not already, why not make them more of an emphasis at your establishment?
One way to do that is by creating special themed nights during the week that you build around different sports.
For example, you could run a special for Thursday Night Football like giving people a discount for showing up in a jersey from their favorite team.
Getting creative like this can help to bring people into your bar for sporting events that they might have otherwise watched at home.
There is a growing number of states in which sports betting is now legal. And there’s a big appetite for this in the United States. So why not take advantage of this trend to help out your bar?
One idea is to set up some of your screens as interactive sports betting stations. You can allow your customers to place bets with touchscreens so that they’re even more engaged with the sports that you show on your TVs.
If you’re worried about the logistics of all of this, don’t be! You could partner with an existing sportsbook so that you get a cut of the commissions without having to set everything up yourself.
You can also use your bar TVs to advertise your bar’s various offerings.
Digital signage makes this possible. It lets you show the streaming content that your customers want while displaying your ads instead of normal commercials.
We’ve included more information on how to set this up in your bar in a later section.
Another great way to get more people into your bar for longer is running weekly trivia nights. You can use your existing screens for these nights as well.
If you’re interested in doing this, check out this article we put together. It gives you step-by-step instructions for adding trivia nights to your bar’s slate of offerings.
If you sell a lot of food, then you might also consider using one or two of your screens as digital menus. These are more engaging than standard menus and are much easier to update.
Adding them to your bar could help to speed up the ordering process so that customers spend less time waiting and more time enjoying themselves at your establishment.
Here are some digital menu template ideas to get you started.
Here are some other tips you can use to start getting more engagement and sales out of your TVs.
The people who visit your bar are diverse. They won’t all like the same type of content. That’s why it’s important to make sure that you’re showing content that’s as diverse as your audience.
You can change what you show based on what you know about the customers that come in on certain days and at certain times of the day.
For example, what your average customer wants to see on a Friday night could be very different from what a Tuesday afternoon visitor desires.
Interactive content like games, trivia nights and sports betting is super engaging. It gets your customers to interact with your TVs in ways that they just can’t when the content that you show is non-interactive.
So if you’re serious about getting more sales and engagement out of your bar TVs, interactivity should be key to the upgrades that you’re making.
Even the best-laid plans won’t always work out exactly the way you want. That’s why it’s important to listen to what your customers have to say about the changes that you’re making.
What do they like about what you’re doing? And what do they dislike? Don’t assume that you know better than your customers. By taking their feedback into account, you have a much higher rate of certainty that your bar TVs will show content that truly appeals to them.
Are you ready to start using your bar TVs for more than TV? Here are step-by-step instructions to make that happen.
The first thing you need to do is make sure that you’re happy with the layout and number of your screens. Ideally, a person in your bar should be able to clearly see a screen no matter where they’re sitting.
If that’s not the case, then you may need to either change your screen layout or add a few extra ones to your bar.
It’s also worth mentioning that you may need to invest in touch screens if you want to make interactive sports betting a part of your bar.
Digital signage software is what’s going to power all of these changes that you’re making to your TVs. It gives you complete control over what you show on your screens.
UPshow’s digital signage software is perfect for bars. You’ll get more than 500 channels of live streaming entertainment to choose from and will be free to choose from templates and create customized displays to fit your exact specifications.
Once you’ve chosen your digital signage software, you’re ready to set up your display rotation. There are tons of different opportunities for customization so you can get creative with what you do.
As you work to create your display rotation, think about what your customers care the most about and make it a point of emphasis.
It’s also worth mentioning that digital signage displays are really easy to update. So don’t be afraid to try some things out to see if they work. You can always go back and make changes if you aren’t happy with the result!
Once you’ve set up your displays, you’ll be ready to start sharing them with your customers. As you do this, you can take advantage of the analytical features of a platform like UPshow.
These can tell you how well your content is performing over time so that you can identify what works and what doesn’t for you. Make sure that you’re keeping tabs on this so that you can optimize what you show over time.
If you’d like to start getting more from your bar TVs, UPshow can help you do it. Our digital signage software makes it super easy to share everything from live streaming video to sports betting options with your audience.
But don’t just take our word for it. You can sign up to get a free custom demo of UPshow today to see exactly how valuable it can be for your bar.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Investing in in-store entertainment is an excellent way to keep customers at your establishment longer. This, in turn, will often get them to spend more money on your business.
Video walls are an emerging technology that can be the perfect way to keep your guests entertained. But if you’re going to invest in one, you want to make sure that you follow the right plan so that you maximize your ROI.
We put together this article to show you how to do that and to tell you more about why adding a video wall to your business could be the right move. Keep reading to learn more.
A video wall is a large screen or a group of connected screens that you can use to share content with an audience.
It’s like a big TV screen that uses special software to display customized text, pictures, videos and interactive content.
Companies use video walls for a few different purposes. One is to keep their audience entertained. Video walls help with that by giving customers something to focus on, such as streaming video content, an interactive game or fun facts about a topic of interest.
A business can also use its video wall to advertise products or services in unique and compelling ways. Additionally, these screens are great for sharing important information (such as current deals or upcoming events) with both customers and employees.
Ultimately, you can use a video wall to display whatever type of content you want. There’s a lot of flexibility with these thanks to the digital signage software that powers them.
Video walls are large and can feel a little daunting to set up if you’re new to them.
But the benefits of using one far outweigh the temporary inconvenience of adding one to your space. Here are five examples of how your company could benefit from using a video wall.
Thanks to their large size, video walls grab your customers’ attention in ways that other displays simply can’t match. When you add a video wall to your store, people stop and stare. That makes it the perfect way to share your most meaningful content.
Video walls also make it easier to share important messages with your audience––both inside and outside of your organization. Once again, the large size of a video wall screen enables more people to see your message clearly than nearly every other type of display.
Customer engagement is a super important part of running a business. The more that you can get your audience engaging with your brand, the likelier that they are to buy from you.
Video walls help to captivate and engage audiences with large, interactive displays that get people talking. They can be an excellent method for getting more customers to form a positive association with your brand.
Video walls also let you get more creative with the type of content that you share with your customers. For example, you can arrange groups of connected screens in different shapes on your wall to create ads that stand out from what your customers see throughout their days.
You can also bring things like interactivity and animations to your displays to add another element to the content that you share. Features like these are key to what makes video walls different from so many other types of audience engagement technology.
Another huge benefit of using video walls is how easy it is to get started with them. They seem more complex than they really are. But you actually only need a screen, the right software and some content to get started.
You can also update the content that your video wall displays remotely, which makes it easy to alter your strategy based on the shifting feedback that you receive from your audience.
Now that we know what a video wall is and why adding one to your store could be a good idea, let’s look at some step-by-step instructions for doing so.
But before starting, it’s important that you have a clear understanding of what you hope to achieve with a video wall. You need to know your goals before you can create a video wall that will help you achieve them.
You might want to improve sales numbers, reach out to new customers or a little bit of both. Regardless, try to get specific so that you can begin thinking now about what your video wall needs to look like to accomplish those goals.
The first step in this process is selecting the location where you want to display your video wall. Try to pick a part of your store that receives a lot of traffic so that as many customers see the content you share as possible.
You’ll also want to think about the angle of your screen. You should make sure that people don’t have to crane their necks to look at it, or else your content may not receive the attention that it deserves.
Now you’re ready to select the screen or screens that will make up your video wall.
When you go shopping, start with an understanding of how large the space that you want to cover is. Then, figure out whether it makes more sense to use a single screen to cover that space or multiple connected ones.
You can also consider the type of quality that you need to accomplish your goals. It would be nice to have a 4K video wall, but that can be expensive and may not be necessary to get you where you want to go.
Another factor to consider is whether you want your screens to be interactive or not. If you do, then you’re going to need to make sure that you purchase touchscreens.
You’ll also need software and potentially a media player to get your video wall up and running.
UPshow’s digital signage software is perfect for video walls. It makes it super easy to create and share a wide variety of engaging types of content with your audience. You can use it to:
You only need a media player if your screens can’t connect to the internet on their own. Whether or not you need one, UPshow has you covered.
Now you’re ready to start creating the displays that you’re going to share with your audience.
Digital signage-powered video walls are great for displaying images, videos, animations, games, and pretty much anything else you can think of putting on a screen.
You’ll make your displays with your digital signage software. These tools have popular templates that you can choose from and editing features so that you can customize your own from scratch.
At this point, you’re ready to begin sharing your video content with your audience. When you do, make a point of tracking how much it’s helping you work towards the goals that you created before buying the video wall.
For example, you can ask yourself whether you’re seeing an uptick in business since adding the video wall to your space. Or consider whether people are spending more time at your establishment because they’re more entertained while there.
You want to keep an eye on this because it’s the only way to truly know whether what you’re doing with your video wall is working. If it’s not, you may want to cycle through a few new display options until you find one that seems to resonate with your audience.
Video walls can help you take your in-store entertainment to the next level. When you’re ready to add one to your space, UPshow has your back.
Our digital signage software makes it incredibly easy to create, share, edit and track the performance of all of the content that you want to share with your audience.But don’t just take our word for it. Sign up for a free custom demo of UPshow today to see how much you can benefit from it. Or reach out to us directly to learn more about what we can do to help.
Going paperless is a smart move for any business nowadays. Research shows that 59% of companies break even on their investment in going paperless after the first 12 months and 84% do in less than 18 months.
But if your healthcare organization is going to go paperless, it needs to use the right strategies to nail the transition and recoup its investment.
We’ve put together this article to help you achieve that goal. Keep reading to learn how going paperless in healthcare can prepare your company for the future.
Going paperless is a term that means replacing your company’s paper documents with digital replicas. For example, instead of keeping your patient files on a desk, create paperless medical records.
Though this costs some capital to do, it’s a price that’s almost always worth paying for a healthcare organization. Here are five reasons why that’s true.
HIPAA places stringent requirements on what healthcare organizations need to do to keep their patients’ confidential medical information secure.
But it can be tough to remain fully HIPAA compliant while using a paper-based system because everything has a physical copy that staff members pass around the office.
Going digital eliminates these concerns. With a paperless medical records system, you don’t have to worry about stray documents ruining your HIPAA-compliant status.
Going paperless will also expand access to all of the documents that your practice needs to function. It makes it easier for everyone who needs to access things like patient documents and billing statements to do so without having to go and retrieve the physical documents.
You should also be able to bring your team’s efficiency up by making an investment to go paperless. This is because digital documents are much easier for your organization to work with.
For example, here’s a paperless billing benefit. You will effectively eliminate the need to print things out, scan them and fetch and retrieve physical documents. This adds up to save you a ton of time really quickly.
And you can use that extra time to do things like improving your patients’ waiting room experience by reducing the amount of time they have to spend in it.
It’s also worth mentioning that paperless healthcare organizations are much more environmentally-friendly than paper-backed businesses. Paper production is bad for the environment so you can do your part to help by bringing down the amount that you purchase by using paperless documentation.
Paperless healthcare organizations also typically cost much less to run than traditional practices. You should absolutely save more than your initial investment as the months and years of being paperless go by.
Going digital also opens up new avenues for your healthcare organization to engage patients.
When your practice is entirely paperless, it becomes much easier to do things like open up a patient portal or start offering telemedicine since you will already have a digital system in place for all of the documentation that you need to do so.
Going paperless in healthcare is much easier if you start with the right game plan. You can copy this step-by-step guide entirely or use it as inspiration for your own.
At the end of the day, it’s your team who is going to be using whatever digital solution you bring to your healthcare practice. So you want to be sure that the system you use for your paperless medical office is an ideal fit for how they get things done.
The only way to make sure that this happens is to ask your team for advice at the beginning of this transition process. Doing so should help you gain some insights into the types of features that any paperless system that you invest in needs to have in order to be effective.
Picking the right software is the key to a successful digital transformation. You may need a few different types of software to get the most out of your plan.
First, make sure that you have solid document management software. Yours should make it easy for everyone on your staff to interact with all of the documents that they need to use to do their jobs.
You may also need to invest in software that allows you to securely send and receive messages. This is important for healthcare organizations because you want to be sure that you’re able to maintain HIPAA compliance without sacrificing communicative efficiency.
Be sure to take the feedback from your team that you got in step one while making your decision.
Next, you may also need to upgrade some of your hardware. For example, if your office computers aren’t capable of handling a comprehensive digital system, you may need to get new ones before proceeding.
It could also be a smart idea to invest in digital signage as part of your paperless transition. It makes it much easier for you to communicate with both patients and employees in a completely paperless way.
Now that you have both your software and hardware in place, it’s time to begin making digital copies of your paper documents. This is often the most complicated and time-consuming part of the process.
Just keep in mind your why as you go through this step. And don’t be discouraged if it takes longer than you initially expect. The benefits will absolutely be worth it once you’ve finished.
Once you’ve completed your digital migration to paperless documentation successfully, you’ll be ready to get rid of the remaining paper documents that you have. This is a process that can be a little more complicated than it initially appears.
That’s because healthcare organizations have to satisfy certain HIPAA-related requirements for how they get rid of patient documents. So you may have to do a little research to make sure that you meet your obligations.
There are organizations that you can hire to do this for you as well.
Taking your healthcare organization from a paper-based system to a digital one can be super rewarding. But it won’t come without its challenges.
After the transition is complete, it’s important to stay committed to the process even if there are some initial hiccups. You’ll also want to track your progress over time to make sure that things really are getting better
Many healthcare organizations get real value out of transitioning to become a paperless company. But you may encounter a few challenges during that process.
Recognizing these in advance can help you deal with them more effectively if they arrive. So here are three challenges that you may face while making this transition.
Going paperless in healthcare should absolutely save your organization money in the long run. But it’s an investment that takes some time to recoup its value. So you’ll need to have some money set aside that you can devote to making this transition, which you don’t need to get back right away.
Another thing to keep in mind is that team members can sometimes be resistant to big changes like this. If you have people in your organization who are used to doing things a certain way, they could be very resistant to the idea of changing the way your company runs this significantly.
If you get some resistance, remind your team of how valuable the new system will be to them. Tell them about how much easier it will be when they don’t have to deal with paper documents anymore after the change is done.
The actual process of moving from physical to paperless documentation can also be complicated. Many healthcare organizations have thousands, if not tens of thousands of paper documents.
It won’t be possible to digitize these documents overnight. So make sure that you’re ready for this process to take a while before going into it.
Digital signage can help to make your paperless transition a success. It’s a technology that you can use to digitize things like:
But don’t just take our word for it. You can sign up for a free custom demo of UPshow today to experience how much your healthcare organization can benefit from it.
Keeping your customers entertained is the key to keeping them in your bar for longer. And the longer that someone is in your bar, the more that they’re likely to spend at your establishment.
Of all the strategies available to keep pub customers entertained, few are as effective as popular digital bar games to make money.
If you’re interested in adding the best bar games to play at your venue, you’re in the right place. Keep reading to learn why this strategy makes sense and to get a look at the best digital bar games for entertaining your guests.
Digital bar games to make money aren’t only about boosting your bottom line. They also end up adding value to your pub in a few different ways. Here’s a look at each of them.
The most obvious value-add of digital games at bars is entertainment. Bar room games are a great way for your customers to pass the time while socializing with others at your establishment.
Remember that old cliche, ‘time flies when you’re having fun’? It may be cheesy but it’s absolutely true. So when you keep your customers entertained with bar room games, they should spend longer at your establishment.
If you’re trying to bring more people into your bar, then adding digital, vintage, or even funny bar games to your list of offerings could help you achieve that. You can brainstorm bar game night ideas and market the games that you have available to get people more interested in coming to your pub.
You can even do themed nights or competitions that leverage digital games to create special events that get more people interested in your company.
Ultimately, adding specifically designed games to make money should increase your sales figures considerably. That’s true because of the previous two points made in this section.
By keeping your customers entertained, digital bar top games make them likelier to spend more money at your bar by keeping them there longer. And you can use your digital games for marketing to bring more people to your pub so that you have more customers buying from you.
Now that we know why adding digital games to your bar is a good idea, let’s take a closer look at your options. Here are some digital bar game ideas that will keep your customers entertained.
Trivia is a game that needs no introduction since it happens to be one of the most fun games to play at the bar. Although many bars host trivia nights, you can also create digital trivia games for your guests to enjoy.
There are lots of different ways that you can do this so you have some room to be creative.
For example, you could do themed trivia nights with questions that all focus on a certain subject. Or you could give your guests the chance to compete with one another for prizes like discounted drinks or a free tab for the night.
Trivia is a universal game that works really well as a digital offering. It could be the perfect way to keep your pub guests entertained.
There’s a reason that Tetris has been around since 1984. Though its concept is straightforward, Tetris is incredibly addictive. Adding it to your bar could be a fantastic way to entertain your guests.
Pac-Man is similar to Tetris in that it’s been around long enough to stand the test of time. Everybody knows what Pac-Man is and how to play it. If you want a game that will appeal to the largest audience possible, then this could be your best bet.
Chess is a game that’s been around since at least the 10th-century. It’s simple enough for newcomers to quickly understand but has enough depth to keep someone occupied for an entire life.
So another idea is to add a digital version of chess to your bar. You can even connect several tablets in your bar together so that your customers can play with one another.
This idea could help your customers get to know new people in a fun and competitive way. That could give your bar a reputation for being a great place to hang out.
When it comes to bar table games, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything better than poker. In fact, you could add poker games to your digital offerings. There are several different varieties to consider, but Texas Hold ‘Em is the most popular.
You may or may not be able to offer real gambling through digital poker at your bar. This will depend on the state that you’re located in.
But even if you can’t offer real gambling, playing with virtual money can still be a lot of fun for your customers. You can even keep a leaderboard to give them something to work towards and compete over.
Uno is not only one of the most fun card games to play at a bar but also a card game that’s available digitally. It’s a really good fit for groups who come into your bar because you need at least 3-4 people to play it.
Blackjack is another super popular gambling game that could be a good fit in your bar. Like poker, you will need to check your state’s laws regarding gambling before allowing your guests to gamble for real money.
Digital bar games can be a fantastic way to keep your bar customers entertained. But they’re certainly not the only way to do this and there’s more to explore beyond just bar game ideas when it comes to digital technologies. Here are some other fun bar activities you can use to make your pub a more entertaining place to be.
There’s nothing like watching a sports game at a bar. But the same is true of many other forms of streaming video entertainment as well.
When we watch things with other people, we tend to enjoy them more. So another way that you can keep your customers entertained is by showing streaming video content when you’re not entertaining them in any other ways.
You can actually do this with digital signage. UPshow provides more than 500 channels of streaming entertainment for you to share with your audience.
Karaoke is another pub pastime that you shouldn’t ignore. People love going out with their friends, having a few drinks and letting loose by singing their favorite song.
Providing this experience to your customers is a great way to keep them coming back to your bar. For example, you could host a weekly karaoke night on your slowest day to bring in more traffic.
Board games can be really entertaining when you get a solid group together to play one. These are great to have on-hand at bars because they’re a convenient way for your customers to entertain themselves at any time of the day or night.
Board games are super low maintenance and won’t disrupt your other customers’ experiences at your bar. But they’ll keep whoever chooses to play them fully engaged for an hour or two.
Live music and bars go together like a hand in a glove. If you’re not already having bands and DJs perform at your venue, consider adding them to your entertainment schedule.
Booking live performers can also help you bring in new customers who might not have had a reason to visit your bar before.
If you’re going to add digital games to your bar, then you need to invest in a technology that facilitates that. Digital signage is the perfect solution. In this section, we’ll tell you how to set it up so that you can start sharing digital games with your bar customers.
Digital signage consists of three distinct components:
The system itself is pretty simple. You connect your digital signage media player(s) to the screen(s) that you want to use. Then you use the software to manage the content that gets shown on the screen.
One thing to keep in mind here is that you may need to use a touchscreen if you want to share digital bar games that require direct input from your customers.
Once you have your digital signage system in place, your next step is figuring out which games you want to share with your audience.
You can browse through a list of premade games just like you’d browse through a list of downloadable applications on your phone. Or you can even create your own game as long as you have software that lets you do that.
UPshow makes digital signage software that makes it easy to keep your bar guests entertained with digital games. Our solution also provides more than 500 channels of live video content and several other ways to keep your bar guests more entertained.Want to give it a shot? You can sign up for a free custom demo of UPshow today. We look forward to hearing from you.
Medical retail health care is on the rise. As we move towards the future, analysts predict it will play an increased role in the United States’ healthcare system.
That’s good news if you run a retail healthcare clinic. But you’ll still face stiff competition from other providers. If you want to keep your patients while attracting new ones, you have to optimize the way you run your clinic.
We’ve put together this article to help you achieve that goal. Keep reading to learn what it takes.
Before you can improve your retail healthcare clinic, you need to have a clear understanding of the role that you play in the broader healthcare system.
Once you understand why a patient would choose you over another option, it becomes easier to see the specific areas you should focus on to drive the improvements that you want.
There are two major reasons why a person would choose a medical retail clinic.
Retail healthcare clinics are extremely convenient. They’re situated in retail businesses that patients visit already. So people don’t usually have to make an extra trip to go see a doctor.
Additionally, retail healthcare clinics are usually easier to get into than standard hospitals. Patients are usually able to make same-day or same-week appointments. And many clinics offer walk-in medical support.
Together, these factors make retail healthcare clinics a much more convenient experience for most patients.
This is another huge factor that retail clinics have going in their favor. Most providers list the upfront costs of the services that they provide. This gives patients foresight into exactly how much they’re going to spend by visiting the doctor.
That type of transparency is rare in the United States’ healthcare system. So patients really appreciate that retail clinics provide it.
A good strategy for optimizing your clinic’s performance is improving upon what you do well while also focusing on minimizing your drawbacks. That’s why it can also be useful to familiarize yourself with the cons of retail clinics.
One of the biggest drawbacks of retail clinics is that they usually only offer a limited set of services. You may not be able to do much about this at your clinic.
But you could partner with a local provider who you refer your patients to when you’re unable to help them. They would likely do the same for you in return.
Technology empowers retail health clinics to provide their patients with better experiences. If you’re looking to optimize your clinic’s performance, making a strategic investment in the right technology could be an excellent starting point.
Here are some ideas.
Digital signage is a single solution that can improve several aspects of your patients’ medical retail experience. If you’re not familiar, it’s a technology that features three components:
You can use your digital signage software to display essentially whatever you want on your screens. Here are some of the most impactful use-cases for a retail healthcare clinic:
The coolest part is that you can do all of these things with a single screen. Digital signage software lets you create customized display rotation schedules so you can accomplish all of your goals.
Telehealth is a technology that’s seen mass adoption since the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing it to your patients is a great way to stand out from the competition.
It enables your doctors to see patients who might not be able to make it into your clinic for whatever reason. This expands your customer base.
Additionally, it helps you stay connected with patients who are already visiting you. This creates more engaged patients, which research suggests leads to better health outcomes.
Creating a patient portal is another excellent way to stay connected with your patients even when they’re not with you.
Patient portals make it easier for the people that you see to stay engaged with their health from home. They also give patients a way to communicate with your staff without having to schedule an appointment.
Focusing on patient engagement is another smart strategy for improving the performance of your clinic. Engaged patients have better health outcomes and are usually more loyal. Here’s how to create them.
People only invest themselves in things that they believe to be important. So in order to get your patients invested in their healthcare, you first need to teach them why it’s important for them to care.
That means educating your patients about the various health issues that they’re facing. Your staff has an important role to play in this. But you can also educate patients by sharing health information through digital signage.
For example, you can use your screens to teach patients about the dangers of obesity, seasonal illnesses and the other common conditions that you deal with in your practice.
Part of increasing your patient engagement numbers is keeping the people that you see loyal to your clinic. And the most effective way to do that is by building lasting relationships.
You can do that by asking your staff to make it a point of emphasis to connect with the patients that they see beyond the health services that they’re providing.
Patients are more engaged with their healthcare when they’re able to manage it from home. It’s another reason why making an investment in building out a telehealth service and a patient portal can be so valuable.
Another way to boost patient engagement is to provide them with a better experience while in your clinic. You can do that by reducing wait times, improving patient-doctor interactions and making it all-around easier for an individual to come and see you.
It’s also worth mentioning that your patients are the best judges of what they need.
We can tell you about some of the common opportunities that retail healthcare clinics have to make improvements. But you may have some even more impactful upgrades to make.
The only way to truly know what your clinic needs is to ask your patients what it’s missing.
So consider conducting a survey of the people who come and see you. Ask them how they feel about different aspects of your care. And then give them the opportunity to write in their own suggestions for improvements.
You never know what you might uncover from conducting a survey like this. The results that you get could have a significant influence on how you spend the limited funds that you have available for making improvements.
Retail healthcare clinics occupy a unique position in the market. They offer convenient, affordable and transparent care, which is why they’re poised to grow in the coming years.
But in order to take advantage of this expected growth, you need the right strategy. Some of the best things that you can do to prepare your retail healthcare clinic to grow are:
If you commit to doing each of these things now, you will be well-positioned to meet your business and health outcome goals in the coming years.
If you’re serious about optimizing your medical retail experience, making an investment in digital signage is a great way to begin that process. But you need the right software to get as much out of this technology as possible.
That’s why you should try UPshow. Our digital signage software makes it incredibly easy to create, edit and manage a multitude of digital signage display types.
With UPshow, you get:
We could spend all day telling you about how valuable UPshow can be for your company. But we’d rather show you so you can experience it for yourself.You can do that by signing up for a free custom demo today.
A recent survey found that over 80% of patients have to wait more than 30 minutes past their scheduled appointments to see a doctor.
That makes the waiting room one of the most stressful and annoying places for a healthcare consumer to be.
But just how long are patients spending in waiting rooms in 2021? And if your healthcare clinic is struggling in this area, what can you do about it?
We’ll answer both of those questions and tell you more about the modern healthcare consumer’s waiting room experience in the sections below.
Average wait times in the United States vary based on the type of medical treatment that a patient is seeking.
For example, the average wait time to see a general practitioner is 18 minutes and 13 seconds. But the average wait time at the emergency room is about 40 minutes.
Waiting room times have a big impact on patient satisfaction.
Research shows that healthcare clinics with wait times of just over 13 minutes had the highest scores for patient satisfaction, while those with wait times of over 34 minutes had the lowest scores.
This means that, in an ideal world, you want your healthcare clinic to get its waiting room times as close as possible to the 13-minute mark.
If you can do that, you should eliminate one of the leading causes of patient dissatisfaction from your practice. This could have a big impact on your bottom line.
You might expect a global pandemic like COVID-19 to increase patient wait times, but the opposite has actually been true.
Research shows that patients generally spend less time waiting for a physician now than they did before the pandemic.
That’s because hospitals and healthcare clinics now have a huge incentive to reduce the amount of time that patients spend around other individuals who need medical attention.
Health clinics have managed to reduce patient wait time by emphasizing proper arrival times and implementing more efficient and optimized scheduling and visitation practices.
Patients who have to wait a long time to see a doctor often end up asking themselves what could possibly be taking so long. But it’s never really just one thing.
There are tons of different variables that all come together to determine a patient’s wait time. These can include:
This is why it can be really difficult for a healthcare clinic to bring its wait times down. To do so, clinics need to effectively address a myriad of factors — any one of which could throw their wait times out of whack.
Providing your patients with a digital-first patient experience could be the solution to your waiting room woes.
Investing in technology like digital signage is one of the most effective ways to do this. Here’s why.
Digital check-in kiosks are one of the most effective ways to reduce wait times in your clinic.
Digital signage powers these and allows patients to check themselves into their appointments when they arrive.
Digital check-in kiosks reduce patient wait times by eliminating one of the most time-consuming tasks from your administrative staff to-do list. When your front office staff doesn’t have to constantly stop what they’re doing to check new arrivals in, they can get a lot more done.
This often has the net impact of bringing down patient wait times. So if you’re looking to reduce the amount of time that patients spend in your waiting area, investing in digital check-in kiosks is an excellent first step.
Do you ever notice how time seems to fly by when you’re enjoying yourself but crawls by incredibly slowly when you’re not?
That’s because when we’re occupied and not thinking about the passing of time, it generally seems to move faster. You can apply this principle to your waiting room.
Another way to improve your waiting area experience is to keep the patients in it entertained. Doing this should help to take their minds off of your wait times, which can make them feel shorter.
So, how do you keep your patients entertained?
One strategy is to use your digital signage devices to stream video content. UPshow offers more than 500 channels of streaming entertainment, including:
Our software makes it easy to strategically deploy video content in your clinic’s waiting area to improve the experience that your patients have in it.
Often, the worst part of waiting is the unknown.
When you have no idea whether you’re going to wait another hour or just a few minutes, wait times can get pretty brutal.
That’s why another way to improve your waiting room experience is giving your patients an accurate estimation of how much longer they need to wait. You can use digital signage for this as well.
The idea is to display your patients’ names (or numbers tied to their names if HIPAA is a concern) on your digital signage screens in the order that you’ll see them.
That way, they can easily identify how many people are in front of them and will be able to gauge how much longer they’re going to have to wait.
Games are another excellent way to keep patients engaged and entertained in your waiting area instead of bored and counting the seconds going by. Digital signage can help with this, too.
For example, you can use your screens to display health-related trivia questions. These will get your patients thinking and will help to occupy their minds with something other than waiting. It’s another strategy that could help you turn your waiting area into a better place to be.
You can also use digital signage in your waiting areas to share important health information with your patients. With this strategy, you turn an otherwise dull experience into one that gets your patients thinking more about their health.
There are lots of different angles that you can take with this. For example, you could share facts about common health issues like the flu and obesity. Or you could advertise some of the special services that your clinic offers and highlight why a patient may want to take advantage of them.
It’s another way to take your patients’ minds off of how long they’re waiting and on a more interesting and fruitful topic.
Investing in digital signage is a great first step towards reducing wait times at your clinic.
But there are other strategies that you can use alongside digital signage to bring your wait times down even more. Here are some examples.
One of the most time-consuming parts of the waiting process is completing paperwork and having your staff review it.
You can make this process more efficient by allowing your patients to complete their required paperwork online.
If you do this, your staff can review a patient’s information before they arrive at your clinic. This eliminates a big step of the waiting process, which could reduce your wait times by quite a bit.
When a patient arrives at your clinic late, they can throw off wait times for all of the patients who you schedule around them.
That’s why you may also want to consider designing and enforcing a more aggressive late policy.
You can consider implementing a small fee for patients who arrive late or require them to reschedule. This should incentivize more patients to make it to their appointments on time.
As you make all of these changes, you need a way to see whether they’re having the impact on your clinic that you want them to. That’s why it’s important to track patient waiting times.
Doing this will give you the data that you need to see whether your investments and strategic shifts are working or not.
If you’re serious about bringing your wait times down, then making a strategic investment in digital signage could be your solution.
UPshow makes it easier to unlock the full potential of your digital signage system.
Our software enables you to customize the content that you share and manage it from any internet-enabled device. You can use it for each of the waiting time reduction strategies we highlighted in this article.But don’t take our word for it. You can sign up for a free custom demo of UPshow today to experience the value we provide yourself.
Running a physical business isn’t easy.
Customers nowadays can buy just about anything online, so it can be tough to get people to visit your store or venue consistently.
That being said, physical stores have some advantages over their online counterparts. One is that they can deliver interactive experiences to customers.
In this article, we’ll tell you why that matters. We’ll also look at some of the different ways that you can start bringing these experiences into your store or venue.
Let’s get into it.
Interactive content forms a crucial part of many companies' marketing strategies.
In fact, about 88% of marketers say that interactive content helps differentiate their brand from the competition.
That means providing interactive experiences to your audience could be the difference-maker you need to start making more efficient progress towards your goals.
Additionally, if you’re trying to make your store or venue a more interesting and rewarding place for your target audience to be, then giving them interactive experiences is a great way to do that.
This is because interactive experiences are novel. They engage your customers in unique ways, which helps them build a stronger connection to your brand.
Ultimately, investing in delivering interactive experiences to your audience could help you improve your bottom line significantly––especially as the effects of that decision compound over time.
So, now that you know why interactive experiences are important, let’s look at some of the ways that you can bring these to your store or venue.
It’s often easier for a customer to see everything that you have to offer on the internet.
That’s one of the reasons why nearly half of all consumers shop more on their mobile devices than they do in stores. But you can bring that same experience to your store by adding self-select product menus to it.
You don’t have to build a custom solution for this, either. Instead, you can use digital signage to display your website store. This lets customers get the in-depth product information that they want while also being able to purchase their desired product right away.
Companies that sell food and drinks can use digital signage in the same way as the previous point.
It’s easy to create interactive menus that let customers see everything that’s available to them, look at ingredients and check out nutritional information, among other things.
This type of interactivity makes it a lot easier for your customers to find and order whatever they want.
When you provide this level of convenience, people remember it. Digital signage can be a great way to make your brand stand out, and boost your number of return customers.
Games are an effective way to engage and entertain your customers. They’re incredibly interactive and you can use them in several different ways.
For example, if you own a bar or casual restaurant, you could use digital signage to share games that keep your customers entertained.
Adding these to your store could make it a fun place for your audience to hang out, which could induce them to be there longer (and spend more while they’re with you for that extra amount of time).
You could also use games to teach people about what you do in a fun and engaging way.
For example, if you use special ingredients or materials in what you sell, you could create a game that teaches your customers about why those things matter. This can be an incredibly effective form of marketing.
Another idea is to create retail displays that you build to appeal to senses besides sight.
For example, stores that sell headphones will often set up a trial pair of headphones for customers to try out so that they can experience how they feel and sound.
This idea is a good fit for any business that sells products that appeal to senses like touch, sound and smell because it enables you to market these products with their best attributes.
If you have a large venue, then you may also consider adding an interactive digital wayfinding display to it. These help visitors get quick directions for wherever they want to go.
They can also help to eliminate some of the stress and annoyance that a person may experience when they can’t find what they’re looking for, which, ultimately, makes your venue a more enjoyable place for them to be.
If you require your guests to check in with you when they arrive, then you may also want to add digital check-in kiosks to your venue.
These are great because they reduce the amount of work that your staff members have to do, freeing them up for other tasks, and ultimately even translating into shorter wait times for your guests.
Contests are a fantastic way to get people engaged with and interested in your company. You can create interactive contests that people can enter while at your store or venue.
Another cool idea is to combine an interactive contest and an interactive game. For example, you could use digital signs to share a game with your customers and then offer a reward for whoever gets the highest score.
QR codes are a simple way to help you combine your offline and online sales funnels.
If you’re interested in gaining more followers on social media, building a more comprehensive email list or getting more people to download your app, then QR codes can help you to do so.
You can use digital signage to create advertisements that include QR codes, which link to whatever you want. And you can entice your customers to scan the QR codes that you display by offering them something in exchange for doing so, or by creating a sense of intrigue about what the code might link to.
If you want to start providing more interactive experiences to your customers, then you’re going to need the right technology. In this section, we’ll tell you why digital signage is the perfect solution.
You may have noticed that many of the interactive experiences covered in the previous section reference digital signage––that’s no accident.
Digital signage enables stores and venues to provide a wide variety of interactive experiences to their guests.
For example, you can use digital signage to:
The bottom line is that digital signage may be your most effective solution for providing more interactive experiences because it empowers you to offer your customers so many of them.
The good news is that you don’t need much to get started with digital signage at your store or venue. The three things you need are:
With these three simple components, you can put together a digital signage system that empowers you to accomplish all of your goals for delivering interactive experiences to your audience.
The way that you set up your digital signage system will have a big impact on how effective it is for you.
One of the keys to this is making sure that you have screens in the right locations so that people can see them no matter where they are in your store or venue.
The content that you choose to display on your screens is also really important. You want to make sure that you have a healthy rotation of displays alongside the interactive content that you want to share so that you never bore your audience with stale imagery.
To do that, you need to have the right digital signage software.
That’s where UPshow comes in. But whether you choose us or not, you’ll want to think carefully about the kind of functionality that you need to hit your goals before making your digital signage selection.
Digital signage helps stores and venues bring more interactive experiences to their audiences. If you’re ready to invest in it, then UPshow is the partner that you need to nail your transition.
We sell digital signage software that stands out.
You can use UPshow to stream live entertainment, create a wide variety of interactive experiences and make your place of business a more interesting and exciting place to be.But don’t just take our word for it. You can schedule a free custom demo of UPshow today to see exactly what we can do for you.
A recent study found that about 53% of churches use digital signage or projectors to deliver sermons.
Many of these religious institutions also use their digital signage to promote community engagement, inform churchgoers of upcoming events and solicit donations.
If your church isn’t using digital signage yet, now could be the time to invest in it. Doing so could help you modernize the way that your congregation worships.
But if you’re not familiar with digital church signs, you probably aren’t aware of all of the helpful things you can do with it.
That’s why we’ve put together the following article. Keep reading to learn how your church can use digital signage to modernize its processes.
Before diving into the benefits that digital signage can provide your church, let’s take a moment to review what it is exactly.
A digital church sign features three components:
You can use digital signage software to design displays that you want to share with your audience. Your media player then processes those displays and shares them through your screens.
It’s worth noting that you can rotate through multiple displays on the same screen at whatever pace you want, making it possible to accomplish several goals with a single screen.
Digital signage can help bring your church into the 21st century. The numerous benefits all accrue with the implementation of the following church sign ideas:
A well-placed digital church marquee sign on the exterior of your church can be an effective way to spread the word about your community and your faith.
You can create dynamic digital displays that advertise who you are, what you believe and services or events you hold. It’s also possible to rotate through several displays on the same screen, making it easy to highlight whatever aspects of your church you think will bring more people into it.
Digital signage is also an excellent way to keep your church community informed.
You can place screens throughout your building to inform, advertise and educate regular members or visitors.
This can be especially helpful for churches that also host community events. You can use your digital signage to display a community calendar so that people know about the various events that you have going on throughout the month.
Of course, you can also create single screens to highlight specific events that are especially important to the church. Examples of this can include fundraising events and meetings around major religious holidays.
Digital signage can make worshipping better for your congregation. That’s because it opens up new avenues for you to engage your people.
For example, you could use digital signage to easily share religious song lyrics so that people can sing along.
You could also use your digital signage to share images, graphics or videos that add a new dimension to your worship. Varied content like this can help to get your congregation more immersed in the experience that you’re trying to share with them.
Churches tend to spend a lot of money on things like photocopying and printing. That’s because there’s a lot of information they want to share with their congregation.
But with digital signage, you can get rid of the vast majority of your printing and photocopying needs. Instead of having to print and copy dozens or hundreds of papers every time you want to make an announcement, you can just make the announcement digitally.
You could save a ton of money every year from this alone. After enough time has passed, your savings from things like this could even recuperate the initial investment that you make to set up your digital signage.
Your church workers could also save a lot of time and energy if you invest in digital signage. That’s because this technology enables you to quickly create, edit and share new screens from any internet-enabled device.
That makes it much easier to share new updates with your community. You won’t have to create and hang large posters each time that you want to share a new piece of information. Instead, you’ll just be able to quickly update the signage that you already have in place to share new messages whenever you want.
There’s really no way to get around the fact that paper-based signage is bad for the environment.
This can be another great reason for investing in digital signage. Doing so could help you reduce the amount of paper products that you use significantly, which could bring down your community’s carbon footprint.
Digital signage can also help a church solicit donations in more engaging and effective ways. It does so by opening up new possibilities for how you ask for donations.
For example, you can create screens that highlight specific problems in your community that you want to address. Then you can add a QR code to that screen so that a community member can easily scan the screen and donate to you right from their phone.
Digital signage also lets you create more powerful donation requests by allowing you to make those requests with high-resolution imagery, animations, and engaging rotating displays.
Nowadays, a church needs to have an online footprint. Digital signage can help you build that online community by encouraging followers to interact with your social media accounts.
You can do that in a few different ways.
One option is to use your digital signage to advertise your accounts on various social media platforms so that your congregation is encouraged to follow them.
Another idea is to share users’ social media posts on your digital screens. You can do that by creating a hashtag for your church so that people who use the hashtag in their posts are featured in your building.
This can be a free way for you to advertise your church online, which is especially important considering that around 46% of churches say that social media is their most important form of outreach.
Selecting the right screens is an essential part of maximizing your digital signage experience.
You want to make sure that your screens are large enough and placed in the right locations so that your audience can clearly see whatever messages you’re sharing with them. Opting for smart TVs also removes the need to purchase a digital signage media player.
People look at things that stand out. So, if you want to make sure that your digital signage is getting attention, it’ll be important for you to share content that stands out from a visual perspective.
You can do that by using high-resolution images, animations and rotating your displays to add variety to the screen so that it doesn’t grow stale.
Think about how you would interpret your digital signage as a viewer. What is it about the designs that will capture and hold an audience member’s attention? Which elements draw the eye, and which fade into the background?
If you can’t answer that question, then there’s a good chance that the display you’ve created won’t have the impact that you want it to have.
Your digital signage strategy likely won’t be perfect from the beginning–that’s okay!
Practice makes perfect, tracking your performance and making adjustments over time can help you to make the necessary adjustments.
Certain types of digital signage software will make this easier for you to do. For example, UPshow has built-in analytics features that make understanding the performance of each of your screens a breeze.
The key is understanding your goals and how your digital signage strategy is helping you reach them. That way, you can track your progress towards those goals and make adjustments as needed.
If you want a super simple way to add digital signage to your church, then you should check out UPshow.
Our digital signage software is a do-it-all solution that enables you to easily create, share and manage every type of digital signage content. You can even use our software to stream live video entertainment to your congregation during community events during which that’s appropriate.But you don’t just have to take our word for it. Let us show you how impactful UPshow can be for your church by signing up for a free custom demo of our software today. We look forward to hearing from you.
Retail health clinics are a relatively new trend in the healthcare industry, but they’re already eating away at the market share of the traditional players in this space.
Given their early successes, it seems that these retail health service providers will have a key role to play in the future of healthcare.
But that doesn’t mean that running a retail health clinic is easy. These companies follow a unique business model, which can make them tough to manage.
That’s why we’ve put together the following article. If you’re wondering how to improve your retail clinic business, then these handful practical strategies can make your retail health clinic excel.
Let’s get into it.
There are two types of clinics. Retail health clinics are different from urgent care providers, regular healthcare clinics and hospitals. We’ll detail how in this section.
Retail health clinics are health centers that are located in retail stores. They’re not designed to help patients resolve serious, pressing health matters.
Instead, an individual can visit a retail health center to get assistance with health issues that they can complete at their convenience.
Patients don’t usually need to have an appointment to come to visit a retail health clinic.
These facilities specialize in walk-ins, which is a large part of what makes them so attractive for certain types of medical issues.
A patient who visits a retail health clinic can get help with many things, including:
Running a retail health clinic isn’t always easy However, if you learn how to market your retail health clinic, then it will progressively become easier. These strategies can help to boost performance and engagement.
If you’re looking for a single solution that can help you accomplish many different goals, then digital signage is something you may want to look into for your retail health clinic.
Digital signage can help your clinic with each of the following things:
Digital signage can help with all of these things because it’s versatile. It enables you to use a single screen to rotate through displays that show advertisements, share important health information, and keep your patients entertained.
You can even set up digital signage kiosks so that your patients can check themselves in. This frees up time for your staff to focus on their other important tasks and could help to reduce the time that patients spend in your waiting area.
It’s also important for retail health clinics to understand exactly how they fit into the broader healthcare landscape.
Being aware of your value to the market can be a great way to prioritize where to focus your efforts, and which areas to avoid.
The value proposition of retail health clinics is providing patients with a transparent, convenient, and affordable way to get primary healthcare. Emphasizing these points with your marketing can help to ensure that your services are received by those who need them.
For example, it’s a smart move to set fixed, transparent prices for common services like flu shots and physicals — or make sure patients know that these services are often covered by their insurance. Doing so can boost your transparency and encourage customers to attend the clinic.
Similarly, you can work to remove as many barriers as possible between your patients and your providers to emphasize your clinic’s convenience.
Focusing on these drivers of value can help you build up a loyal customer base.
Research shows that patients who engage in their care are more likely to maintain treatment plans, keep track of their health and ask providers questions. Experts associate these behaviors with superior health outcomes.
This suggests that if you increase patient engagement, you deliver better health outcomes. And doing that is an excellent way to build patient loyalty at your clinic.
You can check out our blog post for an in-depth look at how to increase patient engagement at your clinic. But perhaps the most effective strategy is to invest in technology that makes it easier for patients to connect with you and stay on top of their health.
Examples of this type of technology include telehealth, patient portals, and mobile apps. You might also try establishing more of an online presence, as that’s where individuals tend to research and ask questions about their health and wellness.
Research shows that up to 30% of patients have left a healthcare facility before seeing a physician — simply because of wait times.
That’s the last thing that you want for your retail health clinic because it’s akin to allowing business to walk out of the door.
It’s also why you should make customer service a priority when running a retail health clinic. But what exactly does that mean in practice?
For starters, you should try to make your waiting room experience as pleasant as possible for your patients. That could mean using digital signage to stream live video entertainment so they have something to focus on while they wait. Setting up digital signage check-in kiosks could also help to bring down your wait times.
On top of that, you should also instruct your staff to emphasize delivering exceptional customer service — especially your physicians. If your doctors form positive relationships with your patients, they’re much likelier to come back in the future.
Forming partnerships with local businesses can be an excellent way to expand your customer base.
These relationships are mutually beneficial because they encourage patients to use both your retail health clinic and whatever local business that you partner with.
There are a bunch of good candidates for this, including gyms, health food stores and supplement shops, among others.
You can approach companies like these and ask if they would be willing to give a discount or free trial to your patients in exchange for your advertising for them.
Some companies may be willing to reciprocate the offer by advertising your clinic in their stores as well, which could be a great source of new business for you.
Keeping your patients educated and informed is a key part of getting them to engage with their healthcare plan. For example, a patient often needs to know about the health risks of obesity before they will get serious about losing weight.
So by educating your patients, you increase their engagement, which, in turn, increases the chances that they come back to your health clinic regularly.
Your doctors and other medical professionals will certainly have a role to play in keeping your patients educated. But you can also supplement what they say by using digital signage to share important health information related to common conditions in your office.
The efficiency (or inefficiency) of your staff will have a big impact on the outcomes that you provide to patients.
When your staff is efficient, patients can get in and out of your health clinic quickly. That increases the chances that they’ll come to visit you again in the future.
It’s why you should make staff efficiency a priority for your clinic. You can do that by optimizing your back-end businesses practices and making sure your staff members follow those practices consistently.
Investing in the right technology could help you accomplish this. For example, certain types of patient management software could make it easier for your staff to find, edit and share patient files.
Back-end digital signage could also help your staff become more efficient by giving them an easier way to communicate with one another.
When you run a business, you constantly need to monitor performance. Even if a strategy has worked well for you in the past, there’s no guarantee that it will continue performing for you in the future.
That’s why it’s important to never stop reassessing the performance of whatever business strategies you utilize in your retail health clinic.
To do that, make sure that you’re measuring your performance in key areas at consistent time intervals. That way you can track how well you’re doing over time and identify downward trends so that you can take action to fix them as needed.
Adding digital signage to your retail health clinic could be just what you need to start improving its performance.
Here at UPshow, our technology is versatile enough to help you incorporate several of the business strategies covered in this article, including:
But don’t just take our word for it. Sign up for a free custom demo of our UPshow’s digital signage software today to see exactly how much your retail health clinic can benefit from it.