Shopping centers can form the economic backbone for a large number of communities. These hubs also offer businesses of all shapes and sizes a centralized watering hole for trade and advertising. However, the complexities of managing large crowds of eager shoppers are no easy feat to conquer, and can largely determine the overall profit margins for businesses. Thankfully, a large majority of these issues can be remedied through the innovations brought about by digital signage. In today’s article, we’ve listed 10 of the top ways that digital signage gets used for malls globally.
Navigation and Wayfinding
Malls can be an overwhelming and stressful experience for some shoppers, especially those that struggle to navigate large crowds or spaces. Digital screens provide an excellent platform for displaying a mall’s layout and floor plan. These displays are generally combined with a color-coded directory highlighting various shop types and points of access. Digital screens offer an incredibly bright and crisp image quality, which means that these maps can be placed high up for many shoppers to view at one time.
Menu Boards
Dining and fast food outlets can benefit greatly from integrating digital signage into their menu systems. Digital menus boards deliver a much clearer and more vibrant visual quality than printed menus and can save businesses considerable costs on redundant printing. Touch screen menu boards can also allow users to further explore a restaurant’s food options by providing them insights into things such as an item’s nutritional values or even upsell optional add-ons and combo deals.
Virtual Concierge
Hotels and holiday resorts have benefited greatly from offering virtual concierge to visitors. Malls can make use of this handy technology too. A virtual concierge acts as an interactive guide for visitors seeking specific information throughout a mall. A concierge can inform customers of the quickest routes to specific destinations, store operating hours, and other useful information. These concierges can also request feedback from mall visitors that can provide valuable insights into their on-site experience.
Passive Entertainment Displays
Certain portions of a shopper’s visiting experience are usually occupied by waiting for service or meeting up with a friend or family, and this can sometimes be an irritable time frame. Transparent led displays can be used to lower the average shopper’s perceived waiting time and alleviate stress levels during unanticipated waiting periods. Several shopping centers place screens around the food court areas and entertainment areas, as well as near areas that may experience rush hours. These screens can display a variety of passive entertainment, from light-hearted video vignettes to news updates and current sporting events.
Third-Party Advertising
Shopping centers should view their screens as a form of digital real estate, and offer third-party advertisers space on their boards to run visual campaigns. All businesses within a shopping center can benefit from this form of advertising as this is where they are in closest proximity to the customer. These business owners can use screens to inform customers of their location or promote specific products or deals. Third-party advertising is a wholesome way for shopping centers to generate some extra revenue, as well as to help shoppers get better acquainted with their purchasing options while navigating a mall.
Community Notices
It’s incredibly important for malls to integrate themselves into the local community. This task can be easily tackled by offering screens as display boards for any local community notices. These notices can include announcements for upcoming events or other important social info that affects the immediate environment. Several shopping centers also like to integrate any locally celebrated holidays into their display designs, and this can be a simple technique to make shoppers feel more at home while visiting.
Social Media Feeds
Social media services like Twitter, Instagram, and Tik Tok can easily be integrated into a mall’s display streams through its content management system. These social feeds provide a fast and exciting means of encouraging conversation between a mall and its patrons. Visitors can be invited to share their experiences throughout a mall on specific screens, and can even be rewarded with incentives such as shopping vouchers for certain stores. Social media is going to be a firm fixture in the communication channels of our population for quite some time. Malls can easily capitalize on the medium’s capacity for developing consumer relationships and brand presence.
Health And Safety Announcements
Every shopper’s safety should be as important as their enjoyment when visiting a mall. It only takes the smallest oversight to cause an accident that could seriously tarnish a mall’s public profile. Thanks to their incredible display power, digital screens are an excellent medium for delivering clear health and safety protocols to shoppers. Screens can also be utilized to display notices during an emergency and inform shoppers of crucial information such as fire escapes, emergency exit points, and health and safety contact details. All screens can be operated remotely through remote access, which means there will be little to no hesitation when trying to execute safety procedures or emergency announcements.
Decorative Installations
Thanks to their incredible modular capabilities, digital screens can be customized to fit just about any shape and size installation. Most major malls are doing away with traditional tile and billboard layouts and opting to allow creatives to design stunning forward-thinking art installations for visitors to experience while visiting. Screens panels come in a variety of curvature options, which allow designers to push exciting boundaries with artistic installations. Innovations such as touch screens and motion tracking add incredible immersive qualities to these types of displays and can convert redundant wall space into a visual treat for shoppers.
Digital Shop Signboards
Digital screens have created a natural evolution in the ways that shop owners choose to display their branding and other important information. The medium provides a more cost-effective means for traditional printed signage, which can experience major wear and tear over time and require constant upkeep. Digital signage can also be resold, as all visual displays have no permanence, and content management systems can have their factory settings easily restored for new shop owners to utilize.
Final Thoughts
The above-listed digital signage ideas all contribute to the overall fluidity and efficiency of operation within most malls. These concepts also drastically improve the average shopper’s on-site experience and encourage them to return for frequent visits. Through the power of digital signage, shopping centers can evolve to become exciting social hubs for local communities and offer renting businesses some incredible opportunities for safe and attractive ROI. Thanks for reading through our hotlist of digital screen ideas for malls.
