The importance of emotion and customer experience in the retail environment is well-documented. Materials, lighting, music, and color are all elements (among many others) that unite to create an environment optimized for driving sales. The holiday season is perhaps the penultimate time of the year for merchandising and store display professionals to shine. But retailers that wait until the holiday season to create engaging, immersive environments may be missing out on additional sales throughout the year.

For retailers, full motion graphics presented on large format digital displays offer an attractive and dynamic means to influence consumer decision-making at the point of sale, while enriching the overall shopping experience.

Here are a few examples of creative uses of digital displays in retail that can be applied year round:

Consumers today are time-starved and information hungry. These trends make digital signage a perfect communication vehicle for retail outlets and themed events.  Digital displays can enrich the customer experience by engaging the senses more deeply and appeal to the viewer’s emotion.

Generate Excitement at Grand Opening and Year Round

  • With the use of portable, ultra slim digital displays as the centerpiece of window displays in the weeks prior to a store opening, a retailer can share glimpses of the developments within to generate excitement and buzz. Video content can change based on the stage of development. For example, a fashion brand can share video footage of their latest runway show prior to the store opening. Once the store is open, this same display can be repositioned inside the store as a video wall that shares highlights from the latest collection or scenes that evoke the lifestyle represented in each season’s collection.

 The Art of the Up Sell

  • Inside the store, lightweight digital signage units can hang above various departments, such as women’s apparel, cosmetics and housewares to provide not only directional signage but also helpful video content on the latest fashion and beauty tips that help shoppers make more informed decisions (for example, knowing which coat lengths represent up-to-the minute styles) and to provide aspirational imagery of the lifestyle that the retailer is looking to evoke.

Interactive Engagement

  • The importance of social media and customer interactivity is becoming increasingly important to retailers to engage, inform, entertain and boost customer loyalty. Digital displays open up endless opportunities to  do this because the content can be adjusted and targeted so easily. This trend is worthy of an entire series of posts so look for more on this subject in the future.