The writer is editor of Digital Signage Today.
A perfect storm is swirling through retail: an increasingly crowded and complex field of products, a populace that is more intelligent and demanding with each passing day, and technology that tries to make sense of it all. In the wake of this storm is the retailer, who must learn — and quickly — how to bring all of these things together in a way that makes sense.
"Retailing has changed from a product-centric business to a customer-centric business," said Jeff Collard, president of digital signage company Omnivex. "Shopping is now a user experience where services and products must be built around individual customers."
New technologies make it possible, for the first time, to reach those individual customers with individual experiences. Digital signage, self-service — and, perhaps most importantly, the rise of multi-channel retailing — are demanding a new holistic view when it comes to the design of in-store experiences.
The changing role of shelves
In conventional retail store design, shelves serve two primary purposes: make the shopper aware of available products and maintain a certain amount of inventory for each of those products. But as the number of consumer products continues to swell, it is no longer possible to put every variety of every item out on the sales floor.
Adam Aronson ran into this problem during his years as a retail designer for Old Navy. Displaying merchandise in a consistent fashion is a challenge, and one that grows exponentially with both the size of the retailer and the number of products carried.
"In a company like Old Navy, the merchandisers would manage this process through a merchandise book that went out to old stores," said Aronson, now president of kiosk company Arc Design. "This book displayed the current SKUs, their prices and how they should be displayed, so that store managers could ensure a consistent look across hundreds of stores."
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
One good experience — or a single bad one — leads to another. In a 2006 survey of holiday shoppers, retail consultancy Gomez Inc. found that 65 percent of online shoppers would stop or reconsider visiting that retailer's real-world store if they had a single bad experience. Likewise, 71 percent said a single bad experience at a brick-and-mortar store would prevent them from wanting to visit that retailer's Web site.
"I often find it easier to find product information online than in-store," said Aronson. "Retailers need to fix this if they are to compete on anything other than price or convenience."
One answer to all of these problems is the integration of small touchscreens, each equipped with an RFID reader, to the front of a shelf. Shoppers can pick up any item in the store, hold it near any touchscreen, and get detailed information delivered through an interactive interface.
Taken one step further, the touchscreens can interface with loyalty data to create a wealth of consumer information: what products interest them, what they did and did not purchase, even how long they spent in certain areas of the store. Has a given customer looked at the same type of product several times without making a purchase? Perhaps a coupon in the mail will encourage them to get off the fence.
"Smart merchandising should focus on modularity and flexibility," said Brian Ardinger of Nanonation, which has developed its own RFID shelf solution for retail. "Technology is constantly changing, so it's important to look for ways to easily service, change and modify shelving."
The RFID/touchscreen approach to shelving would also make shelves "product-agnostic" — that is, it no longer matters exactly where any given product is stacked, as information on it can be dispensed from any screen in the store.
Julian Bowron, president of The Kiosk Factory, said there is only one barrier to the use of item-level RFID tagging in retail — the price of the tags — and that barrier is rapidly dissolving as prices fall.
Watching — and shaping — the flow of traffic
Foot traffic is one of retail's double-edged swords: You can't make money without shoppers in the store, but you can't keep those shoppers happy and coming back for more if clogged aisles make for a frustrating experience.
Witness the department store that decides to add an Xbox 360 demo kiosk. Suddenly, the walk from housewares to hardware is a minefield of kids waiting for their turn on "Gears of War."
Companies like HeadCount and ShopperTrak take a hardware approach to traffic management, offering video monitoring to measure footfalls throughout the store, correlated to time of day and day of week. This data can be turned into "heat maps" that show which spots in the store are, and are not, getting heavy traffic.
Digital signs are one very effective way of "pulling traffic" from one area to another. Humans are drawn to screens, but only if the content is visually exciting and relevant — that same Xbox that caused the traffic problem in the first place has also trained consumers to expect sophisticated media. Arial text and bulleted PowerPoint lists simply will not do anymore.
Bowron also points to the "retail as meeting place" trend, popularized by stores like Borders and Barnes & Noble. Comfortable chairs and couches are natural "people magnets," and strategic placement of them can decide the course of a shopper's walk through the store. It's not an appropriate strategy for all retailers, particularly those instances where the goal is to get people in and out quickly — but for stores seeking to increase dwell time, a comfortable setting is strong.
For retailers planning a "meeting place" or café-like area, it is important to give customers something to look at while they are relaxing. Digital screens should face the area, with appropriately longer loop times and repeat cycles. Every moment customers spend in the store is an opportunity to reinforce brand messages and educate about specials and promotions — and make them feel that they have made a good choice by shopping there.
"The primary emotional goal of a retail environment should be to make the customer feel comfortable and happy," said Aronson. "If the customer is happy, they will buy or buy more. If they are unhappy, they will walk out or buy less. It's as simple as that."
