Interactive kiosk
An interactive kiosk is nothing new to digital signage, however this hardware has been little used to target customers directly, now they can.
An interactive kiosk is very different from an LCD advertising display, in the fact that content can be streamed over the internet for updates and to promote new content and material, where as an LCD advertising display has to have the content added manually to the internal memory card media player (the interactive kiosk has a built in hard drive that can either be hard wired into a data network or connected to a wireless network.
Different types of interactive kiosk.
These are mainly located on floors and the screen can either be in portrait or landscape mode, this really does depend upon the application.
What will these do for businesses?
These will businesses to target their products and find out exactly what your customers are looking for in real time, allowing you to change stock or review inventory, allowing any business owner or manager to maximise the profits, it is just like reading your customers mind.
How it works?
A male shopper enters a gents outfitters looking for a designer suit for a special occasion.
He goes to the interactive kiosk and sees images on the main screen of different clothing ranges from sports wear, formal wear to night wear, he touches the icon on the screen for formal wear.
The next screen lists the manufacturers including the designer range of suits, the shopper selects the designer he is interested in and then he is taken to the current seasons suits, at this point if the man is looking for one of last years suits, he can click on an icon that shows last years suits if the one is after is there he can use the touch screen to register his request for the store to source one of the out of date suits. Then when the suit is in store, the shopper gets a text from the retailer informing him that the suit is in stock.
A female shopper goes shopping for a special wedding outfit, she enters the shoe store (as she has already found “that dress”) and now needs to match the designer dress up with some amazing shoes.
She walks to the kiosk and touches the icon that shows flat shoes, high heels and leisure shoes, she touches the high heel shoe icon, the next screen shows the colours available, she touches the purple colour and is then in a page that asks shoe size, she selects size 6 and then all the shoes in the store and available to the store are presented to the customer under 2 headings, the first is in stock and the second heading is “short lead time”.
Due to the store using scanners to scan the bar codes on the shoe boxes, they instantly know what stock they have in exactly the colours and sizes, so if the shopper clicks the short lead time item she can see on the screen how long it will take to get the shoes in-store.
A digital signage kiosk allows businesses and business owners to maximise staff time and use them to their best and that is to take money, let the interactive kiosk engage with the customer, build the customer loyalty and most importantly let the customer think they are in charge.