Building a successful business means integrating a large number of disparate parts, and getting those unrelated elements to work together can be a real challenge. In the competitive world of the 21st century, digital signage software can be the best friend your business can ever have, that is as long as you use that digital signage to its full potential.
If you want to wow your customers and keep them coming back, designing a stunning digital menu board is a great place to start. Consumers have come to expect these kinds of dynamic screens, but not all of those digital signage solutions are equally useful. Building a highly attractive and incredibly useful digital menu board from the ground up is one of the best ways to differentiate your brand and build a better business for yourself and your customers.
What is Digital Menu Boards?
The term digital menu board may sound complicated, but the concept behind it is actually quite simple. The restaurant industry has been using digital signage for many years, and if you have eaten out recently you have probably seen a few examples.
The digital menu boards you see at your local restaurant or fast food outlet do more than help hungry diners decide what to buy. These digital signage solutions can also be used to highlight certain items, driving profits and increasing margins in a notoriously competitive sector of the economy.
The benefits of using digital menus
Digital signage solutions are often implemented at fast food restaurants, but they are increasingly being embraced by fine dining and fast casual outlets as well. Every restaurant, no matter what the average check or targeted price point, needs a way to attract new customers, and digital signage is a great way to do it.
Digital menus has a number of important benefits for restaurant owners, including the ability to make fast changes to the daily offerings. This allows restaurants to showcase local ingredients, guide diners to their highest margin entrees and otherwise increase efficiency and improve profit margins.
Digital menu boards can also be used to highlight weekly specials, something that is important for restaurants at all price points. A fast food outlet may use their digital signage to push a certain breakfast item, while a fine dining establishment may use the same solution to entice diners into ordering a decadent dessert.
A Simple and Elegant Solution
Digital signage does not have to be complicated. Thanks to the growing number of apps and the increasing sophistication of the software, changing a digital menu board is as simple as clicking a couple of buttons.
With digital menu board apps, restaurant owners can easily adjust their daily offerings based on the availability of local ingredients, the relative profit margins of various entrees and appetizers and a host of other factors. This ability to change menu options on the fly is one of the most important advantages of using digital signage software.
An Effective Solution
Digital signage is an elegant solution, but using software to drive ordering decisions is also incredibly effective. A recent survey showed that nearly one in three diners said that digital menus influenced their buying decisions.
You probably have experienced this phenomenon in your own life. How many times have you approached the drive-through at your local fast food outlet, only to have a new item strike your fancy? You may not have known about that featured item were it not for the colorful menu board, a prime example of how dynamic digital signage influences consumer behavior.
Fast Changes and Easy Integration
Digital signage software can be a powerful standalone solution, but its real potential lies in its integration. Digital signage can be easily integrated into an existing point-of-sale (POS) system, allowing restaurant owners to quickly change prices, update daily specials and notify wait staff when new information arises.
At the same time, digital signage solution can be also be used to notify diners of the availability of seating, reducing wait times and ending the frustration that comes with delays on busy nights. Restaurant owners can even pair their digital signage software with a sensor system, effectively tracking diners as they come and go, speeding the turning of tables, increasing capacity and driving higher profits.
Driving Tableside Dining Decisions
In recent years there has been a concerted move away from traditional hosts and hostesses and toward tableside ordering and payment solutions. This shift has helped restaurant owners reduce their cost, all while increasing satisfaction and convenience for diners.
Those advantages are clear enough, but digital signs at tableside can also influence dining behavior, allowing restaurant owners to upsell their customers quickly and easily. When displayed on an iPad screen, that luscious dessert may prove impossible to resist, increasing profits for restaurant owners and dining satisfaction for customers.
Creating the marvelous digital menu boards with ease
The benefits of digital signage software are clear enough, but many restaurant owners worry that implementing such a solution will be overly complicated or unacceptably time consuming. After all, restaurants are busy places, with harried wait staff, hungry diners and endless uncertainties.
The good news is that implementing a digital signage solution is not at all difficult. Restaurant owners who can use a smartphone app can begin building their digital menu boards right away, all from the comfort of their offices or the palms of their hands.
Even if there is no professional designer in the team, the owner always is able to create beautiful digital menus using current integrations in his digital signage software, for example, with well-known Canva app.
What this means in practical terms is that restaurant owners do not have to moonlight as software designer to create their own stunning digital menu boards. These apps do not require any special design skills, and restaurant owners and managers can instantly update their menu offerings with just a few clicks or swipes.
And once they are in place, those stunning digital menus will start to do their job, drawing in customers, driving purchasing decisions and pleasing diners from all walks of life.
Look digital signage service is able to dramatically simplify a daily content management in your restaurants, no matter how many venues you have and where they’re located. It’s cloud-based, easy-to-use, highly reliable and scalable. The pricing depends on the number of signs you need to manage, so, you pay for what you use. Interesting? Just try it absolutely for free right now!
