When people visit large shopping centres, many find it a stressful experience. Shopping centres with too many shops, crowded with customers, and incomprehensible signs can overwhelm visitors, making it difficult for them to move around the building.
Fortunately, as the world of shopping centres continues to expand, the opportunities for businesses to enhance their customers’ personal and shopping experiences are also increasing. Centres are now incorporating technologically advanced solutions, like indoor mapping and digital wayfinding, to provide shoppers with a more intuitive, efficient, and enjoyable shopping experience.
Incorporating an indoor centre navigation system integrated with large touchscreen monitors is an innovative strategy to help shoppers find what they need. Furthermore, location intelligence allows retailers to gain key insights into how customers interact with the products and services. Thus, this advanced technological solution helps businesses exponentially increase sales and turn shoppers into loyal customers.
This article puts together everything you need to know about indoor wayfinding with touchscreen monitors and how the technology can help enhance customer experiences in shopping centres.
Understanding indoor wayfinding in a shopping centre
Indoor wayfinding is a navigation system introduced in the infrastructure of shopping complexes to help visitors quickly find routes to various retailers or other places of interest. All a shopper needs to do is use a mobile app on their smartphone to access the shopping centre directory and locate the easiest and shortest way to necessary outlets. There is no need for shoppers to study complex signs to determine how to get to a specific shop in the shopping centre.
Indoor wayfinding technology integrated with large touchscreen monitors is versatile for large buildings like shopping centres. You can commonly see wayfinding kiosks when visiting shopping centres in metropolitan cities.
Features of wayfinding touchscreen monitors
Some typical features of indoor wayfinding are:
- Determines the user’s location at a point in time
- Enable navigation in the centre and adjacent areas like parking lots
- Creating heat maps for determining crowded areas
- Allowing data analytics to control and optimise shopping centre operations
How do wayfinding touchscreen monitors work in a shopping centre?
Indoor navigation systems with high-performance touchless screen solutions function by determining the user’s location in real time. The system accurately calculates an individual’s location and helps them get from one point to another.
Many shopping centre operators use different technologies to implement indoor wayfinding in their buildings. For instance, some shopping centres install Bluetooth Low Energy beacons at different points to determine the user’s location using special iBeacon beacons. The sensors installed at multiple locations in the shopping centres regularly send signals picked up by the shopper’s smartphone. This transfers certain information to the customers to help build the routes.
Another efficient location technology that is incorporated in many shopping centres is Wi-Fi. It usually works with existing access points and uses unique labels allowing businesses to find users in the range of 10-16 feet through a multi-advertising approach.
How wayfinding touchscreen monitors enhance customer experience
Implementing indoor wayfinding solutions in shopping centres unlocks opportunities to create more personalised customer experiences. In addition to quickly building routes, businesses can send targeted push messages, showcase discounts or sales offers, decode analytics for optimised centre operations, etc.
We have listed a few opportunities that a shopping centre can create by implementing indoor wayfinding solutions integrated with large touch screens:
Seamless navigation both indoors and outdoors
Incorporating indoor wayfinding technology in the shopping centre leads to seamless indoor-outdoor navigation, allowing shoppers to move easily inside the centre and surrounding areas, such as, nearby streets or parking areas.
Indoor wayfinding platforms can be implemented using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi technology, and GPS can support outdoor navigation.
Building a route to the cars in the parking lot
Shopping centres are often associated with large parking lots, making it difficult for shoppers to spot their cars. You can solve this problem with an indoor wayfinding system. Visitors can quickly spot their car on the digital map and locate the shortest route to reach the vehicle.
Targeted push notifications
Shopping centre administrations usually have their regular shoppers’ contact details via help desk or customer service centres. With location features, shopping centre administration can send targeted push notifications regarding discounts, product details, promotions, and new marketing channels, to the shoppers’ smartphones.
Data analytics
Indoor wayfinding technology is also a powerful solution for centre administrators to collect detailed analytics and make informed decisions to optimise business processes and operations. You can use this technology in many ways, from building heat maps of buildings and customer flow maps to accessing analytical customer data.
Things to consider when installing wayfinding touchscreen monitors
Are you installing digital wayfinding solutions integrated with touchscreen monitors? If so, you should consider the following concepts:
What information is to be displayed on the screen?
- Will the displayed information be permanent, or will it change? For instance, a map to the stores located in a shopping centre is a static form of information that doesn’t change for a long time.
How will information be displayed on the screen?
- Will the information be displayed as text, pictures, maps, or symbols?
Will the wayfinding touchscreen monitors be installed indoors or outdoors?
- What temperatures will the monitor experience? Do they need to be weatherproof?
What will be the budget?
- Consider installation, energy consumption, and maintenance costs beyond the initial purchase price.
Driving exceptional customer engagement
Shopping centre indoor wayfinding technology with a robust touch screen solutions is a powerful tool to revolutionise the shopping experience. By leveraging the latest digital wayfinding and location intelligence platforms, shopping centres can drive exceptional customer engagement and boost sales.
Installing touchscreen monitors equipped with indoor navigation systems in shopping centres makes it easier for confused visitors to locate the shortest routes to the desired stores, eating outlets, or entertainment areas. Since this technology is here to stay, shopping centre managers should take advantage of it as soon as they can.