Retail is a competitive business and as more shoppers head online, finding creative ways to attract consumers to physical stores can be challenging. But thankfully there are plenty of novel technologies that can help and one of these is projection, enabling you to create immersive, exciting experiences that bring your brand, products and services to life. Here’s a closer look at how it’s used and what to consider when deciding whether or not it’s right for your store.
How do retailers use projection?
More than keeping your customers happy, immersive experiences can improve operational efficiency, boost your online presence and help you to better manage your store layout and inventory.
Store Navigation
Managing the flow of people through a store has never been more important since COVID-19. Projection can be used to create digital signage on walls, floors, surfaces and ceilings, making it quicker and easier for customers to navigate your store.
In-Store Entertainment
Projection enables you to transform under-utilized surfaces into engaging experiences that delight customers. This might be aspirational images of your products, educational content or to create a specific mood, such as a romantic setting in a restaurant.
Visual Merchandising
It isn’t always possible to showcase all of your products on the shop floor. Yet customers like to touch, feel and try product before purchase. With projection, you can overlay images and product information onto surfaces, giving customers greater visibility of your product range.
Visual Storytelling
A recent PwC report found customers are willing to pay as much as 16 percent more for products sold by companies that deliver great experiences. Projection is an easy, cost-effective way to do this. For example, you could project a story throughout your store, guiding customers around your space as the story evolves. It could be the real-life story behind your products or a customer case study.
Operational Efficiencies
Using projection to share relevant information such as available online inventory and store operating hours is an effective way to convey important information. At the same time, it reduces the need for customers to ask for support from your staff. This means it can save employee resources while enabling customers to make informed decisions much more easily.
Is projection right for my store?
Projection has many valuable applications. But tight retail margins means every new investment needs to be scrutinized. Here’s a look at when projection can help boost sales and help with cost efficiencies.
Showcase a large inventory
If you struggle to display all of your products or you simply want to showcase stock levels, projectors are an easy way to do this. Use them to showcase the same product in different colors or styles or to display extra product information on surfaces. Here’s an example using Epson’s Lightscene EV100.
Maximize your retail space
Bring your retail space to life and leverage its full potential by using projection to keep customers in your store longer. This could be by creating captivating experiences that entertain customers while showcasing your products in an aspirational setting. Check-out how Ikea did just this.
Promote new product features
There’s often much more to say about your brand and products than can fit on a label. Projection offers an easy and engaging solution by enabling you to display additional product information on surfaces around your store. Use it to tease out unique and undiscovered features of your products.
Make your brand memorable
Attract more customers to your store by creating exciting, engaging experiences that spur word-of-mouth marketing. For example, if you’re a restaurant or entertainment venue, you can use projection to create different moods and atmospheres. Here’s a great example of how Temple House thrilled customers with projections of forests, temples, night skies and mountains.
Make your store COVID-19 safe
COVID-19 has put health and safety at the forefront of consumers minds, which means retailers need to avoid overcrowding and long queues. Here, the challenge is managing footfall without damaging the customer experience. Projection is a simple way to make store navigation easy and engaging.
Boost your social media presence
Projection can help you deliver fun, exciting experiences that are often shared. This makes it a great tool for brands wanting to boost their social media and wider online presence. Use it to tell stories and showcase aspirational content of your products or services.
Tips for getting started with immersive retail experiences
Find a real use case
Identify a specific business challenge that projection could fulfill. For example, improving store navigation to decrease congestion or showcasing your full inventory without cluttering the shop floor.
Start small and simple
Constrain a proof-of-concept to the specific use case you’ve identified. That way you can gradually familiarize yourself and your customers with projection experiences and more easily measure results.
Capture customer feedback
Ask your employees to capture customer feedback through observation and questioning. Create a quick questionnaire for employees to share with customers. You could even incentivize customers to complete it with a small reward.
Iterate and grow
Aggregate your customer feedback and identify any common themes. Based on this, consider how you could improve the projection experience or if there are any other use cases it may or may not suit.
In a competitive retail world, giving customers a great experience with your brand is becoming crucial to success and a key point of differentiation. Projection allows you to create exciting experiences that you can personalize to your brand and customers. To learn more about how Epson projectors can help you create engaging digital experiences, view or download the Digital Signage eBook. Or visit Epson.com/DigitalSignage for more information about elevating customer experiences with Epson projectors.
