Step-By-Step Guide To Upgrading Your Coffee Shop With Screens

Coffee shop digital signage is a great way to give your place a boost in terms of customer engagement and sales. By installing the screens you’re getting a fantastic marketing tool that is going to help you impress your visitors with top-notch content. This is a step-by-step guide to coffee shop digital signage for you to use.

Step 1: deciding why you need coffee shop displays

Some businesses have it from day 1, and others get to it as they grow. Digital signage is among the most popular marketing tools you can use and the sooner you upgrade your cafe with screens the better for your business.

There are several reasons for that. Screen technology is: 

a) engaging - customers are sure to interact with the screens at your cafe. 

b) attention-grabbing - with an average attention span of 2.8-8 seconds, the displays help you to hold the focus of a customer with visual content.

c) versatile - one screen means almost unlimited content delivery choices. Your creativity is untied with software like Kitcast that gives you a chance to design everything in-house. 

d) cost-effective - save on paper menus and static signs printing and boost your sales in the process. 

e) growth-oriented - according to statistics, digital signage brings 32.8% growth in repeat buyers and a 31.8% upswing in overall sales volumes so you get extra points with screens in place.

Coffee shop digital signage is a powerful tool that is guaranteed to positively change the way you interact with customers and sell. Done right it will help grow your cafe.

Step 2: drafting the content strategy

Before buying screens and subscribing to software you have to decide what content you’re going to show and to whom.

That’s essential. Failing to do that in the very beginning may result in an unsuccessful use of technology and a waste of time and money. You don’t want that. 

In fact, as a digital signage software company, we at Kitcast have seen many businesses diving headfirst into signage technology without drafting the content strategy at the start. In each case, it has resulted in a loss of money. Don’t make this mistake, strategize before initiating the buying process. 

Sometimes you just don’t need digital signage. Sometimes you need a whole technological revamp. It’s in the preparation stage that you need to decide what works best for your cafe. 

Your strategy should answer three big questions:

WHO are you going to show content to?

WHAT are you going to show?

HOW are you going to do it?

WHO is about the audience. Make sure to write down everything that helps you understand what your customers are and what kind of content they will interact with.

WHAT is about the content. Decide what kinds of content you’re going to run via screens. Kitcast specializes in cafe and restaurant digital signage, you can check out the industry page on our website to find out more about the content you can broadcast using our software.

HOW is about the practical aspects like the location of the screens, timing of the content delivery, and proper screen distributions around your cafe.

Special mention: coffee shop menu screens

As we talk about content, one of the most popular and effective ways to boost sales in your coffee shop is installing the coffee shop menu screens. 

Digital menus allow you to visualize your offer, interact with your customers in a more engaging way, promote special deals, and highlight items that need special mention. 

In other words, when you think about coffee shop digital signage, the digital menu is the first thing you’d usually introduce in your cafe. 

Here’s a great article with the best ideas for a digital menu board

Step 3: choosing the digital signage software

The points in the previous chapter sound enticing, right? But when we say “screens” it’s not just a standalone display we’re talking about. In order to enable signage technology you need to establish a network. Software is a key element of this network. 

Kitcast is a cloud-based digital signage for Apple TV. It’s very intuitive and enterprise-level powerful. 

In order to start using digital signage with Kitcast you will only need to do 3 things:

1) connect an Apple TV to your screen 

2) install the Kitcast app in the AppStore

3) follow the instructions in the app to link the screen

Once you’ve done it for every display you have, congrats! You have created a digital signage network. The whole process didn’t take you longer than 5 minutes per screen to accomplish. That’s the kind of simplicity and intuitiveness we offer.

Step 4: gathering feedback and experimenting

Once your cafe has screens up and running, it’s time to roll out content and observe how it plays out. 

It is typical for things to not go according to your initial content strategy. That’s why you have to be ready to adjust, experiment, and listen to the audience. 

It may turn out, for example, that the type of content you thought was not that engaging becomes the hit of your signage. Or vice versa, the safest bet you had turned out to be really unpopular with the audience. 

That’s why experimenting helps you establish a clear picture of what your customers really want. 

Feedback is also an important part of coffee shop digital signage operations. With screens and QR codes, you can gather it quickly and efficiently. Do that to keep your hand on a pulse of what your audience is interested in and adjust your content accordingly.

Also, don’t forget to check out our article about the best Instagram accounts to follow if you own a cafe for some inspiration.