Why Are Digital Menu Boards So Effective?

In a restaurant or food service setting, it’s important to communicate your offers effectively to customers. One of the best tools available to you in the modern era is a digital menu board, but what makes digital menu boards so effective? And how should you use your digital menu boards optimally?

The Advantages of Digital Menu Boards

Digital menu boards have grown in popularity over the last several years, and for many good reasons, including:

·       Attractiveness and aesthetics. Many people find digital menu boards to be more attractive and aesthetically pleasing than their physical counterparts. Digital screens look cleaner, brighter, and crisper – and because there are practically unlimited design options available, you can turn your digital screens into almost anything you want.

·       Brand reputation. Having a digital menu board is a higher form of technology, and is therefore more impressive to a wide range of people. Accordingly, you can see improvements to your brand reputation just by having one.

·       Easy reading. Restaurant owners frequently value digital mini boards because of the easy reading they support. The bright lights, high resolution, and crisp font options make it easier and faster for people to read your menu items and choose what they want.

·       Customizability and scalability. Digital menu boards are a highly flexible system, giving you practically unlimited control over how they’re used. You can customize these menu boards to display anything and everything you want, listing all your food and beverage options and even displaying pictures of them. You can also feature advertising, rotate in different messages, or get even more creative with your displays. Plus, it’s easy to add more screens, so you have practically infinite room for expansion.

·       Interactive options. With the right technologies, you can provide your guests with interactive options; instead of just reading your menu board, they can navigate it via touch. It’s a convenient way to make the experience more engaging while simultaneously introducing convenience to people interested in ordering food.

·       Regulatory compliance. Depending on where and how you operate, you may need to comply with certain food labeling requirements when advertising your menu options. With digital screens, it’s easier than ever, since you can quickly and easily customize your own display with nutritional information, ingredient lists, and more.

·       Centralized control. The old days of getting on a ladder and changing out menu boards by hand are over. Now, digital menu boards have centralized control; from a single platform, and authorized person can change the menu boards throughout the entire organization, or even across multiple establishments at the same time.

·       Inexpensiveness. Relatively speaking, digital menu boards are inexpensive. Paying for setup, installation, and electricity may deplete some of your budget, but it’s still likely to be cheaper than printing your menus on paper.

·       Fast, automatic updates. Like any form of technology, digital menu board software requires frequent updates, but these updates tend to be fast and automatic. Your software can update in the background, and you can rest assured that it remains secure.

How to Create a Better Menu Board

What steps can restaurants and other businesses take to create better digital menu boards?

·       Choose the right products and software. Not all digital menu boards are created equal. Shop around to discover and learn about different digital screen vendors, then choose the products that seem to be the best fit for your brand. Focus on usability and convenience to improve your efficiency.

·       Study your competitors. Pay close attention to how your competitors are using their digital menu boards. How are they listing their products? What makes these menu boards unique? You can use this information to mimic some of their strategies, but it’s also a good foundation to help you practice competitive differentiation.

·       Focus on easy reading. One of the greatest natural advantages of the digital menu board is its easy reading potential, but you’ll need to take some efforts to optimize this easy reading further. Play with different font options and use the right colors so that a wide range of audiences can read your written material from a distance.

·       Embrace minimalism. We often intuitively believe that more is always better, but this isn’t the case. In fact, if there are too many options crowding your menu board, you may end up losing customers. Embrace minimalism in your design.

·       Experiment. It’s hard to know what, exactly, will work best for your target audience, so be willing to experiment with different layouts and menu options. Take measurements and analyze them to see whether your experiments are working.

Digital menu boards are likely to grow in popularity from here as more entrepreneurs and marketers understand just how practical and valuable they are. 

With so many options for installation and customization, almost anyone can make effective use of them.