Digital signage and touchscreens add to the showroom
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many industries that had avoided certain technology had to embrace it. Whether it was out of necessity or convenience, digital tools like showroom touchscreens have now become permanent fixtures.
“Most of the touchscreens and technology that we’re seeing [in hot tub retail] is in the form of large, free-standing touch-screen kiosks,” says Mario Maichel, senior dealer development manager at Watkins Wellness. “They essentially look like a giant iPhone in a vertical orientation. Most of them are Windows-based, and they are being utilized largely for their browser capacity.”
Most of the information consumers ask about and dealers want to share can be found online, Maichel says.
“[Digital kiosks] are the easiest way to surface that content in a fun, engaging, technologically savvy environment without having to do any coding or programming,” he says.
Watkins Wellness shares content with dealers through its website and YouTube channel, ensuring it aligns well with the material dealers put on social media.
In the salesroom, customers can ask dealers to show specific hot tubs in different color combinations, how many are in stock and what would look best in their backyard. Customers are excited to visualize and customize their spa, and it’s a great tool for helping facilitate sales, Maichel says. Dynamic signage, designed to show promotions throughout the day, can also be scheduled to help drum up business during slower hours.
Maichel hasn’t seen the industry fully embrace digital signage yet, but it’s becoming less cost-prohibitive, easier to manage and more user-friendly.
Paul Madden Jr., co-owner of Water by Design in Roanoke, Virginia, also uses touchscreens in the showroom.
“We got them at the beginning of the pandemic when we couldn’t get spas and were forced to sell differently,” he says. “We were preselling spas for eight, 12 or 18 months down the road.”
It’s become a part of our sale presentations. We can go in with the digital keypad and build the customer’s spa.”
Paul Madden Jr., Water by Design
With five or six available spots on the showroom floor, they couldn’t display an entire collection, but with the touchscreens, customers could see different colors and models.
Madden says the touchscreen is connected to the internet, making it easy to update and ensuring it always has the latest content.
Customers can also look at customizations, financing terms and packages and add-on accessories all from the touchscreen. And salespeople can create a sense of urgency by showing available inventory during a sale.
“It’s become a part of our sale presentations,” Madden says. “We can go in with the digital keypad and build the customers’ spa.”
Utah-based manufacturer Bullfrog Spas offers touch-screen kiosks to dealers, says Breanne Carlson, senior marketing manager of channel marketing.
“It’s one of the items that we highly recommend, so it’s one that we design, work with a vendor to produce and create the content that goes on it and update as necessary,” she says.
Updates are often done wirelessly, although large updates have been known to come through thumb drives with regional manager support. But otherwise, Bullfrog’s kiosk setup is one where dealers can open the box, plug in their device and it’s ready to go.
“We believe it is important to give customers options,” Carlson says. “Different consumers want different things, so a lot of the [dealers who use] our touch-screen kiosks will use it during their presentation.”
Touch-screen kiosks can be useful when salespeople are busy or when customers prefer to browse and learn independently. Many retailers also incorporate televisions to engage customers.
In the past, many showrooms simply played a TV channel in the background, says Ali Reynolds, owner of The Get Smart Group, a marketing agency for the pool and hot tub industry. But those weren’t helping the retailer educate customers about their products and often served as a distraction.
The Get Smart Group decided to create a content library for manufacturers, and over a year, it built up about 100 manufacturer collections, Reynolds says. These collections contain product images, information and details like local sales or manufacturer promotions. To make updates simple and fast, The Get Smart Group uses a system with slides and an app where their dealer customers can build a slide collection and update their slides anytime.
“It’s a way for the dealers to have everything they want on the screens, and it’s way better than football,” Reynolds says. “It’s more useful for educating customers and for upsells.”
Reynolds says digital screens in a showroom can also be useful in telling a company’s story.
“We create a slide show that has their history, when they were founded, how long they’ve been doing business, stories about their involvement in the community and about their values and who they are as a business,” she says. “It builds customer loyalty and connects the customer emotionally so they want to work with that dealer versus just going and buying the cheaper hot tub at Costco down the street.”