Key Branding Methods in Self-Checkout

Google LLC found that first impressions are formed within 50 milliseconds of encountering a brand. What impressions are your customers forming during your checkout process? Are your customers perceiving long lines and cashiers that are taking too long to process orders? Or are your customers being greeted with a beautifully branded checkout experience?

Your enterprise can take control over how your brand is perceived with self-checkout, and even after your customers leave your business with loyalty and remarketing tools.

Self-checkout lets you tell your brand’s story during every transaction in a way that your customers are welcomed with an engaging experience that will forge a lasting bond.. This is important for your bottom line. According to a McKinsey & Company study, enterprises now view a corporate narrative as a “central rather than marginal element of a supplier’s proposition.” The study found that companies with clear narratives perform 20% better than companies with weak narratives.

This article reviews key branding methods to consider when building and scaling your self-checkout, including hardware and signage, software interface design, evolving employee roles, and loyalty and remarketing.

Hardware and Signage

The moment customers enter your business, they will see your self-checkout kiosks. Will customers perceive your hardware as outdated and clunky, or modern and appealing? Karla Guarino from Kiosk Group shared, “In my 20 years of experience in the kiosk industry, I’ve found that there is a shift from over-sized kiosks to lighter footprint, elegant ones like iPad based self-checkout. This is driven by the popularity of mobile devices.”

Your payment processing hardware impacts your brand perception as well. “Customers are confused and overwhelmed by pin pads with many buttons. Consumers have a strong preference for minimalist card readers like the Square device. Consumers also expect to be able to pay with Apple Pay and Google Pay, and should have visual cues about the supported methods,” suggests Guarino.

Your hardware should be compliant with regulations like Americans With Disability (ADA) compliance to show that your brand is sensitive to customers with special needs.

Your self-checkout hardware is also an opportunity to showcase what makes your brand unique. Everything from the kiosk enclosures to the signage around the kiosks can be designed with your logos and brand messaging. Branding opportunities are available for any type of kiosk, whether your enterprise chooses standing, tabletop, or wall mounted kiosks.

Branded self-checkout hardware lets you create a consistent brand identity at scale. “Kiosk Group and Newline recently helped the chain Wafels and Dinges design a custom kiosk with their branding. As they rapidly expand their franchising program, self-checkout is crucial for establishing brand consistency across multiple locations,” shared Guarino.

Software Interface Design

Your self-checkout software design matters. Researchers analyzed how different design and information content factors influence trust of online sites. Of all the feedback given, 94% was design related:

• Complex;
• Busy layout;
• Lack of navigation aids;
• Boring web design;
• Use of color;
• Pop-up adverts;
• Slow introductions to the site;
• Small print;
• Too much text;
• Corporate look and feel;
• Poor search capabilities.

So how should you design your self-checkout? Google conducted research that found that software with low visual complexity and high prototypicality (how representative a design looks for a certain category) were perceived as highly appealing. Further, a study found that visual appeal even beats usability for positive first impressions.

Make your self-checkout design simple, visually appealing and familiar to build trust with your brand.

It is also important to convey what makes your brand unique. For example, in a survey by Newline, customers were 86% likelier to give a 5 star rating to a business with branded self-checkout with custom images, fonts, and menu workflows than a generic self-checkout.

Evolving Employee Roles

Self-checkout lets enterprises create new roles in your organization that are more marketing and sales focused.

Having self-checkout requires a concierge to greet your customers and serve as an ambassador to your brand. With your employees freed from entering orders, they are able to focus on serving as a champion for your brand. This involves educating customers and creating a lasting bond by focusing on treating customers as VIPs.

Employee morale also improves and staff is proud to come to work because they are empowered by self-checkout technology and the new learning opportunities it presents.

Loyalty and Remarketing

Self-checkout presents an opportunity to continue engaging customers long after they have completed their transaction with loyalty and remarketing programs.

Roy Ganor, CEO of Newline, shared, “Loyalty tools are one of the main requests we get from our clients when building their branded self-checkout. Over 66% of consumers participate in Newline’s self-checkout loyalty programs. Enterprises are particularly interested in using the self-checkout as a means to connect to customers’ social media accounts for retargeting purposes.”

Collecting data through loyalty programs lets your business personalize the entire checkout process for each customer. For instance, your self-checkout can have filters that show vegetarians only vegetarian items, or people with allergies can have items they are allergic to removed from the menu. At the moment of sale, smart upsell recommendations can be made based on machine learning. Having a personalized checkout and recommendation engine boosts sales over 30%.

Adding opt-in for text marketing during your self-checkout workflow is a particularly effective strategy to stay on customers’ minds. 98% of all text messages are opened so this is the most direct way to stay in contact with customers. Moreover, SMS marketing has been found to have a significant positive impact on brand awareness. A survey by SDL found that 60% of respondents appreciated receiving non-commercial messages from brands. According to eMarketer, 48% of consumers said they would prefer to receive their loyalty-related messages via SMS.

In summary, enterprises looking to highlight their brand and engage customers with self-checkout must consider hardware and signage, software interface design, evolving employee roles, and loyalty and remarketing.

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