What Is An Optimized DMB?
Digital Menu Boards can be considered “optimized” when they’ve been created (and are evolved) following the six steps in the order shown at right. These steps form what Allure calls Data-Driven Digital Design™. It’s the difference between actively engaging and influencing fans’ purchase decisions while improving speed of service and satisfaction vs. simply communicating what’s on the menu. Included in this is the willingness to change the positioning and featuring of items by event, weather, or time in the event, or even who’s winning or losing – all the things that drive your fan’s behavior and their purchase pattern. These aren’t your ordinary digital menu boards sold by a basic provider, which is why they often deliver extraordinary results.
Sports venues are teeming with data and statistics and optimized DMBs can play a critical role in gathering and acting on key purchase behavior data and insights. With the right solution, opportunities to impact everything from supply chain and culinary development to concourse design, staffing and more exist – all while adding item counts to average transactions, selling more featured items, and improving guest throughput and overall satisfaction.
One recent test showed a 5.5% lift in sales attributable solely to DMB optimization, but achieving this doesn’t happen automatically – it requires working the solution and doing it right.
Digital Signage 1.0
Initially, digital menu boards offered a value proposition both operationally and cosmetically focused, with most stadium-arena operations looking to achieve three types of benefits:
1. Easing cost and effort around price and item changes for each season
2. Improving the aesthetic of concession stands and menus
3. Reducing the environmental impact of printing and discarding menu boards
As solutions and the market matured, hardware costs dropped, with some providers giving away “free” menu software with other visual solutions like IPTV or large screen purchases. At other venues, menu content looked better and hardware costs lowered while displays got bigger and better and the value proposition widened:
4. Expanding content, including customer-driven design offerings
5. Increasing system integration directly to point of sale (POS) systems
6. Extending the menu with merchandising and other marketing activities
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