Do you need your digital menu boards to do a lot of prompting and
selling?
Here are 10 tips to follow to ensure your restaurant gets the most
from its investment in digital signage.
Take advantage of the flexibility of digital to communicate your menu while telling your brand story. This is something the mom-and-pop restaurants can easily do to match the big guys. Maintain a consistent use of colors, fonts, style, and imagery that aligns with your brand. This ensures that more interactions are memorable.
It’s important that your customers are able to read the digital menu easily, quickly and from a distance. This requires high contrast colors between text and backgrounds. Ideally, you’d have black text on a white background, or white text on a black background (in the case of a dark atmosphere, like a bar). This rule can be bent to accommodate your brand colors, so long as there remains a high degree of contrast.
When choosing fonts, opt for large, bold, easy-to-read fonts like Arial, Helvetica and Open Sans. If you have a fancy font in your branding, then consider using it only for accents or headers while the menu items themselves are in a simple font.
Colors not only attract the eye but also evoke emotions and convey your brand's message. If your core brand was not designed with digital signage in mind, it should still be possible to extend the brand with accent colors that add extra life to your menus. Use reds, yellows, and oranges to stimulate customer appetites and draw attention. Use greens to evoke freshness. Blue, unless it’s part of your brand, may be a color to avoid as it is not often found in foods.
Embrace the power of space in your digital menu. Ample spacing between menu elements increases clarity and focus, guiding your customers' eyes from item to item with the least amount of work. This approach not only enhances readability but also creates an inviting atmosphere that encourages exploration and selection.
High-quality images can turn a standard menu into a feast for the eyes. Invest in professional photography to showcase your dishes in the best light possible, making them irresistible to your customers. Framing food against a neutral or white background helps focus the attention on what matters most.
Your menu’s readability heavily depends on its environment. Consider factors like lighting and the placement of your screens to ensure your designs remain clear and legible in any setting. You don’t want an excessively bright screen in a dark setting, or a dark screen in a light setting.
Make use of your digital real estate and your accent colors to promote daily specials or seasonal favorites. Because TVs are relatively cheap, restaurants will often dedicate an entire screen, or half a screen, to a single promoted item. This isolation will draw the maximum attention and you’ll know quickly if your special is a success.
Keep your menu designs simple and straightforward. Overloading your display with too much text or too many images can overwhelm your customers. Remember, in digital signage, less is definitely more.
Incorporate videos to bring your menu to life. Usually, just a subtle touch will do, like a slow flame photo background or showing carbonation in a drink. A little bit of movement will capture the eye. This way, you won’t overpower, you’ll accentuate the appeal of your food photos and menus.
Digital menu board software, like MustHaveMenus Display, provides advanced features for managing content on your screens. With Display, you can organize your content into playlists and schedule your playlists to appear at the right meal time. You won’t have any need to manually intervene during your busy kitchen hours.
A well-designed digital menu board is not just about a product list, it’s about creating a memorable customer experience that differentiates you and your brand from the rest. Implement these tips to ensure your digital signage bring you maximum results!
Go here to learn more about MustHaveMenus Display.
Need help designing your digital menu boards? Try these
menu services.