Among more than 50 new products displayed at DSE 2012’s New Product Pavilion, a unique mobile signage solution on Apple iPad generated a good amount of buzz. This next-gen signage platform with native mobile signage support is exciting news for system integrators and businesses in the hospitality industry, whom are interested in turning tablets into the new kiosks to attract customers and improve the overall ordering experience.
“Mobile signage is definitely another hot trend in the digital signage industry, and our commercial ready off-the-shelf solution is in the front line. In the near future, we predict many more kiosks turning to tablets.” says Joey Zhao, the CEO of 22 Miles, Inc. (22MILES) The company has deployed about 100 iPad signage systems to a few qualified restaurant chains at the end of 2011 as a test launch. During the DSE show, 22MILES officially launched its TouchMenu for iPad system (iTM) with a high expectation, because “the results are really amazing“ since they launched the pilot program.
Before end user’s feedback, let’s first take a look at how such mobile signage system works for integrators and business owners. The iPad, equipped with enclosure and standard, runs 24×7 as a self-service menu kiosk for restaurants. With the backend CMS and designer, the interfaces and features can be flexibly changed for hotel, retail, and many other verticals as well.
For the end users, they will only be able to experience the iPad signage player in this mobile signage system. 
22MILESsolution provides restaurants with various ways to promote their food and services. When customers step into a new restaurant or plan to try a new dish the have never ordered before, they now have visual menu categories to choose from such as “specials” or “chef’s recommendations”, and can drill down to get tons of information, like “ingredients” and “nutrition facts” about their dish.
During their use, the ads show up from time to time. Each business location has the flexibility to decide if they want to display ads or not, like the banners on the top and right side and the full screen interstitial page. If the system integrators or owners prefer guests to watch the ads, they will have more convenient choice to customize the ad scheduling. Compared to the print menu, nothing is impossible for different types of ad signage on this small screen.
After ordering, various games and social media help to boost a higher customer satisfaction rate of dining experience. Tablets are one the best entertainment tools to kill time while guests are waiting.
Everything the end users experienced on the iPad screen is manageable for the customization by the system integrators or the management team, like the menus, dishes, prices, tax, events, links, coupons, ads, and themes. The operations allow a group of kiosks or even a region display same signage, or each individual kiosk can display from each other. No matter which you want, all the updates will start to take effect on tablets within a few minutes. It revolutionizes the way how restaurant and hotel manager update their menu and ads signage, with a great cost saving and convenience.
Since the launch of mobile signage solution in restaurant chain, 22MILES iPad signage system has been tapped and viewed by millions of times within 3 months. According to one of the store managers, he has seen customers coming in and requesting to sit at the tables with touch screen and prefer to wait longer, even a regular table will be open right away.
In their booth, they also had TouchMenu product running in a multi-user multi-touch table, which is like a giant iPad, allowing multiple guests to play around. That’s the goal of the company’s signage platform, work with different devices, in different scenarios.
Source: 22MILES
