If you intend to improve your store and serve your customers more satisfactorily, you cannot depend on guesswork to know what most customers want. You need to conduct consistent in-store surveys in order to solicit opinions and feedback directly from your customers.
Unlike in the past when stores needed review cards to collect customer feedback, technology has made it possible for store owners to conduct simple surveys that are well structured and easy to analyze. One of these technologies is the touch screen interactive display.
Touchscreen Interactive Displays
These are simple touch screens that store owners place at the main entrance, next to the cashier’s desk, or at any other place where customers are unlikely to miss. The screens, which may contain an LED screen panel, display simple questions for the customers, alongside simple answer options. For example, you could ask customers how satisfied they are with your in-store customer service or how clean they think the store is, and then to answer, you could provide them with 3 emojis (Just normal social media emojis) ranging from angry to happy. It could also be a yes or no answer, for example: Was it easy to find the items you were shopping for? Then they can click on “YES” or “NO”.
Besides collecting customer feedback, you can use touchscreen interactive displays to share important information, e.g. news about seasonal specials and sales.
How to Create a Simple Touch Screen Interactive Display
You don’t have to buy a touch screen interactive display for your store. You can now create a simple touchscreen device for surveys with a Raspberry Pi 4 set. How cool and affordable is that?
This tutorial explains the process of debugging your Pi setup and using it to make a touchscreen display without needing an external monitor.
Hardware:
• HDMI display: You will need it to get your touchscreen display up and running, after which you can remove it from the system, just make sure the port is working properly first as you may need a HDMI Port Repair before.
• Raspberry Pi 4 set
• Touchscreen display
• Micro SD card which serves as your hard disk/storage
• Micro USB Cable
• Power adapter
• A pair of wireless Keyboard and mouse
The Process:
• Configure your SD card using a computer. To do this correctly, you will need to download a disk image of Raspbian. That is readily available on the Raspberry Pi website.
• If you have trouble installing the image files you’ve downloaded onto the SD card, download the Etcher app on your computer, open it, and run it. The app will give you prompts on the process of installing your disk image- it will basically do everything for you.
• After configuring the SD card, put it into your Pi via the serial port.
• Connect the Pi to your HDMI display and plug it into a power source. At this point, you will see text flashing on the display as your Pi boots to the Raspbian desktop.
• Your Pi will now be a Raspbian desktop after booting. Attach the touchscreen to the setup and connect it to a secure Wi-Fi (or Ethernet).
• Download LCD drivers and copy them onto your USB disk via the micro USB cable.
• Insert the USB disk into your Pi through the USB host, and then copy all the drivers into the Raspbian desktop’s file system. If you need help, this tutorial will help you with the installation process. Don’t disconnect your Wi-Fi until the installation process is complete.
The working:
Your Raspbian desktop will be complete and fully functional at this point if the drivers installed correctly. This is the point where you unplug the HDMI display. From this point on, you will be operating your Pi computer using a wireless keyboard and mouse combo.
The touchscreen should now be responsive to touch. It should also be navigable and able to display sharp touch-friendly images. It won’t be as capacitive as a smartphone or tablet screen, meaning that it will mostly rely on pressure to detect touch and not electrical current.
You can now go ahead and program your Raspbian desktop and save your survey questions, which will then be displayed on the touchscreen.
In conclusion
You can also make a touchscreen interactive display using the Raspberry Pi 3, 2 or Model B. Touchscreens are compatible with all Pi devices with 40 GPIO pins specifications but are not compatible with 26 pin GPIO Raspberry Pi.
Besides displaying questions, the Pi and touchscreen combo can be used to browse the internet or play games.
