Category: Solutions & Use Cases

Restaurant owners that want to turn tables faster and increase throughput often look to upgrade their technology. Mobile solutions can help boost profits and ensure a higher level of customer satisfaction – but even the newest, most feature-rich solutions only print as quickly as their device to receipt printer connection allows.

It doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with top of the line POS hardware or more affordable packages, even the best technology won’t perform as expected without connectivity you can count on.

Star Micronics has developed a new printer with a USB tether option that eliminates connectivity problems between the device and the receipt printer, so data is transferred to receipt printers quickly when your restaurant staff is on the go.

What causes connectivity problems?

Device to printer connectivity problems can cause dropped tickets, order mistakes, and errors in food preparation. They also can cause a delay in the time it takes to transmit data.

What is a USB tether?

The main connectivity options restaurant owners usually consider for their device to printer connections are Wi-Fi, Ethernet and Bluetooth. Unfortunately, none are a perfect fit – Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections can be unpredictable in a hospitality environment, while Ethernet connections may be awkward and difficult to set up.

AUSB tether is the ideal solution for a restaurant or hospitality venue that needs “always on” connectivity between devices. USB tethers are established when an Internet-enabled device, like an iPad or Android tablet, is connected to another wireless device using a wireless connection or a physical cable via a USB connection. USB tether, especially when wired to another device, is extremely reliable.

How can I employ a USB tether in my restaurant?

If your restaurant needs to print receipts from mobile, web-based POS applications but struggles with connectivity issues, a printer that is connected via USB tether is the perfect solution. Star Micronics’ new TSP143IIIU offers a simple and extremely reliable tether via USB connectivity. If you’re using an Apple device, the USB tether will simultaneously charge the device that is it connected to.

The TSP143IIIU allows iOS, Windows or Android devices to tether directly to the receipt printer. The simple connection, lightning fast printing speed and compact design provides the reliability required for fast-paced service, high volume transactions and workplaces where wireless networking is difficult.

This cost-effective printer option includes everything you need to upgrade your printing capabilities. The printer comes with an internal power supply, cables, mounting kits, and paper roll. Its simple “plug and play” connectivity and new USB serial number feature, allows a PC to detect the TSP143IIIU on its Windows platform using any USB port.

Your customers expect to see up-to-the minute POS solutions that empower them to order when they want, how they want and pay the check promptly when they are finished. However, mobile POS is only as reliable as the internet connection that keeps it up and running. Restaurants that use tablet POS in their restaurant or hospitality venue should take advantage of Star’s new receipt printer with the USB tether option so they can print receipts anytime, anywhere, with a reliable internet connection.

Learn more about the TSP143IIIU: https://starmicronics.com/TSP100

If you’ve looked into marketing options and best practices for your retail business, you may have seen the term “user generated content” being tossed around quite a bit. For retailers and small businesses, leveraging user generated content is a great way to grow your marketing and sales for little to no cost.

What is User Generated Content?

User generated content (UGC) is defined as any type of content including videos, photos, blogs, tweets, etc. that has been created and published by unpaid contributors. In the case of retail, this would be content created by your customers. This can range from Instagram photos featuring your new line of summer wear, to a Facebook Live video of your bath bomb dissolving to create the most relaxing bath time.

Now the question to ask is: Do user generated marketing campaigns actually work? The short answer is yes!

• Brand engagement increases by 28% when user generated content is used in product videos
• 86% of millennials say that UGC is a good indicator of the quality of the brand
• Shoppers who interact with UGC are 97% more likely to convert with a retailer than customers who do not
• 43% of people are more likely to purchase a new product when they have learned about it through social channels or from friends and family

Organic vs. Driven UGC

Now that you know what user generated content is and have seen some statistics to back up the benefit of UGC campaigns, let’s talk about what it can do for your brand. Leveraging UGC on social media portrays that your brand is so likable, that people want to promote it themselves. Sometimes UGC comes from different motives. Many brands will hold a photo contest in order to leverage user generated content, whereas others generate is more naturally.

For example, if you follow any millennial females on Instagram, you may have seen the famous red bathing suit post that “broke the Internet”. Sunny Clothing Co. saw the opportunity to make their Instagram post go viral by posting a photo of a woman in a red bathing suit with the caption telling their followers that they can get that same bathing suit for free by reposting the photo and tags Sunny Clothing Co. For an SMB retailer, this is a genius way to organically boost your social media following and take advantage some free user-generated marketing. It was in fact so genius, that the company underestimated the success of the post. They ended up with so many respondents that they had to put a limit on the number of red bathing suits they could give away.

Personalization and Contests

Coca-Cola, on the other hand, found a more subtle way to run their UGC campaign. Within the past year or so, you may have noticed that Coke began putting people’s names on their bottles. You may have even found yourself searching through to find a Coke bottle with your own name on it. So how is this campaign helping to create user generated content? We live in a digital age where everything and anything we do gets posted to Facebook, sent in a Snapchat, posted to Instagram, or even sent to a group chat on iMessage. And for some funny reason, people love finding their name on things! With the combination of that and our obsessions with sharing our day-to-day tasks on social, Coke created a wildly successful UGC campaign.

How to Leverage UGC

Before you go off and launch your very own UGC campaign, there are first a few questions you will need to ask yourself. Do you want to drive the UGC? Do you have the budget to give away prizes for top posts? Will the content generated by your customers be consistent with your brand?

Creating Campaigns that Live On

It’s important to remember that leveraging user generated content can be as simple as using a social media monitoring tool to see when your customers are talking about your brand, or it can be as complex as starting an entire UGC campaign like Sunny Clothing Co. or Coca-Cola. While Sunny Clothing Co.’s UGC campaign was very successful, it was also very short lived, as it was only a one-day contest. Coke, on the other hand, is going on their second summer of their “Share a Coke” campaign.

It is important look at your goals and why you want to leverage UGC, and how your business can benefit from it.

Video content is quickly becoming a favorite among marketers everywhere. For small businesses, creating video content is a great way to stand out from the competition and offer a fun and easily consumable way to market your products or services to your customers. Creating and promoting video content is also becoming easier and more feasible for small businesses with tight budgets through social media.

Let’s first take a look at the impact that video content is having on social media marketing (compliments of Buffer).

• Online videos will account for more than 80% of all consumer internet traffic by 2020
• Over 8 billion videos or 100 million hours of videos are watched on Facebook everyday
• More than 500 million hours of videos are watched on YouTube everyday
• More than 100 million hours of how-to YouTube videos were watched in North America in the first five months of 2015
• 60% of marketers used videos in their social media marketing in 2016

Now that we’ve seen how video content has rapidly grown over the past few years and is now dominating social media marketing, let’s talk about how you can leverage video content for your business. There are tons of different videos that can be made on many different topics, using many different styles. For now, we’re going to focus on three types on videos that you can leverage for your small business: promotional, “how-to”, and testimonials.

1. Promotional Videos

A promotional video can be used to tell your customer about your products or services. When creating a promotional video, it’s important to focus on your target audience, the overall message, and the benefits that your product or service will provide to your audience. Are you looking to create brand awareness? Will your video educate your customers? Do you want to increase sales on that particular product? A promotional video can be used to help meet all of these goals, but make sure you have a specific goal in mind before you begin your storyboard.

You’ll also want to consider the duration and the tone of the video when planning out your promotional video. Promotional pieces tend to be shorter in length in order to keep the audience engaged throughout the entire video, and will need something to immediately grab the viewer’s attention.

2. “How-to” Videos

Fun fact: YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google. Visual learners skip the “how to” Google search and go straight to YouTube so they can complete a task as they watch someone else do it in a video. These “how-to” or “support” videos can be extremely helpful for any business. And the number one rule to creating a killer “how-to” video – keep it simple!

When creating a how-to video, it is acceptable to make the video longer in length so you can explain the full process of the task, set-up, or tips at hand. With this said, you want to make sure that the video explains that task in the simplest way possible. Good how-to videos focus on 4 simple things: the problem, the solution, how it works, and a call to action.

It’s important to also remember that how-to videos are not just limited to businesses that sell electronics or tech-savvy companies. A how-to video can be as simple as “How To Tie a Neck-Tie” or as complex as “How To Play Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony” or “How To Build a PC”. Take some time to discover what you can teach your customers, and use your skills and knowledge to create an enlightening how-to video for that process.

3. Customer Testimonial Videos

You know that you run an awesome business offering even more awesome products and services, but convincing other people of that is the difficult part. This is why customer testimonials are extremely important to any small business. Video testimonials are becoming a huge marketing tool for SMB. In fact, customer testimonials have the highest effectiveness rating for content marketing at 89%.

Again, while customer testimonials can be longer than your average promotional video, you want to be sure to keep it simple. Focus on the solution, the benefits, and the results that the customer got out of using your product or service. Another important thing to consider is that testimonials appeal to customers because of their authenticity. Try ditching the script and having a casual conversation with your customer about the product or solution. This tends to create a more relatable video for the audience, and helps the customer feel comfortable on camera.

Small businesses can leverage video content in many different ways. It’s important to define your video goals and decide which type of video content will bring the best results to your business.

Click here to view Star Micronics’ full YouTube video library.

Somerset, NJ – May 3, 2017 – Star Micronics, leading provider of point of sale and proof of transaction technology, today announced that Quetzal POS will be providing support for Star’s all-in-one mPOP^™ peripheral with their new and improved iPad^® point of sale system. Quetzal POS has completely redesigned their iPad point of sale and claims to have the most beautiful and simplistic POS available for retail. Quetzal POS specializes in point of sale technology that provides tools for entrepreneurs to take their small to medium-sized retail business to the next level. Paired with Star Micronics’ mPOP^™, mobile point of purchase combining a 2-inch receipt printer and cash drawer, Quetzal POS is the ideal point of sale solution for boutiques for footwear, clothing, cosmetics, fragrance, and more.

Quetzal POS’ brand new software interface will include a number of visual improvements, plus a lot of new features specific for specialty retailers. For the first time, users will be able to perform 100% of the POS functionality offline including reporting, inventory management, transactions, and more. With built-in loyalty features and a tool that allows users to track sales commission, Quetzal POS’ new solution will be more intuitive for employees and store managers or owners alike. Additionally, users will now be able to choose their interface color scheme to maintain an attractive aesthetic in-store. With Star’s sleek and compact mPOP peripheral, retailers can save counter space and manage their transactions with one, simple solution.

In addition to a brand new interface and additional features, Quetzal POS will still be providing a digital receipt solution for their customers with Star’s AllReceipts^™ app. In addition to their support for the mPOP, Quetzal POS is also adding support for Star Cloud Services, allowing retailers to offer their customers digital receipts and engage with their shoppers. Using the Quetzal POS solution, retailers can print a QR code on the bottom of their printed receipts. With the AllReceipts^™ app, shoppers will scan the QR code and be able to store a digital copy of their receipt right in their smartphone.

“We are aggressively in pursuit to be the leader in the next wave of iPad POS solutions. With our new UI/UX and a ton of new features, retailers will finally have a product that’s priced right, simple to learn, and focused only on specialty retail. In 2017, we expect to onboard 500 new customers for our base case – so the revolution has already begun.”

Somerset, NJ – April 3, 2017 – Star Micronics, leading provider of point of sale hardware and proof of transaction technology, is now working with world-leading retail management software Vend, to bring the digital receipt revolution to their retailers at no extra cost.

Star Cloud Services’ suite of digital receipt and customer engagement tools is free to all retailers using Star Micronics printer peripherals with Vend’s sophisticated POS and inventory management software. With the launch of Vend’s new integration with AllReceipts™, and the recent release of Star Cloud Services’ Micro Receipt™ feature, retailers can now offer their customers an innovative digital receipt solution while saving on paper, reducing the receipt length up to 80% of its original size.

Micro Receipt allows customers to scan a printed QR code into the AllReceipts app or the Itemize digital expense app, giving them instant access to the full receipt on their smartphone. It also allows retailers to increase engagement with their customers and gather useful data – for example sharing a survey where shoppers are asked to rate their retail experience.

New Jersey based retailer The Sunglass Menagerie has already seen the benefits of bringing Star Micronics and Vend together in their six store locations. “Now everything runs so much more smoothly at checkout and we have far better inventory control,” says Colton Karch, Store Leader at Sunglass Menagerie. “It’s comforting to know that we can rely on the system and our printer when making a sale, and our employees really understand and enjoy using it.”

“We are very excited to welcome Vend to our list of point of sale providers supporting AllReceipts,” said David Salisbury, VP of Sales and Marketing for Star Cloud Services. “Vend has become a very popular choice for POS technology among SMB retailers. With this new solution, we are offering much more than just a digital receipt service. We are providing tools to help increase customer engagement, and the ability to personalize the customer experience, at no cost to the retailer.”

“We built Vend to bring mobility to retailers – our software runs on iPad and we work closely with Apple to help retailers manage their business on the go. With AllReceipts we can now offer an even more mobile solution,” says Pierre-Emmanuel Perruchot de La Bussière, General Manager at Vend. “Retail staff will be able to serve customers from the shop floor and provide a digital receipt right to their smartphone, without the need to take down customer details. This will help retailers to speed up the checkout process and provide a superior shopping experience for their customers.”

Vend already supports Star Micronics mPOP™, TSP100, TSP100IIIL, TSP100IIIW, FVP-10, TSP700II, TSP800II, SM-T400i, SM-T300i, TSP650II, SM-S230i, and SM-S220i printers.