Local Businesses Using iPads In-store with Customers

IPad Used in Coffee Shop

If you haven’t noticed, iPads are starting to pop-up in local businesses around the area.  Those devices that many of us have at home for personal use (ex. Angry Birds), appear to be making their way into the places we shop and dine.

This trend apparently isn’t just local, as we hear businesses all over the world are starting to use iPad and other tablets at their physical location to provide customers with a new in-store experience. Here are a few ways we’ve heard about businesses using iPads in their stores:

• To display their website
• To allow customers to watch product and service videos
• As Point-of-Sale systems (linked to cash registers)
• To collect email addresses, Facebook Likes, and Twitter followers
• As menus to replace the traditional paper versions.

Recently, we heard about a coffee shop using OnSpot Social in its café.  It’s a new app that allows businesses to collect Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers, and customer email addresses right in their store on an iPad they have set up on the counter.  The app also allowed the coffee shop to run a Special offer to customers who provided them with their e-mail address right in the store.  To display the iPad in their café, they set up an iPad Kiosk which made the iPad both accessible and protected.

This seems like a neat concept, but we wanted to hear what YOU, the consumers, think about this new trend.  Do you like the idea of interacting with iPads at a store?  Where and how have you seen them being used locally?