How Digital Wayfinding Improves Accessibility for Your Foreign Customers

If you’ve ever traveled to a foreign country and didn’t speak the language, you know just how challenging navigation can be. Locating signage you could understand and then attempting to follow that signage probably cost you significant time and at least a little of your sanity. And in the midst of your unnecessarily confusing journey, you likely wondered if there was a better way to locate your destination.

Good news: there is a better way, and it’s called digital wayfinding. If you’re looking to increase accessibility for your foreign customers, Oppna Digital explains how digital wayfinding provides a comprehensive solution.

Language Support

You can’t possibly display static signage in every language your customers speak. Developing, maintaining, and updating static signage is not only costly, but it’s labor intensive and time consuming. With interactive wayfinding, you can translate your signage into multiple languages, which helps a greater number of your patrons navigate your facility with ease. Foreign language support effectively reduces tourist shoppers’ stress, which simultaneously promotes increased spending—a win-win all around.

Universally Recognizable Icons

Though many of your customers may not speak English, there’s a high possibility they’ll recognize and understand universal symbols. Even native customers can benefit from digital wayfinding that incorporates icons into its design. According to the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute on Literacy, approximately 32 million U.S. adults cannot read. What they can do, however, is interpret appropriately designed visual cues.

Visual maps paired with easy-to-follow directional routes and arrows are a highly effective method of overcoming language barriers. Even if you implement multilingual text, there’s always a possibility that foreign customers will speak a different language than those you have available. At its core, wayfinding is a largely visual undertaking, which isn’t surprising considering the human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text.

Curious About Digital Wayfinding for Your Business? Contact Oppna Digital

If you’re a business owner with tourist destinations in your portfolio, interactive digital wayfinding offers a variety of benefits. Foreign language speakers spend over $150 billion each year in the U.S., and the better your business accommodates their needs, the more your reputation will grow. At Oppna Digital, we’re dedicated to delivering full-service digital wayfinding solutions for large-scale facilities throughout the Twin Cities metro. If you’re ready to learn more about our services, give us a call at 651-237-6577, or you can request a free demo here.