Rethinking Store Receipts

The concept cars at the auto show are both cool and a drag. They show all kinds of awesome features that you can't get in your car. While it seems counterintuitive to show off these extras, they show the forward thinking nature of auto companies and I'm sure they get design engineers thinking about how they can practically incorporate things like automatic parallel parking.

So keep that thought in mind when I show you this -- a fun store receipt designed by the British firm Berg. It includes a piece of trivia, sales stats on the products you've purchased ("Ham & Cheese Baguette, which often sells out by 2pm"), the calorie counts of a few of your items and a request for email address that sounds more like a service to the customer than a reach to build an marketing list.

This receipt is definitely something you wouldn't just throw away, but you'd take it home to show your spouse. It's interesting. It's the next generation of "Won't you take our online survey for a chance to win $1,000?"

Why be just like everyone else? Can you incorporate any of these elements into your store receipts? Invoices? You want customers to hang on to your receipts. They're just another touchpoint that calls to mind the experience the customer had in your store.
 
Like the designer Matt Jones says in an article on the project on FastCoDesign.com, “Not everyone can save the world every time," Jones says, "but you know, it’s quite good if you just make somebody smile for 15 seconds.”