An important hallmark of the 21st century, digital signage is signage that is electronically controlled. This could be anything from electronic billboards to TVs mounted to the top of a restaurant's checkout area.
But how much does it cost? Will it help my business? Do I need special digital signage software to power it? Should I install it myself? We've got the answer to all of these below!
- Digital signage can be used to display a variety of content.
Displaying content is almost always the primary use case for a digital signage system. If you’re interested in getting digital signage but don’t have a set-in-stone use case for them, here’s a few:
- Restaurants and bars can use digital signage to display menu items. With turbulent food prices, this can come in handy if a price needs to be changed, or a menu item must be added or deleted.
- Medical clinics can use digital signage to display important information such as appointment times and patient wait times.
- Retail stores can use digital signage to showcase information about new products, store locations, and sales campaigns.
- Hotels, universities, malls, and tourist attractions can use digital signage to display general information about the area and its sights.
- Offices can use digital signage for welcome signs that display a variety of general information, such as appointments, weather, and news that pertains to the company’s industry.
- Public spaces can use digital signage for informational purposes, such as safety announcements and special events.
The variability of content that you can put on a display should be obvious at this point, but an essential thing to note here is that the use case can vary too!
A neat recent trend with digital signage is doubling their use case as open space presentation areas in special cases. In universities and even hospitals, digital signage is mounted in easily accessible, common areas that classmates or co-workers can wirelessly connect and display media on. Although this isn't an ideal situation for every scenario listed above, it reveals that deeper level of collaboration that can be achieved anywhere.
To see these use cases in action, check out this install we did below!
- Unlike physical signage, digital signage can immediately and painlessly be updated.
The flexibility of what you can display is already useful enough, but the urgency factor is another key variable. By controlling what displays on a monitor either through a hub like the Mersive Solstice or BrightSign, you have an immediate power to revise or completely change anything to what you see fit!
This comes in handy for many use cases. If you have a welcome display that showcases your recent work, you can throw additional content as it comes to you. If you're updating a price on a menu, you can do it at anytime without disrupting front of house operations. If it’s daylight savings time and you forgot to kick back the clock an hour, go for it!
- Digital signage can help the look of your space.
If you've got a specific brand guideline to adhere to, or even a certain room vibe you're going for, digital signage can boost those guidelines!
For example, a neat way to do this is to combine multiple displays and create a full, wide image that floats from screen to screen. You could also blend in the background of your content with the color of the wall you're hanging the display on!
The most important thing to remember about digital signage is that while it needs to pop out, it should still heighten the environment of the room you're in.
- Digital signage can capture a customer’s attention.
Not surprisingly, digital signage is quickly becoming the new way to capture customer attention. With vivid visuals and interactive content, digital signage can actively engage customers with content, allowing businesses to effectively direct them towards promotions, sales and other messaging. This of course leads to....
- Digital signage boosts revenue.
Imagine you walk into a store for the first time. You're met by multiple digital signage displays that are not only dynamically bouncing around, but showing you deals on things you might not have considered before.
These kinds of events help businesses increase sales, and it shows statistically; digital signage has been scientifically shown to increase sales by about 33%. But what's even more spectacular is that unplanned purchases, like in the scenario above, increased by about 20%. For a restaurant, that number goes up to 80%.
- Digital signage is affordable.
The last, and probably most important part for any business pondering on buying digital signage, is that an affordable solution is doable. All you need is a display, a display mount, and a way to display content, and for a smaller scale design, this solution can easily be done in a three or four digit budget!
However, keep in mind that doing a DIY install and design is more work than you might think! If you're interested in looking at hanging up digital signage or presentation solutions in your commercial space, we'll be happy to coordinate with you on a design that realizes your ideals.
