Article

Understanding digital signage software

Guidelines on what to look for when shopping for software.

June 3, 2007 by James Bickers — Editor, Networld Alliance

This story is an excerpt from "Software for Digital Signage." Click here to receive the complete how-to guide at no charge.

Digital signage is still an emerging technology, but already some trends have taken shape, and one of them is unfortunate: Since the screens themselves look very much like the LCD and plasma screens many of us enjoy in our homes, companies have looked upon them as televisions, and have handled their content plans accordingly.

But digital signage is not television; it is not an entertainment medium (even though it can be used as one), but a communications method. Companies that use digital signs to endlessly rebroadcast advertising content are forgetting to take into account their customers' mindset, and reason for coming into the store in the first place.

"If your intention is to take your television commercial and simply play it in a store, that just becomes noise," said Bradley Walker, president of software company Nanonation. "Your software should be able to very thoughtfully integrate brand elements and brand assets, but deliver them in a new way. We talk a lot about compositing — using the software to establish a digital media brand for in-store signage, and use the flexibility of the software to populate those templates using a variety of media types."

Perhaps the key difference between at-home media and in-store media is the mindset of the customer at the moment of viewing, or the "time/place/manner" consideration. A person at home in the evening, watching television on his couch, is in a relaxed frame of mind. He is expecting to be in front of that screen for a given period of time — an hour, perhaps, or two — and his mind parses the content accordingly.

That same person standing in a retail environment at 5:30 in the afternoon is feeling things very differently. He is probably tired from a long day at the office; he really wants to squeeze in a workout and dinner before ending up on the couch for that decompression session, and that means he needs to get in and out of this store as quickly as he can.

To someone with this mindset, a litany of looping ads will not only be ineffective, it will be an outright deterrent. Chances are, his relationship with the brands of both the store and the items marketed on-screen will be damaged.

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Visual elements and the customer experience

Clearly, the customer response to your digital signage is of paramount importance; secondary to that is the cost savings and efficiency you bring to the company. But focus first on what the customer gets from seeing one of your screens.

In order for that experience to be a positive one, your digital signage software should be able to do several things:

• Display a variety of media types. Screens that simply rotate through a series of static images are fine, but customers will quickly learn to ignore them, since they act so much like traditional signage. In order to remain effective, a signage network needs to have the flexibility to change things up — animation one moment, static imagery the next, live video the next.
• Display media at appropriately high resolutions. Many consumers discovered something once they got their shiny new HD-TVs home — non-HD content looks terrible on them. The same holds true in the in-store environment, but the stakes are much higher. If your signage software isn't built to handle HD, you're asking for trouble down the road.
• Integrate with other aspects of the environment. The signs will not be hanging in a vacuum, and that means they should be networked into the other things going on around them. For instance, if in-store music can be heard nearby, the software should be able to mute or lower the volume on it while a message with audio is playing on-screen. Not all digital signage software is capable of this level of interaction, but it's a valuable feature for future expansion and fine-tuning of the network.
• Dynamically generate playlists based on any number of criteria. Different media should play at different times of the day, and the software package should be able to pull the proper media, schedule it on-the-fly, and update playlists as needed. Managers should be able to insert media where they see fit, with the playlist adjusting itself accordingly.
• Dynamically select media assets via tags. All media assets should have one or more "tags" associated with them, and your software should be able to intelligently pull media based on smart tagging conventions. This allows content creators to tag their work, place it in the proper location, and the system will automatically begin using it as appropriate.
• Support audio. Not all signage applications need audio, but it is an important feature to be able to add if needed.
• Scale as needed. "Even if you start with a simple signage solution, having the right software to control your signage will improve your overall success," said Jeff Hemingway, co-owner of software company Storming Images. "You may start out with one sign and grow to 10 signs per store. Software designed to scale and expand the network of signs is important when investing in a solution. The ability to control the signs from a single point or multiple points is key to the flexibility of controlling your signage network."

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