What Is Digital Signage? How Does It Work?

Basics of Digital Signage: Digital Signage in a nutshell

We all know that Digital Signage is simply about digital displays broadcasting any content, such as images, videos, or messages. But what if we told you that Digital Signage is much more than just a streaming device? 

We call Digital Signage a next-generation communication system that can be used in any vertical of the business world with a very beneficial feedback effect for all the users. Digital Signage makes it possible to interact directly and engage with customers in a more effective way than standard signage. How does it work? Let’s take a closer look.

Digital Signage elements

Digital Signage is a system of interconnected elements working hand in hand and complementing each other. There are 4 main components of Digital Signage:

1. Digital Display

As a rule, enterprises use special digital signage screens rather than regular TVs. Such screens are designed to meet all the requirements for commercial use. Thanks to the high brightness of Digital Signage displays, they have a clear image and can broadcast content in high quality, which is essential when placing signage on the street.

2. Media Player

A media player is a device that uploads and caches content from a CMS (content management system) on the internal storage and then broadcasts it on the display. Without a player, the screen will not be able to display content. It provides the computing power of digital signage and offers much more potential than just that. Learn more about the player features that come with our Displayforce Box. It will meet all your technical and business needs and can help you to influence your viewers with video analytics.

3. Digital Signage Software

This is also called content management software (CMS). There are many options for digital signage software that offer varying amounts of features and serve different purposes. But when it comes to a perfect solution, users expect to get the following features:

• easy content creation and fast uploading 
• remote control of several displays
• collecting all the data needed using metrics
• designing ad templates of any complexity

4. Content

Selecting the right content is crucial, as it is the way your business or brand interacts with the target audience. It’s essential for the content to convey clear and attractive messaging that contains a call to action. The content itself involves images, videos, animated messages, keynotes, and RSS & XML live data feeds, like weather forecasts, news, social media posts, web pages, event lists, and so on. With the Displayforce software, you can create personalized messaging and thus engage each viewer at a higher level.

Where to use Digital Signage?

The main purpose of Digital Signage is to increase the engagement of your audience and educate customers using relevant targeted and eye-catching content. 

How? Here are some examples:

• Restaurants can use Digital Signage to display menus or special offers.
• Schools and universities can use digital displays to broadcast announcements, school events, route signs, or emergency alerts.
• Hospitals can demonstrate their services, clients' reviews, and useful thematic content, as well as entertaining people to improve waiting time.
• Banks can use digital screens to improve client service & care in various ways: offer self-service tools, manage queues by displaying the number of busy and free windows, and showing stock values and interest rates.
• Retail stores can boost sales and enhance customer care by displaying discounts and specialties using digital screens. 
• The transportation industry can show travel options and schedules, as well as ads based on location.

Digital Signage benefits

With Digital Signage, you can grow your business when communicating with your customers. Moreover, the benefits have no limits! 

Here are some ideas of how businesses can benefit from Digital Signage:

• Increase ROI by reducing working hours in marketing and IT. 
• Improve customers' queueing experience. 
• Boost overall sales and store traffic.
• Stimulate impulse purchases.
• Increase brand awareness.
• Improve internal communication.
• Broadcast up-to-date information constantly.
• Update any content quickly and easily.

Summarizing

As Digital Signage increasingly influences our lives and opens up new horizons for business, its opportunities are also expanding. If earlier Digital Signage was just a passive system broadcasting content, then now we’re talking about a cutting-edge solution that connects, interacts, and pulls content from diverse sources in real time.

Digital Signage will undoubtedly continue growing and developing, helping advertisers to influence customer decision-making and increase revenues.

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