What Is Digital Signage?
All That You Need to Know

What Is Digital Signage?

Before getting into the details, let’s simplify this term. As the name suggests, digital signage is a digital screen that displays signs. Usually, it is intended to send a specific message to a set of people. These people can be internal teams of an office, students of a school, or potential customers of a brand. Based on the particular purpose, the signage can be altered. Digital signage only shows particular content for your purpose.

Whether you hit a supermarket or visit airports, these digital signs will be staring at you and sending you some kind of message. Almost every domain has embraced the potential of digital signage today. These industries use different technologies like projection, LED and LCD to display additional content in the form of video, images, streaming media, and many more.

It is true that digital signage has remarkably replaced paper marketing and minimized its prominence. Businesses and many other industries are focusing on a paperless approach to put out the word.

What Are the Benefits of Digital Signage?

In case you are confused about opting for digital signage, here are some benefits that will help you make a decision.

Who Can Make Use of Digital Signage?

It is important to understand what is digital signage used for, only then will you be able to make the most of it. Today, it is used in the majority of the sectors. Yes, it can benefit different industries to increase their traffic and attract customers by making attractive videos and image content. For instance, retail outlets can get more sales, banking institutions can reduce waiting times with interactive self-service tools, restaurants can change their menu digitally, hospitals can manage their patients, and so much more. In today’s world, digital signage is used in almost every industry. Here are some common places where you can easily spot these screens:

Brands/Retail : You can find several brands’ hoardings in public places where they target the most audiences. This not only helps them deliver their content to a broad audience but also makes the message interesting enough to grab the attention of their target audience. Hence, it proves to be highly effective and beneficial as compared to other methods of advertising.

Want to learn how digital signage can help to increase your brand value? Find more uses of digital signage in retail.

Airports: If you have ever been to the airport, you must have seen the screen that displays all the flights’ status. In this way, the people boarding or waiting for someone to arrive can easily see the status of the desired flights without any hassle. They also need not stand in long queues to know when exactly their flight will arrive at the airport.

Healthcare : Medicare care has become one of the world's top debated issues with the ongoing COVID-19 situation. With digital signage, things are getting better for both patients and healthcare providers. It has given immense opportunity to communicate and cooperate with patients.

Learn more about the uses of digital signage in healthcare.

Education : Schools, colleges and universities are making use of this technology to attract students and showcase their goodwill in society. Also, educators can make their lectures and classes more interactive with digital signage. Whether it is making announcements or appreciating the achievements of the students, digital signage will help educational institutions to create a better learning arena for pupils.

Restaurants: Digital signage is highly important for restaurants to display their menus and change them at any given point in time. They can display their menu, attractive offers and every other information on large screens to attract visitors. This reduces the efforts required to get the information. People can simply sit at their places and keep an eye on the board to learn more about the menus or prices.

Components of Digital Signage

The two basic components of digital signage are software and hardware. While the hardware is a screen that displays the information, digital signage software helps in processing the data and displaying it on the screen without much hassle.

If we go a little deeper into the digital signage solutions, you will find it divided into four components:

• Display : If you are wondering what is a digital display, you can understand this in simpler terms. A digital screen or display is just like your mobile or TV. It is a screen that displays information. Now, this screen can change in size and type based on the information that has to be displayed on it.
• Content Management System (CMS) : This part of the digital signage software manages the content that is being shown on the screen. It serves functionalities like management of screens, managing media files (creatives), schedules, screen layouts, reports and other admin functions. For detailed features of CMS, refer here.
• Player Hardware and Software : This component is crucial because it makes sure your content gets delivered exactly how you want it to. The digital signage player is nothing but a media player (often a small box that can be connected to the digital screens). This piece of hardware has its own software that drives the signage player for various functionalities like downloading the content from CMS, managing the schedule - what and when to play and rendering the content in various formats like video, image, html etc.
• Cloud for Content Management : CMS can be served from inhouse data centers or from cloud. Cloud deployment helps organisations in easier management of server infrastructure, easy distribution of content across geography and high scalability. Pickcel’s cloud digital signage software solution helps you manage the content effectively.

Digital Signage Is for You

Today, everyone knows what is digital signage technology, and that’s the reason it is getting massive traction among the industries. The future of digital signage is bright and fulfilling. In the coming years, you can witness some great changes in digital signage technology that will further pique the interests of the people.

Before embracing the benefits of digital signage, it is highly important to learn its nitty-gritty. The above mentioned are some fundamental information regarding digital signage that will help you get through. You must explore more about this digital technology to help your business outgrow the competition and reach out to your audience.

How to Find the Most Appropriate Digital Signage Solution for Your Business?

Even after being aware of the technology, you may still get confused about what kind of digital signage software and hardware you should opt for. To find the most appropriate solution, you need to first answer a few questions about your business.

• Business Goal : You can not fulfil your inter-office communication purpose by getting a digital signage solution intended for advertising. That is why you first need to specify the business goal that you wish to achieve through this signage. Only then can you find a suitable solution for your individual purpose.
• Number of Displays : Another crucial question to ask here is how many digital signage displays you will need. If you want to opt for only one screen, the system will be different than when you require multiple screens. So you must calculate the exact number of displays and then only go for it.
• Other Minor Details : Apart from these two, you also need to specify some minor details about the project. It can be about the timeline of deployment, content strategy, or budget.

Once you know all these factors, you will be able to find the most suitable digital signage solution for your business purpose. You will have to learn more about what digital signage is used for and specify your individual purpose to see which digital signage player will fit into your use case.