Yes, another nice article written by yours truly...this one's a keeper! :-)
Digital Signage Best Practices Guide December 2015 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/ds_bestpractices_201512/index.php#/30
Digital
Signage Best Practices: Future-proofing your Next Digital Signage Rollout on
the Software Side
By Jeff Porter, Porter Digital Signage Consulting
Congratulations!
You’ve just rolled out a shiny new digital signage network! Day One is complete.
But what about Day Two? Or Month Two? Or Year Two?? Will the same digital signage software
platform do what you need then? If you
did your homework, then the answer is yes.
But just to review, let’s take a look at the decision process of
choosing the best digital signage technology platform, so that you’re not
having to explain to your boss (or the worse yet the client), that you’ll need
to completely scrap the system a year or two later with some other new shiny
digital signage system!
With more than 20 years in the digital signage business,
I’ve seen a lot of networks come and go.
Allow me to share with you some of the secret sauce of success to make
sure your network will serve you well into the future.
Number one…start with a decent understanding of the client’s
content strategy and their use case for digital signage. Please don’t lead with technology. I know that’s hard for us technical guys, but
trust me, choosing the correct platform will become obvious once you understand
what the client wants to do. Here are
some basic questions to ask:
- Can you tell me what content you’d like to have
on the screen?
- How often do you plan to update the content?
- Are the screens customer facing or employee
facing (or both)?
- How many locations do you have? Do you need different content in different
locations?
- Are there more than one screen per
location? And do those different
locations have different content needs?
- Will you need interactive capabilities? (eg:
Touch screens, push buttons, other)
- Will you need dynamic data on the screen (eg: price
of products, meeting schedules, KPIs)?
- Do you need news, weather, sports, stocks, or
other content feeds?
- Who is going to manage the content on a day to
day basis? And how many people will need
to have access to the system to manage that content (with different roles)?
- Do you have someone already picked out to
provide content for the network? (and do they have experience with designing
content for digital signage networks – as opposed to TV, print or web)
- Have you given any thought to where you’d like
to have the screens? Where do people
have the most dwell time?
- Are there special audio requirements? (many
digital signage systems don’t use much audio as it can become rather annoying)
- Mobile: Is there a need for mobile integration? Do you have an app already done?
- Walk me through the customer experience. (that’s a good one to wrap it all together!)
Let’s do a little deeper dive into those questions, so
you’ll understand how the answers to the questions will help you pick the best
technology platform going forward.
Many digital signage platforms are pretty basic in their
operation. Upload a few videos and play
them in a loop. What more do you
need? But imagine that you have 100 or 1000
locations and each needs a separate playlist of videos. How do you keep your sanity with 100 or 1000
different playlists? What might have
worked well in a pilot, just doesn’t scale if the network takes off. A content management system that allows for meta
data and smart playlists means that ONE playlist can be made for many
locations, and the players will dynamically “play the right media” without
having to manually create a 100 or 1000 separate playlists .
Similarly, creating videos for every permutation of text
overlay needed, will likely break the bank of the person paying for content
development. Imagine your 100 or 1000
locations each with a different price for different products in different
stores. Creating 1000’s of videos is a
non-starter. Creating one video with
dynamic text overlays is the only way to go.
You can use brute force in a pilot, but if the network scales, you’ll be
dead in the water unless your platform can handle dynamic text overlays.
Feeding the Digital Signage “monster” with regular content
updates is going to be a key ingredient to making sure that your network is
successful. Having great looking content
on Day One is wonderful, but if your viewers are ignoring the screens from Day
Two onward, people will start to wonder if the investment in digital signage is
worth it (or not). Having timely,
relevant, and compelling content on the screens every day will engage your
customers more, and encourage people to participate in supporting your ongoing
plans (to grow your empire!). So make
sure, in the budget planning process, there’s a line item for “ongoing content
development”.
Location location location is important in real estate. It’s also important in digital signage. Putting the screens in the wrong place (too
high, too out of the way, too far away) will be a sure fire way to fail. Think about locations that are eye level,
where people have some dwell time, long enough to see the messaging on the
screens that you want them to see. And
make the playloop length match the dwell time for that area.
These sorts of content questions sound rather simple, but
it’s amazing how many people still get these basic assumptions wrong
today.
There are however some non-content related questions that
you’ll need to consider for a given deployment that will have a large effect on
your choice for a digital signage software platform.
- Will the IT department allow the digital signage
players on their network? If not, can
you talk with them to ease their fears?
Is there any other way to connect your players?
- Is the client OK with a “cloud based” system or
do they need to have the content management server set up within their own
corporate IT infrastructure? Many
software companies only do “one or the other”.
Some do both. So narrow your
choices based on this answer.
- If your server is “in-house” and you have a
large network, and your content is mostly videos, will the bandwidth at the
server be sufficient to handle the traffic for each location to download their
media is a relatively short amount of time?
Do the math on the bandwidth. 1GB
of data times 1000 locations is 1 terabyte that needs to be downloaded from the
central server. How long will that
take? Longer than you think! Do they have any restrictions on that traffic
(eg: only at night)?
- Consider if the digital signage software is
coming from a company that will potentially become your competitor. A lot of digital signage companies sell
direct to end users. If you are
purchasing digital signage software to bundle with your value added services to
sell to end users, be careful. You don’t
want your partner to do an end-run on you.
- To the nearest whole number….how many 1000
player networks has the software company in question ever deployed? If you need to “go large”, find out ahead of
time if the company has ever done a network that large before. You don’t want to be the guinea pig.
- Check their financials, stability, track
record. The latest and greatest shiny
new digital signage software might look pretty, but will that company or that
software be supported for many years to come?
Are they financially sound? Are
their existing customers happy?
- Does their business model match yours? If your business model is based on a monthly
recurring fee from your customer, does your software partner make you purchase
everything upfront, or can you pay for the software on a monthly basis to
manage your cash flow?
Top Five Technology
Trends for the next Five Years
From a technology side, obviously things are changing pretty
rapidly. Allow me to gaze into my
crystal ball for the top five trends that I see going forward over the next few
years.
1. Displays will become even more affordable. That's one
thing you can count on in the hardware business ... costs always go down! This will be a HUGE driver to your business.
I can remember the first plasma screens costing $15,000 each. Now you can get an even larger commercial
screen in the $1000 range. More
affordable screens means that your clients can deploy more screens in more
places, and the ROI to justify those screens is almost not worth talking
about.
2. All displays will become smart-er IP addressable
screens. You’re seeing this already in
smart screens from Samsung and LG (and others).
MagicInfo from Samsung and SuperSign from LG allow you to “just have a
screen” and connect it to the network without the need of an outboard media
player or PC. Both Samsung and LG have
software solutions supporting these new smart screens, and even some third
party software companies like Scala and SignageLive support these built in
players as well. Again, lowering the
total solution cost and making it easier to deploy will be a boon to your
business. The only trick is to make the
built-in players more capable over time, or as Mark Twain said, "Reports
of my death have been greatly exaggerated," when it comes to out outboard
media players. Sophisticated
applications will still require an outboard media player.
3. Software in the cloud, players always connected (no more
sneakernet). A shocking number of digital signage screens in retail are not
connected to a network today, and just get updated via USB stick from time to
time. Really? In 2015??
Unfortunately yes. That's gotta
change. The Internet of Things (IoT) is
undeniable and unstoppable.
4. Dynamic data everywhere drives content strategy. Just
playing a simple video loop won't cut it anymore. Content needs to by timely and relevant, and
therefore dynamic, which in turn will be more engaging and successful. Talk to your client about their content
strategy upfront and engage with them at a higher level. This will help you tailor the technology
solution to exceed your client’s expectations (and get more business)!!
5. More retailers adopt digital signage as a
"default" versus print. To quote another famous person, John Wanamaker,
"Half of the money I spend on marketing is wasted. I just don't know which
half!" With 50 percent of print
campaigns being either bungled or not deployed in-store, folks will realize
that digital will guarantee 100 percent compliance (or close to that given
human error). I don't think print will ever go away completely for permanent
signage, but signage that ends up in the trash dumpster each week or month will
absolutely go away.
Conclusion
Hopefully this discussion has given you a roadmap for engaging
with your client to understand their needs and for you to recommend and deploy
a digital signage network that will serve everyone well for many years to
come.
About the Author
Jeff Porter is one of the industry’s leading experts in
digital signage and is the founder of Porter Digital Signage Consulting. From business planning, to sales and
marketing and technology choices, Porter has been helping his clients get all
the moving parts of digital signage in alignment for success. Prior to heading his own consulting business,
Mr. Porter was employed by Scala, Commodore, Bell Labs and Eastman Kodak. Mr. Porter holds a BSEE from Purdue
University and a MS from the University of Illinois. He can be contacted at
jeff@porterdigitalsignage.com or by phone 610-202-7676. For additional articles of interest on
digital signage, check out http://porterdigitalsignage.com/Blog.html
