So, you’ve got your digital sign – but do you have the content to match? Once you’ve decided to invest in digital signage for your business, you’ll want to see a return on that investment in the form of impact and increased engagement with your brand. With traditional static signage, the decision-making happens before you install the signs – and then it’s fixed. With digital signage, the content can be much more fluid and adaptable to your customers and business needs. What really brings it to life is the quality of your content.
Choosing the Right Digital Content
If you’re going to spend time creating content for your digital signs, it needs to be the right content for your purpose, because the best content will have the biggest impact on your audience. What should you consider when you’re aiming for engagement and impact? For online-only businesses, there’s a fierce battle for attention and a host of optimization techniques to capture users. But when it comes to digital signage content, the playing field looks a little different. When the digital meets the physical world, context is key to overcoming the challenge of grabbing and keeping people’s attention.
Tips for Creating Digital Signage Content
1. Know Your Audience
Before any content is crafted, you need a clearly defined content strategy that aligns your digital signage with your overall business goals. For an effective strategy, you have to know who your audience is, what they expect from your signage, and the purpose of the sign.
Take a café, for example. Your audience can change throughout the day. In the early morning, it might be commuters grabbing breakfast. Later in the morning, it might be mostly seniors taking a break from shopping, or parents with small children. Lunchtime might see small business meetings, and mid-afternoon could bring in older teens after college.
By understanding your key customers at different times of day, you can fine-tune your signage to better appeal to each group. Maybe in the mid-morning, a screen in your front window shows an animated, steaming, delicious-looking cup of coffee to entice people to take a break. GIFs are a great way to incorporate motion without investing in high-end video production. A powerful technique is the cinemagraph – a photo that combines static and moving elements in a loop. The coffee cup could stay still while the steam moves, creating a cozy and welcoming vibe.
2. Attraction, Not Interruption
Continuing with the café example, the appealing drink shown on the screen is a way to attract customers. By showing something desirable in a place where people are actually looking for it, you’re more likely to make a sale. If they then have a positive experience, they’ll remember your brand and come back.
On the other hand, if your image of hot, tasty coffee is shown on a sign somewhere else – say, a bus stop – when the customer is focused on getting home, it feels more like an unwanted interruption.
3. Keep the Noise Down
A golden rule of digital signage content is: Keep it simple. Too much content at once can be overwhelming and off-putting. Instead, focus on delivering the right content at the right time. Less is more.
Cut through the noise with:
Clear fonts that are easy to read from different angles
A color scheme that enhances readability and fits your brand
Good design makes it easy for people to engage with your message.
4. Showcase Your Offering
Unlike static signage, digital signage gives you a platform to present dynamic visual content – something customers are already used to from video games and smartphones. Adding video or animations doesn’t have to be complicated; it’s a great way to:
Showcase your brand, product, or service
Make your offering clearer
Highlight current promotions or discounts
5. Keep It Fresh
Even the best-designed content will only hold your audience’s attention for so long. That’s why it’s important to keep things fresh and up to date. Change it based on time of day, and make sure you’re not showing outdated offers – like a Christmas sale in spring. This keeps things engaging, especially for repeat viewers like loyal customers and employees.
6. Be Socially Enterprising
A smart way to keep your content fresh is to tap into recent posts from your company’s or employees’ social media channels. If optimizing a screen for a specific platform isn’t practical, your digital signage is still a great place to promote your social handles – especially to customers waiting in line with their phones in hand.
7. Guide the Way
Give your customers a clear call to action – like visiting a social media page – to give your digital signage a clear purpose. This also invites people to engage with your brand on their terms, whether it’s replying to a post or participating in a poll. Of course, your CTA could also encourage customers to try a new product or take advantage of a special deal.
8. Create Content Templates
After all the effort you’ve put into making great content, it seems like a waste to throw it out once it’s done or outdated. Creating editable templates saves time and effort for your next batch of content.
The Right Tools for Digital Signage
When it comes to digital signage, quality is king. Your content is competing for attention in a world of ultra-HD visuals and cinematic sound. But quality doesn’t mean breaking the bank on fancy production. As we’ve seen, you just need the right tools for the job.
Quality means:
Content that fits your goals
Content that grows your business
Content that strengthens your connection with customers
Even basic things like correct spelling, readability, and tidy design signal professionalism and care.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a cloud-based, no-code visual editor with shareable templates to make creating great content easy? Good news: Desquare is launching software that makes creating high-quality digital signage content quick, easy, and effective.
Sign up now for the latest updates on our exciting new software release.
