Toledo Speedway

Before you deploy a digital signage network, it is essential to have a strategy in place. Even after being aware of the technology, you may still get confused about what type of digital signage software and hardware you should opt for. To find the most appropriate solution, you need to answer these three questions:

What will I use my digital signage for?

Who is the target audience?

What is my budget?

Now, let's see the factors to consider while implementing digital signage.

1) Business Type and Business Goals

Any business from a small retail outlet to a big enterprise can adopt a digital signage system for engaging their audience. But, depending on the industry and the objective, the business needs will vary.

There are primarily three reasons why businesses use digital signage:

• Marketing communication (Advertising),
• Information dissemination
• Internal communication (employee engagement & information).

You should identify the goal you want to achieve, which ideally should fall into one of the above categories, and accordingly, devise the strategy and plan. This, in turn, will influence the other factors mentioned below.

2) Audience

The audience is the key here. You should identify your audience and accordingly plan for the signage solution. Depending on your business type and purpose, your audience can be your:

• Customers
• Employees
• The general public

Also, it is important to understand the demography of your audience, which will drive the digital signage content strategy.

3) Investment & ROI

Your strategy should be to clearly chalk out both tangible and intangible benefits. It has to be further translated in terms of revenue added, cost-saving, brand building, or generating awareness.

This will drive the decision to invest in technology and content.

4) Technology

This is the Big-ticket, as always! The more you invest in your digital display technology, the more returns you get. In the upfront, the hardware cost will be significantly higher than that of the software (since most software nowadays have a subscription-based pricing model).

Some important considerations while choosing the display are:

• Display size,
• Display type (LCD or LED)
• Luminosity
• Resolution
• Enclosure (for weatherproofing like IP65 standards)
• Warranty

As for the signage player, there are different varieties of digital signage media players available on the market, and you should decide depending on your:

• Type of content: Is it primarily web-based content? Does your content have fast-moving graphics or animations?
• Network connectivity: Your device should support the available connectivity on your premise, whether your device supports LAN or Wifi connectivity. If Wifi, what is the frequency that the device supports (2.4 GHz or 5 GHz).
• Supported resolution: If you would like to run 4K or 8K content, your hardware cost will be higher than the HD or full HD displays.
• Daily play duration: This is crucial if you want to run your signage display 24x7. Any device may not support 24x7, and it may require specialized hardware with a good heat sink, reliable motherboard, and CPU.
• Vendor support: One critical consideration is ensuring that your signage player is compatible with the software.
• Some popular digital signage player OS versions are Android, Linux, Windows, and Chrome OS (Chromebit & Chromebox).

Android digital signage player are gaining popularity amongst customers. If you are looking for affordable players, then a few good and reliable options can be raspberry pi, Amazon fire TV stick, or Android-based TV players.

There are other options where the digital signage players are embedded within the displays like LG commercial signage displays with webOS based signage players, Samsung Tizen signage displays with an embedded player, or Android-based displays like Phillips, Sony, TCL, and Viewsonic.