You’ve spent time consulting with a digital expert about which solutions are best fit for your project, your partner solutions agency has designed, planned and innovated to produce some pretty cutting-edge concepts, and you’ve stood back and soaked in the impressive installation. That’s great. But the installation alone isn’t going to guarantee effective digital signage.
To get the most out of your new solution, you’re going to need to understand exactly how to use your digital signage displays, and that means solid content design.
The facts
In the signage world, you typically have between 1 and 3 seconds to communicate your chosen message, making content design kind of a biggie!
Digital signage is 34% more effective than traditional signage at boosting sales, and for good reason. With its innate capabilities, like motion on-set that grabs attention, content management that enables you to display the right message, at the right time, to the right person, and analytics that help you better understand your audience - we’re sorry static signage, we love ya, but there’s just no competition.
Here are some key pointers to ensuring your digital content performs at its best.
DO
1. Do Use Faces
Our brains can’t resist a face. Whether it be animal or human, a face suggests compassion – put a story to that face and you're onto a winning recipe. Faces have been shown to be more recognizable than company logos and make an image more memorable overall. 2. Use onset of motion to draw attention
Use large changes in luminosity at the start, end, or in between content items to draw more attention. This includes adjustments to elements like hue, saturation, and brightness.
3. Ensure your headline text can be read in the typical glance time.
Remember what we said earlier about having 1-3 seconds to communicate your message? Your headline should be short, punchy, and large enough to capture the attention of a passer-by at your target distance to keep them engaged.
4. Pay attention to analytics.
How do you know if your digital displays and content are having the impact you had hoped for? The data and analytics that digital platforms can provide will tell you. Depending on how data savvy you are, this might be one to rope in the professionals who can help provide structured intel, like how often and how long consumers are interacting with your screens, right through to in-depth demographic statistics and dwell time heat mapping.
DON’T
5. Don’t use ‘digital wallpapers’.
It’s tempting and you might wonder why they exist if they’re such a bad idea, but put simply, each content item should be as different as possible from the last to trigger the (excuse our nerdiness) ‘Just-Noticeable-Difference’ which is the minimum level of stimulation a person can detect 50% of the time. A content loop of similar items creates a sort of digital ‘wallpaper’ and just won’t perform the same.
6. Don’t use more than nine elements.
Keep your content simple. An element, like an image, roundel or text placeholder grabs attention. If you overload a content item, it dilutes your message and could turn people off. Pay particular attention to maintaining high contrast between elements and their backgrounds.
7. Don’t include generic content.
It dilutes the effectiveness of your loops, and unfortunately your core message pays the price.
8. Don’t take it all on yourself.
Like anything worth its weight, to get the most from your digital solutions can be time consuming if you’re not well versed in what works and what doesn’t. That’s why we recommend that most businesses hire professionals like us to handle some of the load - at least in the beginning.
To wrap it up, your digital display is only as good as your content, so invest wisely and collaborate with those in the know, at least until you have an understanding of what works.
Oh, before we forget, did we mention that we have an in-house studio that have been working on psychologically backed digital content for over 17 years? Say it louder for those in the back! Find out more: Content Production
Comments