A recent survey reveals many retailers aren't exactly where they want to be with their IT technology, including digital signage. These five tips can help.

Retailers realize the important role IT technology, including digital signage, will play in their continued success, but many say they aren't using technology to its full potential.

Those are two important findings of a newly released survey from CompTIA, a non-profit association for the IT industry. The report "Retail Sector Technology Adoption Trends Study," finds that 72 percent of retailers surveyed see technology as important to their business -a level that is expected to grow to 83 percent by 2014. However, only 7 percent say they are exactly where they want to be with the use of technology. Twenty-nine percent say they are close to their ideal application of technology.

The study also reveals that digital signage is seen by retailers as an important part of their IT mix. The CompTIA study finds a third of retailers said they currently use digital signage, and 20 percent intend to begin doing so soon. Seventy-one percent of respondents said the most popular application of digital signage was for announcements of sales and other promotional offers.

Given the survey findings regarding satisfaction with how well technology is being used and the importance of digital signage to retailers, the need for some advice on how to make the most out of digital signage technology seems apparent. These five tips should help put retailers on the right track.

First, digital signage technology is irrelevant without great content. Obviously, it's not enough to hang flat panel monitors and install digital signage players. Care must be taken to engage customers with interesting, appealing content.

Second, digital signage content must remain fresh, especially in a retail store where many people will visit repeatedly over time. Remember to mix it up. Playing back the same content day after day soon grows stale and may actually drive customers away.

Third, digital signage requires someone to take responsibility for it, both in terms of content and technology. Granted, these probably won't be the same people, but that makes no difference. What is important is that digital signage isn't just another in a long line of responsibilities some IT person has on a checklist.

Fourth, digital signage should offer consistency of messaging across multiple locations but still allow for an element of local control. For large retail chains, centralized control over signs at individual locations from a corporate network operations center will help to ensure messages remain consistent at all locations or groups of locations. However, it also is important to provide some local control to meet fast-changing communications needs at individual store locations.

Fifth, digital signage messaging should complement the overall communications strategy of the retailer. Sending disparate or contradictory messages to potential customers via TV advertising and on-location digital signs can be perplexing to customers at best and actually discourage them from visiting the store again worst.

To be sure, retailers who say they are not getting what they want from the IT technology they've implemented are concerned with far more than just digital signage technology. But to the degree that they use or plan to use digital signage in the future, the five tips offered here should improve their satisfaction with how this powerful communications medium is performing.

Digital signs give retailers a powerful way to communicate with retail shoppers as they act out on their impulses to buy unplanned-for items.

If there were ever a question about whether or not it makes sense to communicate with customers via digital signs in retail stores, a new survey from the Integer Group and M/A/R/C should leave no doubt.

According to The Checkout, an ongoing shopper behavior survey, nine out of 10 shoppers report buying an item not on their shopping list. The research reveals several reasons why. Sixty-six percent of respondents reported buying off-list items because of a special sale or promotion; 30 percent said they did so because of a coupon offer; and 23 percent said they wanted to pamper themselves.

Digital signs are a great vehicle for retailers to tap into the opportunity this consumer behavior presents. They are a natural when it comes to presenting special promotions. Ditto for coupons. They can be tied into coupon-dispensers or used to display virtual coupons based on QR codes that can be photographed with a mobile phone camera and displayed at the checkout stand. And they certainly are a powerful medium when it comes to presenting products in their best possible light to tap into the desire by many shoppers to pamper themselves.

Craig Elston, senior vice president with Integer summed it up this way: "Our data shows 61 percent of off-list shoppers purchase an additional one to three items. This shows that if you reach a particular shopper at the right moment with the right message --for example, using in-store signage to play into their desire to pamper themselves, it can end with that item being added to their basket."

For retailers, this sort of data is critically important as they evaluate their marketing budgets and make decisions about the return they can expect for their investment in digital signage technology. Without data on consumer buying behavior and how many more items shoppers are likely to buy, calculating an ROI equation of digital signage becomes an exercise focused on identifying costs of competing alternatives and determining which is the most attractive.

With findings like those presented in the latest Integer Group- M/A/R/C research, it is possible to add an evaluation of potential added revenue to the mix. It would be helpful in future studies if these researchers or others could compare the effectiveness of competing signage solutions, i.e. traditional printed signage, Duratrans backlit signs, digital signage and others. Insight into the average dollar value of additional items purchased would be helpful as well.

Even without that data, however, it's not a stretch to say that all things being equal, digital signage should produce the most attractive ROI in retail. After all, it is more responsive to changing messaging needs, is less expensive to use in terms of updating messages, and can be centrally controlled with local input to provide messaging consistency across retail chain locations while still offering an avenue for individual stores to respond to local needs.

The new Integer-M/A/R/C data should motivate retailers to re-examine how they are informing, educating and enticing consumers at the point of purchase. If dynamic messaging on digital signs in retail isn't part of the mix, retailers should reevaluate their approach to maximize their presence at the point where shoppers reach into their back pockets or purses and act on their impulse to buy.

A new report from IMS Research forecasts dramatic growth in digital signage over the next few years thanks to growing acceptance of the medium as a valuable ad delivery mechanism.

Whether your operation is a mom-and-pop store or a highfalutin retailer, take note. Digital signage is expected to see some remarkable growth over the next few years and much of that growth will come from retail.

A newly released report from IMS Research concludes that after a couple of sluggish years, the worldwide digital signage market will see growth in excess of 40 percent in 2013 to reach a total of $7 billion. And an important component of that market will be in the retail sector.

According to the research firm, which laid out its forecast in "The World Market for Digital Signage, 2011 Edition," an important reason for the growth is that digital signage is now entering the mainstream of media, which are regularly considered and evaluated by ad agencies and marketers for their advertising purchases.

"There is increasing recognition that it is a valuable tool for directly interacting with audiences, and providing a compelling additional dimension to augment overall advertising placements across media," a press release announcing the findings quotes Shane Walker, director of the Consumer Electronics Group at IMS Research, as saying.

With that growing recognition of the value of digital signage as an advertising medium, it's not too surprising that IMS Research found strong growth in the retail sector.

The new study shows that of all the vertical markets for digital signage, retail continues to be the largest, accounting for just under 25 percent of all digital signage hardware and software sales. By the end of 2015, IMS Research forecasts retail will remain the dominant sector of the digital signage market, reaching nearly $2 billion.

Long recognized as a fundamental strength of digital signage in retail, the ability to reach shoppers at the point of sale with a message aimed at influencing their final buying decision is likely to benefit from a trend that is in its infancy at home, but soon is likely to become commonplace: TV Everywhere.

Cable, Telco and satellite television providers have been promoting the concept of TV Everywhere for the past year or so. Perhaps you are familiar with the commercials. A TV viewer witnesses a raging battle between two robotic-looking creatures in his kitchen. As one appears to get the upper hand and slams his opponent through the wall, the viewer pauses the action with his remote control and walks into an adjacent room, where he hits the play button and the fight resumes.

Commercials like these are building awareness among television viewers that they are no longer chained to one TV set to watch a show. Rather they now for the ability to not only resume programming they are watching from set to set as they walk through their homes, but also access and resume a program on their laptop computers, smartphones or media tablets that they started to watch on their TVs.

Now extend this "TV Everywhere" concept to the realm of commercial messages and take that every-access notion to the retail store aisle with a digital signage end cap. Imagine how brand awareness campaigns in the home could morph into a product-specific offer at the point of purchase.

As Walker of IMS Research put it in the press release: "The tools are available today to create a consistent campaign that can reach an audience multiple times while in transit through billboards, street furniture, metro displays, video walls and in-store kiosks, all the while becoming more targeted through mobile device interaction. This experience will culminate in the customer reaching a touch-enabled screen at the point-of-sale where inventory can be checked and an order placed."