As a professional in the digital signage business, I've developed a habit of checking out digital signage deployment wherever I go. Airports, QSRs, retail stores, malls and electronics shops have more digital signage displays than ever before. Besides giving an appearance of a growing business, the presentation digital signage makes is always the key I pay attention to. The unified color characteristics across multiple displays, display-array or video wall always represent the major issue I am concerned about.

Average consumers might not be overly worried when color is off a bit on their consumer TV. However, that same consumer might get upset in front of a display-array or video wall with the same hodgepodge of colors. The adverse performance effects of poor colors on a digital signage display-array are worse than not having the display at all.

The point being that the viewer needs information right then and there, and those off colors aren't helping, but are greatly affecting buying decisions. Those bad colors are only aggravating his or her intent to capture the information they need.

The bottom line is that commercial video walls or digital signage must have the right colors all the time.

Therefore, color calibration is key when selecting LCD displays for display-array and video wall applications. Therefore, a handy tool to easily calibrate color is of utmost importance. Business owners can use the tool to help correct and maintain the right colors and color uniformity across all displays.

It's not only got to be the right tool, but an easy one to use without the bits and bytes associated with a technical gizmo. Something that only takes one click of the mouse, and all the displays in a video wall are automatically color calibrated is the ideal one for ordinary business owners.

The ideal calibration tool should be easy to operate and simple to process. For instance, during this process, all parameters of each display are saved for future reference as part of the calibration process.

The owner selects a single display to act as a central point.  Remaining displays in that video wall are then matched up with the central point display.  Once the mouse is clicked, color calibration is performed for the complete video array or video wall.

In addition to pricing, quality, reliability, and post-sale service, selecting the right display that comes with the ideal color calibration tool is a key part of doing one's major pre-purchasing homework.

By Jessica Glynn
Reality Interactive

Consumers may love shopping online, but that doesn’t mean that it’s right for all purchases. Sometimes, you need to try before you buy. This is where having a physical location comes in handy.

Retailers that began in an exclusive eCommerce format like Birch Box and Athleta have started opening brick and mortar locations over the past few years. Now even Amazon is opening physical locations.

Google may be thought of first as a search engine, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their place in retail. After all they have products to sell; like laptops, phones, tablets and Chromecasts. In the future they may also have a reinvented version of Google Glass. With this in mind, they have opened their first “shop in shop”, called The Google Shop, in Curry’s PC World in London.

The Google Shop will allow customers to explore the different devices available from Google and to learn about how the devices work together.

Features of the Google Shop

Just because the Google Shop is a shop within a shop, doesn’t mean it’s a simple mall kiosk where you buy cell phones. The Google Shop experience is a unique, innovative and interactive one.

It features “Portal”, a surround-screen which allows users to explore Google Earth. The “Doodle Wall” lets customers use digital spray cans to paint their own version of a Google logo, which they can then share on social media. The “Chromecast Pod” is a spot for customers to watch movies from Google Play or videos on YouTube. The “Shadowbox” is positioned to be visible from the sidewalk to draw passersby into the store. It shows rotating digital art which highlights local London landmarks.

The Google Shop will also host public events and classes, including Virtual Space Camps which will teach children how to code.

 

by Dan Brown - RMG Networks

Have you ever walked into a corporate lobby, retail store, hotel or any venue and thought, “Wow, that digital signage display is too large!”

Humorous, but of course not.

Most of the time, if anything, displays are commonly undersized. Why? Well, while 55” seems large in the intimate setting of your living room watching the latest best-selling blu-ray, the affect may be lost in a different environment with a different purpose.

What do you need to keep in mind when selecting screen size for your business?

A 55” display is the viewable distance from corner to corner diagonally across the screen. Assuming a 16x9 widescreen display, this equates roughly to a height of 27 inches and width of 48 inches.

There are formulae from every TV manufacturer and standards committees such as SMPTE or THX to suggest screen sizes and are mostly geared toward consumer entertainment applications.

Don’t get confused if you start researching the web for the correct formula to use. Your specific application may differ. The important thing is to use a formula (or any formula) as a starting point, not an ending point.

Here are a few examples of different formulas and applications, and their resulting viewable distance.

General at-a-glance viewing or video

    4 x 55” diagonal = 220” (or about 18 feet) viewable distance
    8 x 27” height = 216” (or 18 feet) viewable distance

Reading text or data

    6 x 27” height = 162” (or 13+ feet) viewable distance

These examples assume you are using the entire full screen to display your content. Are you? Often the display is segmented to display multiple content items.

For example, on that same 55” display, let’s say we want to include a side panel graphic. Reserving 12 inches width for this content leaves us with 36 inches of width for our main content which is effectively the same as a 42” display.

This changes our viewable distance from the previous examples.  

General at-a-glance viewing or video

    4 x 42” diagonal = 168” (or about 14 feet) viewable distance
    8 x 20” height = 160” (or 13+ feet) viewable distance

Reading text or data

    6 x 20” height = 120” (or 10 feet) viewable distance

Even though you started with a 55” display, because of the content requirements and screen real estate limits, you are effectively limiting the viewing distance of the display by several feet and shrinking the content. This may or may not be a negative; but it is definitely something that needs considering during the design phase.

Likewise, why put the current temperature nestled in the corner of screen when its “real life” size on a 55” screen is nearly the size of your thumbnail and not truly viewable beyond 6 feet from the display. Is that the intended audience range? Probably not. This is another reason to make sure all content is viewable at your target distance.

Screen size is certainly only one factor of many to consider in your digital signage deployment. It works in coordination with screen placement, lighting, other environmental factors, and of course (and most importantly) content!

So you have a formula to determine display size, but how about content? How large a font should you use to get your message across and easy to read? As a general rule of thumb, it is recommended to have 1 inch of font height for every 10 feet in desired viewing audience distance.

Now you're ready to configure your optimal signage and content size.

But, even in our high tech world, old school methods still work.

I was with a customer once who used a properly sized cardboard cutout pattern of a TV they were considering and taped it onto the rich marble wall to get an idea of what it would look like and how much space it would occupy. They used white poster board and markers to write some sample content to understand what font dimensions were required to reach the furthest intended viewer. I thought it was a brilliant idea and was glad to see so much interest and consideration into making sure not only the correct display size was chosen, but more importantly, the proper content size. Well done!

Whether, you use a high tech online calculator or poster board cutouts, you have begun a very important process of considering what is important to you and your viewers.

When budgeting for digital signage displays, it is always easier to add more displays later, rather than try to “right-size” a set of undersized displays already deployed.

It doesn’t need to be a $63M, 362' x 62' behemoth scoreboard like the Jacksonville Jaguars, but definitely give thought to the size of screen required for your application (then maybe even go up one size). As you start the process of determining the correct screen size, here are some questions to ask yourself --

•     What type and quantity of content will be displayed?
•     Will the content be displayed full screen or on segments of the screens?
•     What is the smallest content to be displayed?
•     How far is the desired viewable distance?

Once you know the answer to these questions, you know the required content size. And, required content size should be the leading factor to your screen size decision; not vice versa.

A year later, retailers are reporting positive results from iBeacon campaigns. There are, however, still challenges from the caveats associated with  iBeacons.

Specifically, customers must be iPhone users. They must download the retailers’ app. They must enable Wifi on their phone and opt-in to receive notifications. Many consumers are not willing to opt-in because they have privacy concerns about retailers collecting their data. Physical Cookie gives retailers and their customers the benefits of iBeacons without having to meet all of these requirements.

What is Physical Cookie?

Physical Cookie is a RFID-tag within a piece of plastic, usually on a key-fob,  which retailers can give to their customers as they shop. The customer puts Physical Cookie in their pocket and then has to take no additional steps. Electric readers are then placed around the retail store. The Physical Cookie key-fob collects data in real-time in the same way cookies on websites do (hence the name). Digital screens within the store, show customers advertisements based on their behavior. Customers do not sign up or register, so there are no privacy concerns involved. Physical Cookie has operated in the Citycenter shopping mall in Helsinki, as part of a trial since Fall 2014.

Physical Cookie is easier for the consumer to use than iBeacons. Unlike the Bluetooth technology used for iBeacons, Physical Cookie is always on. Instead of pinging a user’s phone, the actual retail environment reacts to the consumers behavior, which feels much less spammy.

The Physical Cookie Customer Loyalty Program

In the Citycenter trial, a customer loyalty program called VIP-key was launched. The VIP-keys were given to 14,000 randomly selected customers who were then automatically part of a loyalty program, without ever having to opt-in, register, or sign up for anything. The trial was in a shopping center but Physical Cookie has said this can work for both retail chains and for brands working within big-box retailers.

While this trial was conducted using Physical Cookies in a key-fob format, the company said in the future this does not necessarily have to be the case. The key-fob format was selected with the thought process that customers enter the shopping center with their wallet, mobile phone, and keys with them. The average customers wallet is already full of loyalty cards, and mobile phones would require opt-in. The key chain was chosen instead because it does not already have any smart device on it.



Results:

•     The VIP-key cost the equivalent of about two cents in US Dollars.
•     15% of the VIP-keys were active.
•     They showed a 14.5% increase in activity between floors.
•     There a was a 21.7% increase in time spent in the shopping center.

For more information on enhancing your customers’ retail experience, please visit our About page.

Photo Credit: Physical Cookie