Digital signs are not important for business…They Are Vital. Digital signs now appear in so many businesses and in so many places, from swimming pools to ancient caves, that they are now even featured in video games as a graphical tool. You may have seen digital signs being used for a puzzle in Resident Evil 7. Well, in Marvel’s Spiderman Remastered (2021), the developers actually added digital signs into city areas so that they could better show off the Ray-tracing lighting effects that they had added into the game.
You can actually make out the shapes and features of the digital signs on the car itself. That is no accident. The reason that car is so shiny is so the developers could show off their new and improved graphics.
Are Digital Signs “Important” For Business?
The word “Important” may be a sticking point for some people. There are reports in the Kitcast blog digital signage archives about business owners thinking of digital signs as novelty items. Yet, they have become an integral part of modern business, especially after the 2020 pandemic where companies were forced to adapt to more contact-free methods of business.
Waiting rooms are no longer staffed because people are told by digital signs when they may enter. Mcdonald’s and various other restaurants have ordering stations using digital signs so that people may simply pick up their order once they have made it. There are digital signs in car washes, in hotels, in theaters, at tourist spots, and even in hardware stores. These are not a novelty, they are a legitimate way for businesses to communicate with their customers without added human interaction/contact.
It is a Sensible Transition From The Internet
Okay, so let’s do a little “Real talk” for a moment and address the elephant in the room. Offline retail most offline stores are struggling. We used to blame the mega-corporations like Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and so forth, but they always left niche pocket areas for smaller businesses to thrive.
Sure, you could get your rifle from Walmart, but you are not going to find a mother of pearl handle and a reinforced firing pin, and a leather case in the store. You need a smaller boutique experience for that. But, these days, people simply go online and find everything they need. If people businesses are going to survive, they need to keep people coming into their stores.
In order to do so, people need a soft transition from online to offline, and digital signs allow businesses to do that. They can start small, like having people flip through digital signs to see if things are in stock. Or, they could go a little deeper and have digital signs that demonstrate their items and products, or perhaps compare their products to their nearest competitors.
Will Digital Signs Save Offline Retail?
No, digital signs will not save offline retail, but they will help, and offline retail can use all the help it can get. There will always be a need for offline retail. If you have ever tried shopping for a bra online, where you buy your size from three different retailers and you get a three-bears situation (too big, too small, just right), then you will know how valuable offline shopping is. If you have ever tried shoe shopping online for a toddler, and the shoes you receive in his/her size would better fit a Chimp’s hand feet than they would your child, then you know how much we still need retail offline shopping. Nevertheless, digital signs are only a part of what is keeping offline stores alive, and that is okay.
Digital signs have become stupidly cheap these days thanks to the Chinese insistence on keeping their currency value as low as possible. Digital signage software has never been more sophisticated and more accessible. Plus, there are now hundreds of online videos on the subject of setting up your digital signs so that you don’t even need engineers to help you do it. In fact, on that point, most digital signage hardware is plug and play, so all the installing nonsense of the past is gone. Digital signs are not the saviors of offline retail marketing and of business in general, but they are certainly important to their success.
