A picture may speak a thousand words, but a digital video wall can allow your brand to say even more.
Video walls, a type of digital signage composed of multiple displays, are a common sight in shopping centres today. But retail isn’t the only sector taking advantage of this technology; educational institutions, hospitals, airports, real estate agents, workplaces... pretty much everyone is seeing the benefits of digital signage.
Video walls create an immersive experience that excels at capturing the attention of passers-by. They've also been proven to be more effective than traditional signage, and they're easy to keep updated with the right software.
But video walls are large investments, which come with their own set of challenges: Which software should you be using? What hardware do you need to have installed? What types of content are going to be the most effective?
Here are six tips for how you can use video walls to deliver impactful messages to your audience and make the most of your investment.
This is the first question to ask yourself before investing in this technology. Identifying the goals behind your decision to install a video wall is key to its success. Choosing a video wall solution just because it's what your competitors are doing is simply bad business.
Ask yourself: What am I trying to achieve? How will this video display help me do that?
Only once you have a solid grasp of your goals can you go about reaching them.
When deciding where to position your video wall, you first have to consider the practicalities:
What's the physical size of the space you have to fill?
How much light is present?
What are your chosen video wall’s cooling needs?
Will your video wall be recessed or flush with the wall?
It's equally important that your video wall is installed in a location where it will be seen by the maximum number of people. Size and purpose may determine this for you. For example, if you're installing a very large video wall into a retail environment, positioning it on the back wall of your store would make the most sense as it will be seen by all who enter. A smaller video wall might be better placed nearer the entrance, enticing people inside.
There are few hard rules when it comes to choosing your video wall's location. So long as your screens aren't hidden away and fit their space correctly, you should be onto a winner.
Even the most cutting-edge set of displays will be completely useless without the right software to keep them running.
There is a plethora of software solutions available on the market, but the robustness of these varies wildly. You need to find the right service to suit your company in terms of budget, resources, and how you plan to use your video wall.
Ensure that whatever software you choose is easy to use but powerful enough to handle tasks like automating content, displaying live social feeds, and displaying live news and weather widgets.
With average human attention spans now shorter than a goldfish's (thanks internet!), creating exciting, dynamic content is crucial for capturing consumer consciousness.
To avoid boring your audience, consider creating a series of different content types that can play on a cycle. Here's a few ideas to get you started:
A 10 second advert for a new product
Promotional information
Live social media feeds
Customer reviews or testimonies
Season-specific content
It'll take a bit of trial and error to see what works for your particular use case, just remember that your content needs to be short enough in length to be understood at a glance and change frequently enough to hold people's attention. Think about taking full advantage of your video wall software's capabilities too – MIX convenience store in Skøyen uses digital signage to promote ice creams in hot weather and warm drinks when it's cold, for example.
The ability to keep your content fresh is one of the key benefits of using a video wall instead of traditional static signage, so make the most of this to ensure your audience is kept engaged.
Have you ever sat in front of a presentation or lecture and been assaulted by mountains upon mountains of text? This is known as 'death by PowerPoint' and will send audiences to sleep faster than the snap of a hypnotist's fingers.
It's important to remember that digital signage is a visual medium – if something can be said with an image then it should be. No one is going to stop in their tracks to read a paragraph of text, and research by Mvix found that messages containing fewer than 250 characters increased engagement levels by 60%. Be sure to keep any text short and sweet and focus on using colourful imagery to successfully capture attention.
Humans are hardwired to notice movement, it's a hangover from our days as cavemen and part of our survival instinct. It's no wonder, then, that research by Intel found that the motion of digital signage garners 400% more attention than static signs.
The content you feature on your video wall should make use of this fact by staying in motion. Featuring live video would be excellent, but even simple animations can be an effective way of drawing people's attention. These can implemented easily using DatabeatOMNI's PowerPoint Publisher. Take into consideration things like speed, direction, and type of movement when creating your animations to ensure your content grabs attention for the right reasons.
Video walls are proven to garner more attention than the static signs of the past, but creating alluring content is critical to their effectiveness. Following these 6 tips should go some way towards helping you utilise your video wall to its full potential. If you're still deciding on which software solution will work best for your organisation, get in touch with us and try a free demo of DatabeatOMNI.