What happened to Digital Signage in 2020?

Well, here we are at the end of 2020 and I think most of us can agree that we weren’t expecting that. 

With the changes the pandemic has brought to almost every single business around the world, we look back at our “best laid plans” in January 2020 and say “If only we knew!”

There have been challenges for all vertices from QSR to Retail, Corporate environments to Stadiums and everything in between. We’ve seen some interesting revolutions in industries that have done the same thing for many years. Companies have been forced to think “outside the box”. 

So how has 2020 changed digital signage?

Without mentioning the elephant in the room, things have changed dramatically. Staff moving from their office desks to their home desks (or whatever setup they may have put together at the last minute) to Retail environments (when not in lockdown) having had to sharply adapt to the number of clients they can deal with at a time and started to think about the experience, rather than the volume. Essential retail created this post citing that 64% of respondents say that engagement is a key benefit to their digital signage deployment.

We’ve had to change too. Making sure that our focus is on what our customers need right there and then. 

One of the biggest changes to our planned Roadmap was to expedite the release of our Broadcast player to help alleviate the transition from office to home environments. 

Many of us found ourselves getting more familiar with the “work from home” philosophy and the communication challenges that it brings. There are a myriad of communications tools that companies use such as Slack, Email, Monday.com and many more, however, a lot of these tools are bi-communicational and as such, can get a little.. overwhelming.

Signagelive’s Broadcast Player allowed companies (both new and existing) to utilise and share their digital Signagelive experience directly via a URL to an unlimited number of staff. This allowed a lot of people who were worried about duplicating their communication to carry on as normal and the Broadcast Player provided a place for staff to be able to tab over and remain informed. Over 2,600 users logged in to check their digital signage while at home. 

The Broadcast player was released and will be free for new customers up to 30th June 2021!

Something else that has appeared far more prominently in conversations this year is health and safety. Keeping your distance and checking your temperature. Digital signage has always been able to trigger content based on things like RFIDs, Head-counting or other similar metrics, but 2020 has seen these requests become part of the mandatory requirements when it comes to your digital roll-out. 

On the other end of the retail spectrum, we saw more companies investing in “experience” digital signage. Content that adds to the selling experience and gives a customer a memory of purchasing their product, rather than just a collection point. Examples of this are plentiful but this Hyundai showroom in Seoul is a shining example of the Wow factor. Their wall-to-wall LED experience urges audiences to take a closer look.