Location, location, location.

What you say is almost as important as how you say it—and when and where you say it.

The right message at the wrong time and place results in a missed opportunity to make an impact, essentially rendering that “right message” pointless. Not only that, it’s frustrating to the people you were trying to reach in the first place. Think about driving your car and seeing an important message about something ahead. Have you ever passed the sign before you are able to read and understand the message fully? It happens all the time. It’s highly likely that you’ve been in this situation and been left wondering, “what did I miss? What’s happening ahead of me?” Missing out on critical information is not fun—and not just in your personal life, but in your professional life too.

Give Your Audience the Info They Need (When & Where They Need it)

If people are unable to absorb the messaging you need them to see, you are minimizing the effectiveness of your communications. Think about that in terms of your digital signage network. It doesn’t matter who you’re trying to reach—guests in your hotel, passengers on your cruise ship, patrons on your casino floor, or students on your campus—if you’re not reaching them in the moments they need to know what you have to say, you’re missing a huge opportunity.

That’s why it’s critical to consider the location and messaging strategy for each screen. Every screen should have a defined purpose, and the content it shows needs to be tailored to the needs of the person at the receiving end of the content.

Audit Your Screen Locations

If you want to optimize your ability to reach your audience, you need to consider how they use your space and what they need while they use it. Think about the physical location of your signs and how the space around them is used. Are the signs in a hallway in the Business School’s buildings or are they in your lobby where patrons enter? Are you trying to inform students about an upcoming event or guests about your latest promo? These questions—while simple—are critical to ask. Because without answers to them, you can’t tailor your content to the place. Depending on where your screens are, sometimes short and impactful messages with eye catching graphics are the way to go. And in other places where your audience will likely have a longer dwell-time, video-based content and more detailed information is a better option. Consider walking your space and observing how your audience uses it. Watch for how they interact with your content. And ask yourself, is each piece of content optimized for the location?

Just imagine how changing the format of your message can connect with your audience in the moments that might make an impact on the actions they take.

Fit Your Content to the Way Your Space is Used

In any use case, the content you display should not only be tailored to the place it’s displayed, but the way it’s built should also take into account the space. So, apart from the message itself, you should also consider the formatting of the content. Each one of your signs should only display content that matches text size to viewing distance, as well as content duration to the amount of text.

Taking location into consideration has a direct impact on the readability of the signs and thereby the effectiveness of your messaging. Ensuring your content is designed for the space is one key to world-class digital signage—and it’s something we’re passionate about. A lot goes into some of these decisions, and we’re happy to help you with any questions regarding screen location and content optimization, just let us know what you’d like help with!