digital signage

Everything you need to know about digital signage

Digital signage is being used more and more in everyone’s day to day lives. People are exposed to some sort of digital signage daily. It’s the new way to display information or promote businesses and products because, when installed correctly, digital signage can be updated in real-time, without physically having to be in the sign location to update the messaging.

What is digital signage? 

Digital signage is everywhere – be it in shopping centres, hotels, hospitals, universities or even now on large scale advertising billboards on the street. A digital signage network can be a large or small screen, or even a projector. They’re often used for staff notice boards, digital out of home advertising, catering menus, or for communicating any important messages to your audience.

To put it simply digital signage just means displaying any sort of multimedia or video content on any digital screen. Wikipedia’s detailed but very dry description of what digital signage is, reads:

“Digital signage is a sub-segment of electronic signage. Digital displays use technologies such as LCD, LED, projection and e-paper to display digital images, video, web pages, weather data, restaurant menus, or text. They can be found in public spaces, transportation systems, museums, stadiums, retail stores, hotels, restaurants and corporate buildings etc., to provide wayfinding, exhibitions, marketing and outdoor advertising.[1] They are used as a network of electronic displays that are centrally managed and individually addressable for the display of text, animated or video messages for advertising, information, entertainment and merchandising to targeted audiences.

How to run a successful digital signage project

Although this is correct, there is much more to digital signage than just the displays. The components you need for a successful digital signage project include:

  • Content – an inventory of different types of content is required to run on the screens. This could be informational or promotional content and can consist of imagery, audio, video, graphics and text.

  • Hardware – the physical items like the media player, screens, mounts etc.

  • Software – the digital technology that enables content to be deployed, run, managed and analysed on the scre ens. 

Choosing your digital signage partner

There are so many vendors out there selling digital signage solutions, and as nearly all companies are offering the exact same software, it’s almost an impossible task to decide who to choose. 

At Hawkr, we’ve done things a little differently. Rather than providing lots of complex features you’re unlikely to need or use, we’ve simplified the way digital signage software works and therefore specialise in easy-to-use digital signage and digital out of home advertising technology. 

Uniquely, we have also made this technology accessible to everyone, no matter what their level of technical knowledge is.

Using the latest web and cloud-based technology we allow our users to manage media content on their digital screen network in the most flexible and easy way.

Hawkr digital signage content management system

If you have a single screen or large network of screens, the way you can access and remotely manage the media content will require digital signage content management system software – and this is where Hawkr comes in.

With Hawkr, managing digital signage networks has never been so simple. With our CMS system, you can now remotely update any screen individually or on a group basis, meaning no more having to physically update screen content at each individual location via a USB stic . Check out this video to see an overview of the CMS.

As well as our intuitive and user friendly CMS, we have a number of features and tools that provide a flexible way to manage your network as efficient as possible and get the most out of your screens. This can allow you to communicate with staff in a unique way, display content for ad-hoc or regular events, or maximise your profit and advertising revenue income.

What is the set-up?

We make things easy, even at set-up stage.

1.Hardware – we use one Media Player, a mini-PC that connects to your screen via HDMI and displays full HD 1080p resolution images and videos. We don’t confuse things with different Players at different costs – keeping things simple!

2.Software / CMS – our web based CMS, accessible through any internet browser, provides an easy to use management platform.

3.Connectivity – our media Players can be connected to the internet via Ethernet, WIFI or 3g/4g sim/routers.

4.Installation – installing the software is so simple. It can be done by one of our trained engineers on-site or one of your own team.

It’s as easy as that. If you’d like to find out more then get in touch to find out how we can help.

 

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