Display Signage: New Environments Lead to Innovations

Think about the last time you were in an unfamiliar situation. How did you respond? What steps did you take to make yourself comfortable and adapt to this new experience? And looking back, did you grow and learn something about yourself along the way?

Similarly, you can grow and advance your product whenever it’s inserted into a new environment. At Outcome Health, we are constantly challenged by the new environments that we are called to install our products into. We view each new environment as an opportunity to iterate and evolve our product suite, thus ensuring we are providing our customers with an optimal experience no matter where our products live.

When evaluating whether or not a product will be successful in an environment, there are several considerations to evaluate. Our team goes through a multi-layered approach to find the best fit for every install. The layers of considerations we go through are described below:

Hygiene: (aka “the basics”)

At the lowest level, basic hygiene is considered.

• Will the environment continue to be safe with our product installed?‎
• Is the product going to remain safe in that environment?

Note: This layer includes several safety, serviceability and other factors.

Traffic & Engagement:

In the second layer, we think about factors influencing engagement and traffic patterns. Height of display and brightness fall under this layer. Regarding traffic, it’s critical to quantify the value and footfall volume because not all traffic is equally valuable. For example: Our team recently studied the difference in advertising near a food line that sold packed sushi v. Indian food. Sushi was very popular and attracted a lot of traffic while the Indian food line was relatively small. But, sushi was pick and go — so the “gaze-through” rate of that line was very low. Since customers paid less attention, advertising near the sushi line was rated “low-value, high-volume” traffic. On the contrary, the Indian food line had a much higher linger time and hence was rated as “high-value, low-volume” traffic.

Display Saturation:

We scan the area for how best to saturate the footprint. Flow of traffic, traffic rest patterns, the current signage layout, and alternate times of the day are all considerations. Proximity to traffic centers and other points of interest (like a popular ice cream shop) play a role and are considered in this layer. Competition play a role in this assessment as well.

Storytelling:

A more complex layer that goes hand-in-hand with display saturation is storytelling. Since our products live at the point of care, it’s important that our signage tells a continuous story. As engagement continues, the story should advance. For our products specifically, one way to advance the story is through an interactive session.

As we consider the evolution of our product capabilities, we can also enhance the storytelling experience using a connected signage concept. Think about it: a customer is engaging with a display and is alerted about an alternate display down the corridor (perhaps one that is more aligned to the customers interest), which contains more detailed information. Customers can now be targeted with information best suited for each stage of their purchasing journey.

Understanding and properly evaluating new environments will contribute to your business’s and your products’ success. While there’s definitely uncertainty involved with entering new environments, if assessed properly, the benefits outweigh the risks. To truly make your products stronger and more equipped to handle your customers’ needs, you must be willing to step out of your comfort zone and into something new.

Want to helps us build #ABetterOutcome? Outcome Health is hiring! Check out our Careers page or message me if any of our open roles are of interest: http://www.outcomehealth.com/careers/