Digital Signage: How Sticky is Your Content? – Part II

Like that sticky bakery tissue I wrote about in my last column, digital signage content is at its best when it’s something with which people have a strong attachment.

In other words, effective digital signage content gives its intended audience a reason to take glance, and another and another. Digital signage pages built with stickiness in mind tap into a subconscious longing on the part of a viewer for something that’s relevant, interesting and fresh.

The term “sticky” and the concept of “stickiness” as relates to content have come out of the realm of the Worldwide Web, but it’s really nothing new. Media of all sorts have used content that’s desirable to consumers as a means to build and retain an audience since shortly after Gutenberg began printing Bibles.

The fundamental step towards building stickiness into digital signage content is recognizing one simple fact: Most people in any given society share common interests in some very basic things. For instance, is it going to be hot or cold out today? Sunny or rainy?

Beyond these are topics like news, sports scores, stock market averages and traffic reports that many, but probably not as many as the previous example, find interesting and worthy of frequently checking.

Integrating these sorts of elements into a digital signage page can be powerful. Consider the findings of a recent survey from the National Center for Atmospheric Research of Americans about weather forecasts. Fully 90 percent of American adults said they obtain forecasts daily –many doing so more than three times per day. With that sort of natural stickiness, weather forecasts, conditions and warnings seem like a logical place to start for digital signage content designers looking to attract repeated attention from their audiences.

A weather element built into digital signage pages targeting the general public, such as grocery store shoppers, makes complete sense. But remember, there are other special-interest topics that have as much stickiness to viewers of niche signage. The trick is matching the content to the desired audience’s interests to get them to take a second or third look. For example, quotes on soybeans, corn and other commodities wouldn’t likely attract a second glance from the general public but would have a high degree of stickiness for farmers visiting a farm implement dealership. Ditto for visitors in the lobby of commodity exchanges.

Thus, the first step to adding stickiness to digital signage content –whether for the general public or a niche audience- is ensuring that it’s relevant to those whom it’s directed. The next is making sure the data upon which you‘re hoping to build stickiness is not static. Remember, creating stickiness taps into the desire of the audience to check back for something new and fresh. Don’t waste your time in regards to building stickiness with data that doesn’t change.

A third important ingredient to the stickiness recipe is making sure the content you hope your audience finds sticky is available or attainable. What good would it be to design mountaintop weather conditions into digital signage content for a ski shop at the base of the mountain, if it were impossible to set up and maintain the instruments necessary to collect and deliver that data?

Intentionally adding on-screen zones to digital signage content for sticky content that attracts viewers over and over again is a smart strategy. All that’s required is making sure the content is relevant to the desired audience, changes often enough to tap into the desire to take another glance and can be obtained from a data provider, collection instrument, via the Web or from some other reliable source. With those pieces in place, building stickiness into digital signage content is doable and a worthwhile endeavor.