Master Class

Beyond the screen: How to turn digital in-store into measurable business impact

These are important questions. But they are not the most important place to start.

Whether you are investing in digital in-store for the first time or considering changing your current digital signage provider, the first question should be much more fundamental: What do we want this investment to achieve for the business?

The answer might be increased sales, a stronger brand experience, better customer guidance, greater operational efficiency or new opportunities within retail media. Most likely, it will be a combination of several objectives, depending on where and when the customer encounters the communication.

This distinction matters. Installing a digital signage network is one thing. Creating a digital in-store environment that continuously contributes to business objectives is something else entirely.

At Visual Art, we believe the most successful digital environments are designed around a clear commercial concept, connecting customer behaviour with business objectives and operational execution.

Impact isn’t accidental. It’s designed.

Every touchpoint should have a purpose

One of the most important questions in any digital in-store project is surprisingly simple: What do we want to happen here?

Consider the customer entering a store. Communication at the entrance might need to capture attention, establish a brand impression or introduce something worth discovering. A few moments later, the same customer may be comparing products, looking for information or deciding what to buy. At that point, the role of communication changes.

The screen may be the same technology, but the context is completely different.

Customers don’t experience a store as a collection of channels or screens. They experience a sequence of moments. They arrive, discover, evaluate and decide. Each moment creates different needs and different opportunities to influence the experience.

This means the question shouldn’t simply be, What content should we put on our screens? It should be, What should this particular touchpoint contribute to at this particular moment?

Perhaps its job is to attract attention. Perhaps it should inspire discovery, explain a product, encourage an additional purchase, make a choice easier or strengthen how the customer experiences the brand.

Once that role is understood, the content can be designed around it. Just as importantly, we can begin to define what success should actually look like.

Measure the objective, not just the screen

Digital signage has traditionally been relatively easy to measure operationally. Is the screen online? Was the correct content delivered? Did the campaign play when it was supposed to?

Those questions matter. A network has to work before it can create value.

But operational performance is not the same thing as business impact.

A piece of content can play exactly as planned without changing anything for the customer or the business. That is why measurement should not be something added at the end of a digital in-store project. It should be part of the thinking from the beginning.

Before we create the communication, we need to understand what behaviour or outcome we are trying to influence and how we might recognise whether that happened.

If the objective is attention, success needs to be evaluated accordingly. If the objective is product discovery, conversion, upsell, navigation or brand-building, the relevant signals will be different. Depending on the situation, that could mean connecting communication with sales and category performance, attention, dwell time, customer behaviour, footfall, product interaction or other relevant data.

The objective is not to measure everything simply because we can. More data does not automatically create more insight.

The objective is to measure what matters.

And that means accepting that different touchpoints within the same network may require different definitions of success.

The real value of measurement is what happens next

There is another important reason to measure digital in-store communication. Measurement shouldn’t only help us prove that something worked. It should help us make it work better.

Once a digital network is live, it creates an opportunity that traditional static communication could never offer at the same scale. Communication can be changed, tested and adapted. Different creative approaches can be compared. Content can respond to context. What we learn from one campaign can inform the next.

This creates a continuous learning loop.

We start with the business objective and translate it into a purpose for the touchpoint. We design communication around that purpose and observe the response. The response creates insight, and that insight informs the next iteration.

Over time, the question changes from Did the campaign work? to something much more valuable: What did we learn, and what should we do differently next?

Perhaps one message is easier to understand than another. Perhaps a particular creative treatment attracts attention but doesn’t influence behaviour. Perhaps communication works differently at lunchtime than it does in the evening. Perhaps a screen is technically in the right place but the content doesn’t correspond to the customer’s mindset at that point in the journey.

Sometimes the learning will validate the original idea. Sometimes it will lead to a different creative approach. And sometimes it may challenge the role of the touchpoint itself.

That is the real opportunity. Measurement becomes more than reporting. It becomes part of the creative and strategic process.

Creativity and data should make each other better

This also changes the role of creative content.

Digital in-store isn’t simply a distribution challenge where the goal is to keep screens filled with fresh material. The creative itself is one of the most important variables determining whether the investment creates impact.

A customer walking through a store may only have seconds to notice and understand a message. The content has to work within the architecture, the customer journey and the mindset of the person seeing it. What works on a website, television or social media feed will not necessarily work when someone is walking towards a shelf or deciding what to order.

That is why we see design as an engine of impact.

Strategy establishes what we want to achieve. Creativity turns that objective into communication capable of capturing attention or influencing behaviour. Measurement helps us understand the response. Those insights can then make the next creative decision better.

Data does not replace creativity in this process. It gives creative teams more information to think with.

This is particularly important as digital in-store environments become more sophisticated. When content can respond to location, time, product information, campaigns, audience signals or other contextual data, there are considerably more opportunities to create relevance. But there are also more decisions to make.

The goal should never be complexity for complexity’s sake. It should be better communication.

From digital signage to an intelligent in-store channel

This is where the technology behind the experience becomes important.

An IXM platform creates the foundation for connecting content with the wider retail ecosystem. Rather than operating digital signage as an isolated system, communication can become connected with data and systems such as POS, CRM, product information and other sources.

That opens the door to communication that can adapt according to what is happening in the store and around the customer journey.

But the technology should enable the experience, not define it.

The value isn’t that a platform can change a message based on a particular data point. The value comes when there is a strategic reason for doing so. Technology gives us the ability to act on what we know, while strategy and creativity determine what we should do with that ability.

That is when digital signage starts becoming something more: a digital in-store channel that can be orchestrated, measured and continuously developed.

When the screen becomes media, measurement matters even more

This thinking becomes particularly important as retailers develop in-store retail media.

A digital touchpoint can now serve several purposes. It can communicate the retailer’s own messages, contribute to the customer experience and become valuable media inventory for advertisers.

The opportunity is significant, but so is the need for balance.

The retailer needs to protect the customer experience and its brand. Advertisers need confidence that their campaigns have been delivered and created value. And the retailer needs to understand the commercial value of different audiences, placements and moments throughout the store.

In this environment, measurement means money.

Being able to demonstrate delivery, understand audiences and evaluate campaign performance helps turn screens into credible media inventory. But measurement also protects something equally important: the quality of the store experience.

The ambition shouldn’t be to maximise the amount of advertising shown to customers. It should be to maximise the value created by the network without compromising the reason the customer is there in the first place.

A useful question therefore applies to both retail media and a retailer’s own communication: Is this content earning its place in the customer journey?

Going live should be the beginning, not the end

Perhaps one of the biggest missed opportunities in digital signage is treating implementation as the finish line.

The screens have been installed. The platform is running. Templates have been created. Content is playing across the network.

Project complete.

Except this is precisely the moment when one of the most interesting parts begins.

Customer behaviour changes. Campaigns change. Assortments change. Stores change. Business priorities change. New data becomes available. And every piece of communication creates another opportunity to understand what works.

A digital in-store environment should therefore never really be finished. It should evolve.

This requires a different mindset from the traditional rollout-and-maintain model. Instead of simply operating the network, retailers should continuously develop it: measure, learn, create, test, improve and scale what works.

The most valuable digital signage network isn’t necessarily the one with the most screens or even the most sophisticated technology.

It is the one that keeps learning.

Choosing more than a digital signage provider

For organisations currently considering digital in-store or evaluating a new digital signage provider, technology will naturally form an important part of the decision.

Reliability matters. Scalability matters. Integrations matter. Security matters. The ability to efficiently manage communication across a large estate matters.

But these capabilities are the foundation, not the end goal.

There is another set of questions worth asking a potential partner.

Can they help you understand what digital in-store should achieve for your business? Can they define the role of individual touchpoints throughout the customer journey? Can they translate those objectives into communication designed specifically for the physical environment? Can they help establish how impact should be measured? And, once the results start coming in, can they turn those insights into better communication?

This is the difference between operating digital signage and continuously developing digital in-store as a business channel.

At Visual Art, this is why we bring strategy, creativity, technology and operations together. Our Design Studio helps define the objectives, experience and communication. Our IXM platform provides the foundation for connecting content, data and touchpoints at scale. And our technology and ongoing services help turn the concept into an environment that can continue to develop after launch.

Strategy gives direction. Creativity gives impact. Technology gives scale.

Because the ambition shouldn’t simply be to have a digital signage network that works.

It should be to create a digital in-store environment that works harder for your business over time.

What impact could your digital in-store environment create?

Whether you’re planning your first digital in-store investment, considering a change of digital signage provider or questioning whether your existing network is delivering enough value, the conversation doesn’t have to start with screens.

Start with what you want to change.

Get in touch with Pelle Mets Höök, Global Head of Design Studio at Visual Art, to explore how strategy, creative design and measurement can turn your digital touchpoints into a continuously improving driver of business impact.

Let’s design for impact — and keep improving it.