A few years ago, digital signage meant a specialist AV install, an IT team and a five-figure budget. For a small business, that puts it out of reach.

That has changed. A display, a plug-in media player and a cloud-hosted content management system (CMS) now do the job, making digital signage easier than ever. With Xibo Cloud Hosting, there’s no CMS server to provision or maintain. With the Amazon Signage Stick, there’s no separate PC to buy or manage.

What your displays can do

Small businesses tend to get value from signage in three ways:

• Sell. Promote products, highlight offers and guide customers toward the next step.
• Inform. Put opening times, menus, directions and announcements where people already look.
• Operate. Handle wayfinding, room changes and priority alerts that need to reach people quickly.

The setup looks different depending on your business and industry needs, but the jobs stay the same:

• Retail. Change window content by time of day or weather, promote products at the shelf and add gift cards or loyalty prompts at the till. Lavi Industries reports a 35% reduction in perceived queue wait time when signage runs at the point of sale.
• Hospitality. Switch menu boards from breakfast to dinner automatically and answer common guest questions in the lobby before they reach the front desk.
• Education. Push an alert to every display at once when plans change, then use the same screens for room updates and event information.

Getting started

Digital signage works best when it starts with the objective, not the screen. Before buying hardware, such as a media player, or choosing a content management system (CMS), define the problem you are solving and the outcome you want. Then pick one spot in your business where a display could do that job, like answering a common customer question, promoting an offer or keeping information current, and put a single display there.

With the objective set, you only need two things to get started: a player and a CMS.  The Amazon Signage Stick is a Xibo-certified media player that plugs into the HDMI port of a compatible commercial display. Buy it from Amazon or Amazon Business, select Xibo during setup, and the app is ready without manual installation. It works with both Xibo Cloud Hosted and Self Hosted deployments.

The Xibo CMS is where you create, schedule and manage what plays. With Xibo Cloud Hosting, you work from a web browser and there’s no CMS server to set up or maintain. If you need control over where your content and data live, you can self-host Xibo instead. Either way, a non-technical team member can upload, schedule and publish content without training. 

Once it’s running, you can reboot devices, turn screens on or off, adjust volume and capture screenshots from the Xibo CMS, without a site visit to keep screens running smoothly. That matters when your team is one or two people, helping to minimize downtime and maintenance.

Grow without changing tools

When you add a second location or a tenth, you add one Amazon Signage Stick per display. The same Xibo CMS that runs one screen can run hundreds, with user roles so local teams manage their own content while you keep oversight. 

Five questions before you buy

Before choosing hardware, answer these:

1. Where will the displays be installed?
2. How many locations are you covering?
3. What does each display need to do?
4. Who will manage the content?
5. What does success look like?

The guide works through each of these, along with how to choose a CMS, media player and display hardware for your space.

Get the free guide

The SMB Guide to High-Impact Digital Signage, from Xibo in collaboration with Amazon Signage, covers planning, hardware and connectivity, and real applications across retail, hospitality and education. It also includes case studies from KFC Barbados, The DS Company and the University of Nottingham for your review.

Download the guide

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