The Benefits of Digital Signage for Museums

Museums provide a unique opportunity to explore history and culture in a way that can be both educational and entertaining. They offer visitors the chance to view artifacts, learn about different cultures, explore different time periods, and better understand the world.

You are eager to entertain people of all ages, backgrounds, and interests in your museum. Many of these people visit to learn about art and culture for educational purposes. Others may visit museums for entertainment, to explore the exhibits, and take in the atmosphere.

How can you capture visitors' attention, imagination, and interests?

Short answer: Digital signage for museums!

How? Let us explore how many museums around the world have improved visitors’ experience and increased revenue with digital signage.

Enhancing the Visitor Experience for Museums Through Digital Signage

Since many visit museums to understand the past better and connect with their cultural heritage, you need a way to educate them and keep their attention. Museums also attract tourists who may be interested in learning about the history and culture of the area they are visiting.

Nowadays, people prefer to spend time on the internet and may second-guess the need to visit physical locations such as libraries or museums for information.

Your museum must take advantage of something that will give the audience a similar experience to what they enjoy on the internet and an added advantage of social interaction. The best way to keep them engaged is to use digital signage.

Digital signage offers a user-immersive experience that can help to make exhibitions more exciting. Through the use of large video walls, interactive touchscreens, and other digital signage solutions, visitors can be given an enhanced experience that encourages interaction and engagement.

Here are some of the benefits of digital signage for museums:

1. Make Every Visit Memorable

Many people hate museum visits because they feel bored by the monotony of tour guides and the unrelenting aura of obsolescence. You want to make them feel livelier than when they came in.

Digital signage can help make every museum visit memorable by providing an interactive and immersive experience. Digital signage solutions such as large video walls, interactive touchscreens, and other digital signage solutions can engage visitors and make their experience more exciting.

You can use digital signage to give visitors important information about the exhibits and provide a more engaging and interactive experience with multimedia content such as videos and images.

2. Museum Storytelling Shares Information in a More Interesting And Entertaining Manner

Many people don't enjoy reading long blocks of text. That is what most museums have on plaques for exhibitions. With digital signage, however, museums can present their content in a more creative and engaging way that is sure to captivate and hold their audience's attention. You can incorporate external input devices such as RFID/NFC tag readers and beacon technology to allow visitors to interact with the content using their mobile devices, making the visit even more enjoyable.

Interactive learning is a crucial part of any museum experience, especially when it comes to engaging younger audiences such as students. Digital signage is the ideal way to enable this, as you can use it to display informative images, details, and signage throughout the museum.

Your museum can use digital signage to create interactive projections, such as video interviews and interactive timelines with exciting visuals. With the help of digital signage, museums can genuinely bring their stories to life for all visitors.

3. Provide Assistance to Visitors

When visitors cannot find the exhibition they are looking for or become lost in the museum, it can negatively affect their overall experience. Digital signage in museums can be an invaluable tool for wayfinding, especially in vast spaces.

By installing screens that provide directions to different exhibition areas, visitors can quickly and easily locate the exhibitions they are looking for, even in museums with multiple floors. This will enhance their overall experience.

You can use digital signage to manage crowd traffic by directing visitors to the areas they need to go to, making it a valuable tool for museums with multiple floors. By providing clear and concise directions, digital signage can make the museum experience more enjoyable and hassle-free for all visitors.

For an even more interactive experience, touchscreen wayfinding kiosks can be added, allowing visitors to search for and receive tailored directions to the exhibits they wish to see.

4. Reducing Labor Costs

Digital signage can reduce labor costs in a museum by allowing for automated and self-serve processes. Every day, popular museums receive hundreds or even thousands of visitors.

Managing the admission process can be tricky, with long queues of individuals and large groups and various languages being spoken. They employ more and more staff to manage the crowd.

Digital signage for museums helps bring order to this potentially chaotic situation. For example, digital signage can be used to create interactive kiosks that allow visitors to purchase tickets, access directions, and find out about museum programs without needing to speak to a staff member.

You can also use digital signage to display information about exhibitions and events, reducing the need for staff to be available to answer questions. You can display welcome messages and pricing information on screens as visitors wait in line. Show any promotional content for individual exhibitions.

Digital signage can display content in multiple languages, making informing visitors of health and safety policies easier. You can also use it to control crowd traffic, thus reducing the need for staff to direct visitors manually.

5. Reduce Paper, Banners, and Save the Environment

Museums use paper flyers and banners to great effect when it comes to promotion and marketing. Flyers and banners are great for quick, cost-effective advertising, allowing museums to reach a large audience quickly.

That means they trash all the paper flyers and banners after the event or exhibition advertised gives way for newer ones. That also harms the environment as these waste products end up in landfills, water bodies, etc.

That is why museums that care about the environment and money-saving are shifting to digital signage. Digital signage can effectively replace paper and banners in a museum. You can use digital signage to display welcome messages, pricing information, and promotional content for particular exhibitions.

Digital signage can display content in multiple languages, making it an effective tool for informing visitors of health and safety policies or the location of the toilets.

You can easily change and update the content of digital signage. Using digital signage, you can even display more than 10 promotions in the same space. With traditional signage, you need 10 different printouts.

6. Make Learning Interactive

Many of us learn best through a hands-on approach, and interactive learning is hugely important for museums, especially with younger audiences like those coming on school visits. Digital signage for museums is an invaluable tool for this purpose.

Most museums implement some kind of visitor pass that can be combined with RFID tag technology to allow visitors to interact with exhibition screens through the familiar action of ‘tapping.’ QR codes, meanwhile, enable visitors to capture content from a screen, allowing them to download information that they can access later.

Many museums are deploying screens with integrated cameras to entertain audiences. Digital signage for museums can offer visitors the chance to take photos of exhibitions or to apply Snapchat-style filters to pose in period dresses or with dinosaurs, for example. This helps to create a buzz and gives visitors a great souvenir to take home.

7. Reduced Costs and Massive ROI

Digital signage is an effective and cost-efficient way to exhibit your museum artifacts, promote events, or keep in touch with your employees and visitors. Compared to traditional print media, digital signage can help you achieve better results at a fraction of the cost.

Studies have shown that switching to digital signage can increase sales by up to 3-5% without any associated costs of changing the message on a static print.

Digital signage eliminates the costs of materials, labor, manufacturing, printing, and setup, allowing you to quickly and easily deliver the most up-to-date messages to your audience, helping you get the most out of your efforts.

Digital signage solutions offer museums a powerful and versatile platform to entice more visitors. By creating interactive content that is both engaging and entertaining, galleries and museums can provide a more memorable experience.

How to Use Digital Signage for Museums

In this fast-paced, ever-changing world, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to learn quickly and efficiently. As a result, modern museums and art galleries are embracing digital signage to make their exhibits more accessible and informative.

Digital signage can be used in various ways to improve the visitor experience. It can provide directions, provide summaries of exhibits, and even offer interactive experiences that bring them to life.

Digital signage also provides an opportunity to engage with visitors, offering them a unique and personalized experience that they can’t find anywhere else. Here are 5 remarkable ways to use digital signage for museums:

1. Digital Welcome Board

Digital welcome boards provide much more than just "Welcome!"

With the help of digital signage software, you can use them to display a wide range of content, such as presentations about the history and location of the museum, what visitors can expect from the tour, the schedule of shows, events, and activities, a social media wall to display all the online chatter about the museum, information about services and amenities, accessibility initiatives, special courses and workshops, and tour guide contacts.

All of these features can be used to create an engaging and informative experience for visitors.

2. Ticketing or Lobby

When visitors enter a museum, they need a streamlined ticketing process that allows them to quickly and easily purchase tickets.

Digital signage software that provides kiosks with payment options can help speed up the ticketing process and provide a smoother experience. Digital signage video walls can welcome visitors and showcase exhibits and events throughout the day.

Wayfinding systems are also important to help visitors navigate the museum and access various pavilions and galleries. These systems can illustrate the flow of patrons throughout the museum and are even more crucial now with social distancing guidelines in place.

3. Exhibition Video and Images

Digital signage in museums can be a great complement to an exhibition. Combining a variety of mediums is often the best way to educate visitors about a topic.

Video is now a popular way to consume content, making screens and video walls a great way to engage viewers. Younger visitors in particular would rather watch a video than read a large amount of text on a poster. Slideshows of images and animations are also better than static posters which are limited in their ability to convey information.

4. Donor Walls and Membership

Museums rely heavily on donations and memberships to be successful. Video walls and projections are often used to showcase donors and to encourage corporate sponsorships.

Since this content needs to be updated regularly, it is important to choose digital signage software that is secure and dependable. This will ensure that patrons have a positive experience when viewing the digital signage.

5. Conference and Reception Areas

Museums often have conference and reception halls for large gatherings, where lighting, audio, and visuals play a vital role in creating the right atmosphere.

These areas can be used as conference centers, banquet facilities, or meeting rooms and are usually equipped with modular systems that can be adjusted to fit the size of the event.

Projection screens and mobile video walls are often used in such settings. Live events also require audio and lighting elements to ensure quality sound and to set the right mood in the room.

However, you must seriously consider the kinds of audio you play in such settings, as the wrong music may put off your audience. You can use a free service like Loop to get the best music and digital signage content to entertain your audience and set the mood for the event.