Measuring the Impact of Digital Signage in Education

Education digital signage for schools and universities is the perfect student engagement tool. We’ve covered the benefits of this technology before and there are many. But how do you track the effectiveness of the screens? This article is about digital signage analytics and ROI. You’ll learn how to measure the impact of your education digital signage.

How do schools and universities use digital signage?

The era of education digital signage for schools and universities is here and it’s beautiful. Many educational institutions turn to this technology to communicate and engage better. It positively impacts how information is disseminated and gets the students involved in the content creation.

Screens on campus make it easy to provide real-time updates. This immediacy combined with unlimited visual potential makes education digital signage for schools and universities a superb addition to the institution’s tech landscape. 

Here’s a short overview of the advantages of having Kitcast digital signage at your college and university: 

– improved student engagement

With screens, you’re getting a superb engagement tool that uses visuals to show information that matters. As a digital-first solution, it speaks the same “language” that students do and allows institutions to be up-to-date and relevant. 

– real-time information

There’s no delay in education digital signage for schools and universities. Use Kitcast to design and show any kind of information you want. The system does that immediately and in real time. 

– cost-effective solution

Displays make paper obsolete. By doing that you’re saving tons of money on print and paper design. 

– content flexibility

Are you looking for scheduling displays? Or maybe you’re interested in wayfinding signs? How about cafeteria digital menus? Well, Kitcast digital signage is up for any content challenge. It’s a flexible technology that allows institutions to show any information they want. 

– sustainability

Education digital signage for schools and universities is also an eco-friendly solution. By saying “no” to paper you’re making an environmental impact. Also, many screens today come with a set of sustainable features so you can make sure that your network is as green as possible.

How do you measure the effectiveness of digital signage in education?

These are screens, how can you actually track their performance? You will be surprised to discover the many ways to do that. 

Everything comes down to digital signage analytics and ROI.

Different approaches to tracking digital signage performance give educational institutions important analytics. With detailed analytics, you will be able to calculate the ROI of your screen network.

Here are the top approaches to measure your screen technology success in education.

By engagement 

It’s easy to get the data from engagement online. You have a clear picture of who came to your website, how much time they spent and where they clicked. It’s a bit different with digital signage. 

Although it bridges online with offline, the screens still exist in the physical world. This fact makes tracking by engagement tricky. These are the metrics to track and best practices to collect the data. 

– impressions

The impressions metric includes all the times you’ve shown content to your audience.

– dwell time

Dwell time in digital signage refers to the amount of time a person spends engaging with your content. It’s an important metric for determining the attention span of your audience. 

– interaction rate

If your content has interactive elements (such as a QR code), this metric shows how many times the audience interacted with your content. This can also include information about clicks. 

By audience

The previous block focuses on “what” you’re showing. This one is about “who” you’re showing it to. 

For colleges and universities, the audience metric allows fine-tuning content to address the needs of various audience profiles (prospective students, seniors, staff, parents, advertisers, etc.). It’s quite straightforward and includes: 

– demographics

Information about the:

1. Age
2. Gender
3. Interests
4. Special needs, etc. 

– foot traffic

It’s a helpful metric to understand which locations of your college or university need screens the most. Also, it includes a number of people passing through your display at various times per day. 

– roles

Education digital signage for schools and universities isn’t only for the students. It can be also used for internal communication and advertising. So it’s helpful to set different roles for tracking your audience according to their occupation (students, professors, staff, cafeteria workers, cleaners, parents, etc.). 

By operation

While the previous two tracking metric blocks were about the content, this one is about the operational side of digital signage technology. It shows you how effective the hardware and software is. This includes: 

– screen uptime

Showing you the time your screens work without any issues. 

– errors rate

Giving you a picture of technological issues and errors. 

So you’ve collected all this data, what now? It’s time to analyze the effectiveness of your digital signage by calculating the ROI (or return on investment).

What’s the ROI of education digital signage?

Determining the return on investment is among the top ways to see if your digital signage is effective. 

ROI is calculated by evaluating the tangible and intangible benefits against cost. Here are the steps to take to measure it: 

1) identifying the investment 

Simply speaking, it’s everything you spent money on to create the digital signage network including: 

– hardware and software

– installation

– maintenance

– electricity bills

– training cost (if there’s one)

2) calculating tangible benefits 

Getting the data on financial results that digital signage helped bring. 

– enrolment 

– revenue from event organization 

– revenue from advertising 

– cafeteria revenue

– costs saved on printing materials and hardware

3) tracking the intangible benefits 

As digital signage is an additional marketing tool in college and university space, its benefits are often intangible in nature. 

– improved student experience 

– better internal communication 

– improved wayfinding 

– better safety and emergency response

Now, once you have the full picture, you can use the ROI formula: 

ROI (%) = [(Total Benefits – Total Costs) / Total Costs] × 100

The percentage will show you how effective your digital signage is.

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