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Finding the right digital signage software is supposed to be easier these days now that digital signs are pretty common, but a staggering number of digital sign programs have entered the market from nowhere. Small companies and developers are hacking them out like cheap cheese cut from a rusty board, and so it has become even more difficult to find a “Good” digital sign program, and therefore more difficult to find the “Right” digital sign for your business. Here are a few things you should consider when you are making your choice.
In This Post:
Stop Picking Abandonware
This point is no joke, this is not a piece of article fluff. One of the biggest problems that digital sign users face is their choice of abandoned software. It is mostly the fault of Google, since it is easier to go online and find free software that has been abandoned than it is to find software that doesn’t charge stupidly high fees. If your software is not being updated on at least a quarterly basis, then your problems will compound upon themselves until you end up spending most of your day troubleshooting.
They Should Give You a Free Trial
If the company isn’t giving you a free trial, then they have something to hide. In our modern app-centric culture, we all know that the free trial is almost mandatory at this point. When even big game publishers are offering free trials of their game, then you know it is hard coded into the public zeitgeist. Take a company like Kit Cast, they work on very tight margins and even they offer a free trial.
Don’t Believe The Reviews
The best examples of this exist in the WordPress marketplace where a service can have 100 positive reviews and only has 100 downloads, where a plugin can have 10,000 downloads but only 3 active users. The trick to marketing digital sign software is to buy as many fake reviews as possible using Chinese click farms and spread them as thick and as frequently as possible. Ignore the positive reviews and ignore the companies who don’t have any negative reviews.
Search For Negative Reviews
Take the company KitCast. They have been around forever, and where they may have a set of good reviews, they also have a reasonable share of bad reviews. They range from people who feel the service is too expensive, to people who couldn’t get the software to work on their PC. If you see negative reviews that all says the same thing, like if you see a candy delivery service where many reviews complain about late deliveries, then you can take those reviews as true. If there are very few negative reviews at all, but many positive ones, then look upon that piece of software with suspicion.
It Should Make Scheduling Easy
Saying that it should make scheduling easy is like saying an art program should make printing easy. Scheduled posts are a staple of modern digital sign usage, and yet there are still programs that make the process unintuitive. They do things like set out the schedule like an accountancy spreadsheet, or they run a drag and drop that doesn’t adjust to specific times. The program should make it easy, or you should forget all about it.
If you’re also eager to explore the world of entertainment, check out our companion article, “Where to Buy Now Pay Later Concert Tickets,” for insights into securing your spot at live events with flexible payment options.
Stop Picking Content Clones
This problem is common with digital sign content, video editors and photo-adjustment software. A good piece of software is created and the app market is flooded with very cheap and very nasty imitators. Even those services you see being marketed at the top of Google’s search engine results are often cheap clones of other software that the company is charging a fee for using. If you find a piece of software that looks good, you need to do intensive research to find what “Inspired it” because 90% of the time you are looking at a cheap clone of a better piece of software.