Digital signage for banks and exchange offices.

Where the screens go

Digital signage in banks works when each screen has one job. A branch has four places where a screen earns its keep, and people read each one differently.

Behind the counter is where people look while they wait their turn. In an exchange office this is the exchange rate board: every currency, the buy rate and the sell rate, readable from the door. In a bank branch it hangs above the cash and currency counter, beside the notices people should read before they reach the window.

In the window of an exchange office, the board is read from the street, often by someone comparing your rates with the office across the road. A portrait screen with the currencies people actually change does more here than the full list. Behind glass, brightness matters more than size.

In the waiting area, people sit with a few minutes to spare. This is the place for the savings campaign, the loan offer with a QR code to its terms, a few financial headlines and the clock. In a credit union, it is also where members see what their credit union is doing this month.

In the ATM lobby, the screen is seen when the branch is closed. Set its working hours to always, or to the hours the lobby is open, and keep it to what makes sense at midnight: the opening hours, a QR code to the website, a notice about the branch.

Your rates, and the reference rates

Most people who ask for a currency exchange rate display want one of two things, and they are not the same. Get this part right before anything else: a customer must never mistake one kind of rate for the other.

Your own buy and sell rates are the ones a customer gets. They go on the screen from a Google Sheet: one row per currency, with columns for the currency, the buy rate and the sell rate. The Google Sheets app shows the sheet as a table and follows it on its own, so an edit reaches the screen within a minute or two. Keep the board on the first tab of the spreadsheet, because that is the one the screen shows, and set the decimals in the sheet, because the screen shows each cell the way the sheet formats it. For a short list, the Menu board app works as a price list typed in by hand, though each line carries one price, so a sheet suits buy and sell side by side better.

Reference rates come from the Exchange rates app: daily market rates from a public source, one rate per currency against your base currency, updated once a day, with the date on screen. They show how the market moved. They are not an offer, and they are not your rates. If you show them, label them: Zones splits a screen into panels, so the reference rates can sit in one with a Text panel beside it saying what they are. If you want an official rate on the wall, such as your central bank’s, enter it in your sheet with its name next to it.

How big, and which way up

Measure from where people actually stand. For a table read line by line, the furthest reader should be no more than about four screen heights away: a 32" to 43" screen for a counter two or three metres from the queue, 43" to 55" across a waiting area. The hardware guide has the full table.

A rate table with three columns reads well in landscape above a counter. A window is often narrower, and a portrait screen runs the list down the glass. Decide on the day you mount the screen — the mount and the cable follow from it — and set the orientation on the screen in the dashboard.

Writing for a screen in a branch

People read these screens standing in a queue, or sitting for a few minutes between other things. Write for that.

• Give the rates room. The rate table is the one thing people come to read. Give it a screen of its own, or the largest panel.
• One offer per slide. One product, one sentence, one image. The full terms go behind a QR code, not onto the slide.
• Let the right people check the slide. Advertising a loan or a savings rate usually comes with rules about what must go with it. The screen shows exactly what you put on it, so send slides through whoever checks your printed material.
• One clock, your own time. The Clock app shows one local time. There are no world clocks; if you want New York and Tokyo on the wall, this is not the app for it.

Keeping it right across branches

Give the rate sheet one owner, or a small group, and share it in Google with editing rights for them alone. Everyone else gets a SignageStack login of their own and a role: Admins run the account, Members change content, Viewers look without changing anything. Marketing can run the campaigns for every branch while a branch manager checks what is on without being able to change it.

One playlist can play in every branch, and a change to it reaches every screen within seconds. A branch whose rates differ gets its own sheet and its own playlist.

Look at the screens list in the dashboard now and then. Every player reports what it is playing and when it was last seen. In an exchange office this matters more than anywhere: a screen that has lost its connection keeps showing the last rates it received, and the dashboard is where you notice.

The playback report shows what each screen played and when, as a PDF for one screen or the whole network. Schedule it to be emailed to a list, and the record of which notice ran where keeps itself.

Mistakes that are easy to avoid

• Reference rates presented as your rates. The quickest way to an argument at the counter. Label them, or leave them off.
• A sheet everyone can edit. One wrong keystroke is on every board within minutes. Keep editing rights narrow.
• Anything about one customer on a screen. No names, no account details. The screens are for everyone in the room.
• A window screen too dim for daylight. If you cannot read the sell rate from the pavement at noon, nobody can.
• Campaigns that outlive their offer. Switch them off the day they end; the screen will not do it by itself.