How to tell whether your screens are paying their way

Give each screen one job, then compare the thing that job should change before and after, using your till reports. Use proof of play to make sure the content ran when you think it did. You won't get a neat return figure for every screen, and you don't need one. A few honest comparisons will show which screens are earning their spot on the wall and which need new content, or a new wall.

Decide what each screen is for

"More sales" is too vague to measure. Each screen in a venue usually has a narrower job, and the job tells you what to count.

• The menu board above the counter: shorter queues and fewer questions at the till, and price changes without reprinting anything.
• The window screen: getting people through the door.
• The bar screen: selling whatever it promotes, like a cocktail of the week or the Sunday roast.
• The gym reception screen: class bookings and personal training enquiries.

Some screens have two jobs. That's fine, as long as you know which one you're measuring this month.

Start with your till

Most tills can report sales by item and by day, and that's most of what you need.

Pick something a screen promotes and nothing else does. A dish that's only on the screen, missing from the printed menu and not being pushed by staff, gives a much cleaner answer than one that's everywhere. Run it for a few weeks and compare sales with the weeks before, matching days of the week (a Tuesday against a Tuesday).

Plenty of things muddy the water: the weather, a bank holiday, a big match, a price change, a new member of staff who loves recommending it. You can't control them, but you can note them down, so the screen doesn't get the credit for a heatwave.

An on-and-off test is better still. Run the promotion on the screen one week, take it off the next, then put it back. If sales rise and fall with it, the screen is doing the work. Scheduling makes this easy, as an event can repeat every other week on its own. Scheduling screen content explains how.

Screen-only offers

The cleanest measure of all is an offer that only exists on the screen. "Ask for the screen deal" or "say 'window' at the till for a free cookie with your coffee" means every redemption is someone the screen reached. Staff need to know about it, and there needs to be a way to count it, whether that's a button on the till or a tally sheet by the coffee machine.

A QR code works in a similar way for bookings. Put one on the screen that goes to your booking page through a link nobody else uses, and the visits show up in your website's stats. It suits event tickets, table bookings and class sign-ups. The QR code is just an image in the layout, but people need time to get their phone out, so leave it on screen long enough to scan. How long each slide should stay on screen has more on timings.

Check the content ran

Before you credit or blame a screen, make sure it was doing what you think.

Proof of play records each time a layout or media item plays and for how long. Switch it on for the promotion before it starts, then run the report at the end to see the Number of Plays and Total Duration on each screen. The Distribution report shows when in the day or week it played, so you can confirm the lunchtime offer was on at lunchtime. Time Connected shows how much of the period each screen was online, and a screen that was offline for three days of a two-week test has thrown your numbers.

Proof of play records plays, and it can't count the people who looked. Proof of play reports covers the setup in more detail, and the reporting section of the features page lists what can be recorded.

Count what the screens save

Some screens pay their way in what they stop costing. Printed posters for every offer, menus reprinted after every price change, a member of staff rewriting the chalkboard each morning: add up what that came to over the last year, from the printer's invoices and a rough count of the hours.

Menu boards are where this shows most. Change a price once and every screen showing it updates, and mark a dish as unavailable without anyone redesigning anything. That time never shows up as a sale, but it's real money all the same.

When a screen isn't pulling its weight

If a screen's numbers are flat, the cause is usually one of a handful of things, and each has a fix.

• Nobody sees it. It's too high, behind a pillar, or up against the big sports TV. Where to put screens in a venue helps here.
• People see it but can't take it in. Too many words, text too small, or the price lost in the design. Writing words for screens is the place to start.
• Too much is on rotation. If your offer is one slide in twelve, people waiting at the bar may never see it come round.
• It's off more than you realise. The Time Connected report will tell you.

Change one thing at a time, then measure again. Change the position, the wording and the offer all at once and you'll never know which of them worked.

Keep a simple log

A spreadsheet is plenty. One row per test, with the dates, the screen, what ran, what you counted, the result and anything odd about that week. It takes five minutes to fill in, and after a few months it tells you which kinds of content work in your venue and which screens deserve a rethink.