Best OnSign TV Apps for Waiting Room Digital Signage

Wherever waiting takes place there is an opportunity for influence. These are places where queues form or areas where people wait to be called up. As such, you have a captive audience looking for ways to shorten their waiting time. Apart from a speedy service, there is no better way to do it than through waiting room digital signage. Provide information about your business, the customers’ interests, or simply entertain to help them pass the time. We’ll cover additional uses below.

OnSign offers a long list of apps to help raise engagement in waiting areas. Of course, there are some apps fitting more uniquely to some contexts than others. We’ll cover the ones which apply to most businesses, but also briefly mention those more unique ones in the end.

Testimonials

For waiting areas, especially in cases where new customers are just discovering your business, testimonials are a game changer. They build confidence in your service and make the experience better as a whole. After collecting them from your existing customers, load them up into a Data Feed, containing their name and their feedback. This data will automatically be loaded into the app which will then neatly display the content in rotation.

Your main challenge here is to line up compelling testimonials and obtain information from your existing customers. Remember to keep it short and to the point. You don’t have to include everything that was said, and you may even edit their words to a more streamlined version, so long as it’s consistent with their feedback! Don’t be afraid to include somewhat negative feedback, but then be sure to include what changes and improvements you’ve made in your business as a result of it. Waiting room digital signage is ideal for this purpose as the viewer will have the time to digest all the information you’ve presented. Meanwhile, in a storefront, they might just look at the headline of the testimonial and make their own conclusion instead of getting the full picture.

News & RSS feeds

With OnSign, you can currently use 14 different news apps, ranging from simple news scrollers to more detailed and configurable setups. In the context of a waiting area, the audience isn’t rushing, so you are free to include more text beyond just headlines. The app setup will rely on RSS and Data Feeds to load the information, placing images, headlines, and news contents in their appropriate place, ensuring everything looks well designed.

Menu apps

While their name might suggest that they’re exclusive to the food service industry, menu apps are versatile tools applicable to services, products, and beyond. Given that every single bit of information on them is adjustable, they can be used for anything you can place in a list. 

Load up your own products, pricing information, and images into a Data Feed and simply attach it to the app of your choosing. Consider other data to be included in these apps. The Cafeteria app, for example, offers a great way to lay out activities and plans. In the context of a cafeteria, it shows food offers broken down into breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Switch food for daily activities and you get yourself an agenda at a hotel or a course plan at a gym. Meanwhile, in other environments, it can list activities in upcoming days or weeks, such as seasonal promotions, product categories, upcoming products, services, travel destinations, etc.

Fun facts!

Fun facts are popular and a fun way to pass the time. With digital signage, you can easily implement them into your waiting room. Currently, OnSign offers a long list of facts surrounding animals, science, travel, health, as well as a range of sports. The Today-in-History app pinpoints several facts for each day of the year. If you wish to, you have the ability to make your own fun fact lists about anything that will interest your audience. All you need to do is build a Data Feed containing the fun facts, their titles, and an optional image for greater impact!

As you may have noticed, lots of apps rely on Data Feeds for information. This really paints a clear picture that apps are just a sleek representation of raw data. As you change or update this data, your apps will adjust accordingly! Learn more about Data Feeds before diving into any specific app.

Social media apps

The OnSign platform currently offers 12 different social media apps for you to use. Use them to show off your social media handles, either in full-screen or banner mode. Display Instagram posts from your profile, one by one, or in grid-form.

An exciting way of using social media apps is to build social media walls. Load them up through your own Data Feeds or, if you want to take it a step further, use services such as Taggbox and Walls.io to show next-level social media arrangements!

Additional apps

As you browse through the many apps available, you’ll stumble across those which are unique to certain businesses. For instance, apps surrounding finance may be useful if your target audience is interested in charts and exchange rates. Sports apps offer ways to show off scores more easily. You may also import content from other sources of your choosing, such as Google Slides, for whatever type of content you want to present.

For some finishing touches, consider adding weather and time apps to break up your content or fill up any gaps you might have in your screen layouts. A simple square in the corner or a banner at the bottom can always be filled with an upcoming weather forecast, a clock, or even a simple image of your social media handles. There is much to discover, so browse, adjust, and even publish your apps with OnSign for free, right away!