Digital Signage Made Easy: The XOGO Story

The History of Digital Signage

Digital signage is an industry that came to life in the 1980's and has evolved over the years with technology. Business owners would initially use VHS tapes, and later DVDs, in order to loop their brand content on CRT televisions rather than printing static signs. As technologies evolved and became more affordable, more users came on board. Companies began to develop CMS (content management system) software, and the digital signage industry as we know it began to take shape. By 2015 digital signage had already become a multibillion-dollar industry, with users streaming content from media player PCs directly to large flat-panel displays, video walls and billboards. However, there were still a lot of problems to overcome.

The Challenge

As recently as 2015, digital signage systems were generally quite expensive and difficult to install. Player software needed to be run on expensive PC hardware, and users were generally required to install a server on-premise to distribute content to their players. CMS software was overly complicated for the most part, requiring an IT team to install the system plus customized training courses for the system’s day-to-day users. There was clearly a huge opportunity to improve upon the setup and user experience of these systems, while also lowering the barrier to entry.

Why We Created XOGO

In 2015 our team was busy building über-customized, cloud-based, interactive experiences for Fortune 500 retailers. Many of our customers were already using digital signs in one way or another, and we kept being asked if our powerful cloud-based platform could be used to replace their existing, overly-complicated signage systems.

We decided to go all-in and create a revolutionary new platform that would change the industry. Instead of expensive on-premise servers, we would leverage the cloud and allow users to manage their signs from anywhere in the world. Instead of a complicated CMS, we would build beautiful, intuitive player & manager apps for Windows 10, Android, and other platforms so users could simply visit their favorite app store and then set up their signs in seconds. For those in search of the ultimate trouble-free experience, we would build our own sub-$100 media player device that would come with XOGO Player preinstalled so it could simply be plugged into a TV or projector and connected to a XOGO account. Additionally, we would make our hardware available to customers all over the world via distribution channels like Amazon. Finally, we decided that we would offer every XOGO customer tech support services completely free of charge - even customers on our completely free tier.

Where We Are Today

We've come a long way in the past five years, from plucky-startup stage, to deploying interactive signage systems worldwide for Microsoft, to winning best-in-class awards at our industry's premier annual event, the Digital Signage Expo.

In the past two years alone we have built and released the world's first media player device (XOGO Mini) that’s based on the Windows 10 IoT Core OS from Microsoft. We’ve released additional versions of our apps for Chrome and Fire TV devices. And we’ve partnered with our friends at Seenspire to offer nearly 300 of the world's finest dynamic content feeds to our customers, including those using our $199 XOGO Mini device (it's remarkable for a low-cost device to be able to run dynamic feeds of this type).

As of autumn 2019 XOGO now provides digital signage for hundreds and hundreds of clients around the globe, from corner shops to the world’s leading companies in various sectors including retail, hospitality, airlines and more. But we're just getting started.

Where We Are Going Next

In the product development process, our top priority is always to build and release features that will be useful to our customers without making our platform more complicated or costly. In the next few months, XOGO users can look forward to new features that include advanced playlist-scheduling options, the ability to set custom durations for your graphics, and a version of our XOGO Manager app for Apple iOS devices. Sign up for email alerts below or check out our news feed to be the first to hear as we release new products and features.

[Edit: 18 September 2020 - We released playlist scheduling, custom durations and an iOS version of XOGO Manager last winter as promised. We are currently working on some very exciting developments including an integration with NEC smart displays and an integration with low-cost sensors which - for the first time in our industry - will make it easy for users to instantly trigger content on a screen when someone lifts an item from a shelf, comes within X meters of a display or holds an RFID-tagged product near a reader. Stay tuned!]

Get Started Today

XOGO was designed to meet the needs of organizations large and small. With our freemium pricing model, free technical support, and virtually unlimited hardware options, it's never been this easy to set up digital signage. Download our apps in order to get started with XOGO today, or feel free to contact our sales team with any questions about our technology or pricing.