The display Roc Nation & HBO put in their spaces.

Retail signage displays mostly fail for one reason: they are static, and a static thing in a window becomes invisible within a week. A split-flap board is the opposite. It moves, and movement in a shop window is what stops somebody on the pavement. In-store digital signage that flips gets read; a poster that has been there a month does not.

It's the same split-flap magic used as a centrepiece by flagship stores and studios, including spaces run by Roc Nation and HBO, on any screen size you like. Because Split-Flap TV is software, you control every word and change it in seconds, with no fixed hardware to buy or install.

A retail board has about two seconds to work, and it is competing with a phone. What a split-flap board has that a poster does not is motion, and what it has that a video screen does not is restraint: it looks like something the store chose rather than something the store rented. That combination is why it tends to end up in window displays and flagship spaces rather than back-of-house. Flip prices the moment they change, count down to a launch.

The window is the highest value place to put one, and it is the one most often missed. A board facing the street is working on people who have not come in yet, which is the half of your audience the till-side board never reaches. Paper Planes on Lafayette Street in New York put theirs inside the window facing out, and the line on it is a question rather than a price, which is a better use of two seconds than a discount.

Inside, the board earns its place on the things that change. Drops and restocks, sizes that have sold out, a campaign line that runs for a fortnight and then changes. Anything static could be printed more cheaply, so the board should carry whatever would be wrong by Friday. see it in a real store.

If you're planning the space around the board, there's more on the blog. Concept stores covers why experiential retail keeps people coming back and where a moving board fits into that. Pop up shops is the practical one: a temporary store lives or dies on a two week window, and a board you can rewrite from a phone suits that better than anything printed. And fashion boutiques looks at the small independents that treat the window as the whole brand.

Because it is software, the same screen does all of it, and you change the words in seconds from a phone. Brands run one board in the window and another above the till from a single account, with a schedule so the window changes at open and close without anybody staying late to do it. It runs on a screen you already own, from €19.99 a month per screen, with a seven day free trial and no card. See how it works, or read how it compares to buying a physical board.