Three tips for successful retail installations

During my short thirteen years at R/GA, I have been a part of numerous projects in retail, events and branded spaces. In addition to software testing, these projects often include hardware, OS and networking configurations specific to the space. From a development and testing perspective, there are three important requisites for a successful retail project:

1. Replicate the on-site environment as closely as possible.

Any small variation between your test site and the on-site system could lead to some nasty surprises in the field.  Therefore, testing needs to be done on machines that exactly duplicate the system that will be running at the retail location. Instead of doubling your costs to create a “close enough” test configuration, consider having the final hardware shipped to you ahead of time for configuration and final testing.   After testing, the hardware is shipped with installed and working software to the on-site location. Two birds, one stone.

2. Communicate or fail.

The client will need to share lots of information about the setup at the installation site. In the best case scenario, the client and other vendors will define the exact hardware, software and network specs, and other on-site details. Related to the first point, if these are received early enough hardware can be purchased and set up in the test environment. This allows you to do functional and performance testing very early on. This, in turn, gives you the flexibility to make changes.  Having a strong partnership with the client team is important for those changes to be communicated in a timely manner and approved even faster.

3. Road trip!

The final stages of retail projects always call for on-site testing and implementation.  Plan to have a full team on the ground and ready to react to any unknowns.   Tweaks often need to be made based not only on the technical aspects of the setup, but also the environmental variables. Lighting, space architecture, crowd flow, acoustics, non-digital elements, etc. all are factors that are hard to reproduce in a test environment.  Having a team on-site allows for changes to be rapidly approved, implemented, and tested.