Table of Content
There’s a point every retail team hits where the signage problem becomes impossible to ignore. Content starts slipping. Campaigns go out late. Screens in different cities show mismatched visuals. Teams improvise with Canva or PowerPoint. And slowly, store displays stop reflecting the brand altogether.
This isn’t a creative issue. It’s a systems issue. And solving it doesn’t start with hiring more designers, but switching to scalable, ready-to-use templates that let marketing control the brand and empower store teams to act fast.
In this guide, we’ll break down exactly how to use digital signage templates in your retail environment, what to show, how to customize, and why it works better with Look DS.
Why Digital Signage Templates Save More Than Just Design Time
Cut production time and simplify decisions
Ready-made signage templates give your team a clear starting point, so they’re not making layout or design choices from scratch. There is less back-and-forth, which paves the way for faster execution.
Keep branding consistent across stores
With templates, you don’t need to worry if each location is interpreting design guidelines differently. The structure is baked in. You can change images and messaging, but the core look stays locked in.
Update promos, product drops, or events with less effort
Need to launch a weekend sale or promote a limited collection? Pick a template, drop in your content, schedule it, and you’re done.
Give non-designers a way to build on-brand content
Store staff or field marketers can use templates to create content that still feels like your brand without a steep learning curve or risking brand quality.
Best Content Types to Use with Templates in Fashion & Retail
We’ve seen teams use templates in wildly different ways. Some use them to maintain branding across dozens of stores, others to let individual stores quickly push promos. The point is: they’re flexible. And when they’re built right, they handle the bulk of daily signage work without anyone having to open Photoshop.
Here are the most common and most effective use cases we see:
Promotional Campaigns
Sales. Limited-time offers. Weekend-only events. You need these to look good and go live fast. Templates let you create a batch of promos with locked-in layouts, just swap in the new headline and discount. A single designer can prep a week’s worth of promos in one sitting. A store manager can publish them without calling HQ.
Lookbook Slideshows
Most fashion retailers are sitting on a goldmine of content like lifestyle photography, styled outfits, and seasonal edits that’s not being used in-store. A full-screen lookbook template can run on entrance screens, windows, or fitting room mirrors to bring that content to life.
Product Spotlights
Want to push a high-margin item? A bundle? Accessories that usually get overlooked? Product spotlight templates make that frictionless. Drop in the item, price, and a visual. You can change the entire focus of your clothing store screen layout in under a minute.
Store Announcements
Fashion store signage isn’t just for selling. It’s also how you communicate hours, policies, welcome messages, and membership perks. These often get neglected or worse, printed and taped to a wall. Retail digital signage templates for retail make them clean, clear, and easy to update across all your locations.
User-Generated Content & Social Proof
If you’ve built a loyal following or worked with creators, let people see it in-store. Templates make it easy to feature tagged posts, recent reviews, or highlight what real customers are saying.
Top Template Categories Available with Look
Look’s template library is built for the pace and complexity of retail. Everything is editable, brandable, and made to scale.
Product Grid Layouts
These are your go-to for collections, bundles, or SKU comparisons.
Use them to highlight categories like “Back to School,” “Best Sellers,” or “New This Week.” Each slot can be customized with product name, price, image, and call to action.
Fullscreen Promotions
Built for windows, entrances, or anywhere foot traffic passes.
High-contrast, large-format templates designed to grab attention and drive people inside. Great for high-urgency messages like flash sales or in-store exclusives.
Multi-Zone Templates
Combine multiple content types such as video, static banners, new tickers, weather, and more in a single screen.
Useful for large displays in flagship locations or shopping malls where attention spans are short and screen real estate is wide.
Watch on Look Academy: How to Divide Your Screen into Zones with Look
Countdown & Flash Deal Templates
Useful when you want to create urgency or build hype.
Add a countdown to new collection drops, limited-time offers, or event start times. These work well at entrances, near the checkout, or in high-traffic product zones.
How to Customize a Template with Look Digital Signage
1. Pick a Template
In your Look dashboard, navigate to the layout designer and browse templates by industry or content type. You can also filter by interactive or non-interactive layouts, depending on how you want customers to engage with the screen.
2. Drop In Your Content
In the Look template editor, replace placeholders with your product shots, logos, and messaging. Fonts, colors, and animations can be updated to match your brand style guide.
3. Add Layers
Use built-in widgets to add video, animations, live pricing, social media feeds, or even API-based real-time data from your inventory or loyalty systems. Everything plugs in cleanly without requiring any custom dev work.
4. Schedule and Launch
Control what plays when and where. Schedule content by store, city, time of day, or campaign window.
📌 All templates work across portrait and landscape displays, so you don’t need to redesign for different formats.
Why Look is Ideal for Template-Based Retail Design
We’ve worked with retail teams running just a handful of stores, and others managing hundreds in different locations. Across the board, the challenges tend to be the same. Content takes too long to produce, updates aren’t consistent, and store teams are stuck waiting for head office to respond.
Here’s where Look makes a difference.
- The platform includes a growing library of retail-specific templates customizable within minutes. Since the layouts already follow brand guidelines, teams can just drop in content and publish without a lengthy approval process.
- The built-in editor is drag-and-drop. Store managers, marketers, and operations leads can all update content without needing help from design.
- When updates are ready, you can push them to one screen or a hundred in seconds. There are no syncing delays or manual uploads required.
- Content scheduling is flexible. Set campaigns by store type, location, time of day, or promotion calendar.
- It runs on the screens you already have. There’s no need to buy proprietary hardware or replace your existing displays.
📌 You can explore the Look Template Gallery to see what’s available and customize a layout in just a few clicks.
How Railway Furnishers Scaled Marketing Across Stores with Look
Railway Furnishers is a household name in South African retail, with a 60-year history, over 450 employees, and a network that includes both urban and rural locations. But keeping screen content up to date across all those branches used to be a logistical headache.
Marketing updates were sent out via USB sticks which was slow, manual, and especially difficult for remote stores that could wait days for new promos to go live.
Switching to Look changed that. The team started using the TVs already in-store to run digital signage and managed everything centrally through the Look platform. Updates that used to take days now happen in seconds.
Templates played an important role in making this scalable. The team can quickly swap in promotions, tailor content by location, and schedule everything in advance without needing extra hands. As Corrie Wright, Marketing Manager, put it:
“With Look, we can upload content and publish it within seconds, and also customize screens for each of the branches. It is incredibly user-friendly and so easy to use, thus it's amazing to work with.”
Now, Railway Furnishers can keep messaging fresh, respond faster to campaigns, and make better use of the screens they already have without adding complexity or overhead.
Design Less, Sell More
If you can cut down design time by 80%, that means more campaigns out the door, fewer missed promo windows, and less reliance on overstretched creative teams.
Look helps you get there with template layouts that let your team work faster, stay on-brand, and keep your displays aligned with what’s actually happening on the floor. Less lag time between idea and execution means more opportunities to drive revenue.
Explore the Look template gallery to see how it fits your workflow. Or skip straight to the free 14-day trial and test it with your own screens today.
