These days it’s not really a question of if you should have a wifi connection for your customers, but more a case of how you deliver it. It has nearly become expected of nearly all venues across the hospitality industry. 

Let’s face it, if you do not provide it and your competitors do, guess where people are likely to shop? That’s right – this may well cause them to vote with their feet. 

Knowing that offering WIFI is important to the customer experience, it then makes a lot of sense to discuss the concept of accessing the WIFI in your venue. 

How easy are you making connecting the the WIFI in your premises? 

Do you have the WIFI code available and on display? Or do people have to ask for it? Remember that not everyone is comfortable asking for it? 

Have you gone to the effort of setting up an easy to say, hear and remember password & branded WIFI network name? If not you could be missing out on people passing also seeing your business name on their phones. 

If you set your wireless internet network (WIFI) up to have your company or brand name in – it’s easier for people to find, remember & it also re-enforces the brand in customers minds. 

Maybe you have gone above and beyond and created near field connectivity (NFC) ‘tap points’ for people to be able to auto connect. This speeds up the process and gets people online quicker than manually entering a password.

One thing this may lose you is the sign in page opportunities to enforce brand, but it may encourage customers to tell others how easy it was to use and connect in your venue, over other venues. 

If you are getting people to log on to your WIFI, it’s important to think about the capture form / landing page details, and how important it is to have them complete a form. And if you do this – how much data you really want and need from them. 

Keep it simple, easy and non-intrusive, is my advice!! 

And consider if the act of giving the WIFI access could be better for your brand than getting some data to market directly to them afterwards? 

After all you can always take them to a landing page with a much softer approach!

SO which approach do you currently use? 

Would you consider trying the others? 

And what are your thoughts on this topic? 

Let me know down below… 

On a final but no less important note – remember the importance of data security, and consider different WiFi networks for the public access, separate to the operational network for added security.