Chances are, you offer free guest Wi-Fi to all your customers both regular and first-timers. It has suddenly become a prerequisite for visitors to visit your business. Most customers these days would not even enter your store or restaurant if you do not have a “free Wi-Fi” sign post outside your door. Seeing this is the case, it makes sense for you set down some form of rules or policies to ensure everyone is happy.
While offering free Wi-Fi is good for business, it is not without its downsides. The most common of these downsides is people trying to ‘overstay their welcome’ on the network. In general, whenever something of value is offered for free, people would use as much of it as they possibly can. And they usually abuse it in the long run.
For instance, they would use your Wi-Fi network to surf the web for products or services that have no connection with what you offer. Or run heavy downloads, and maybe live stream for hours on end. As if that’s not bad enough, some people will return to your business premises with their friends, not because they want to make a purchase but because they want to make use of your free Wi-Fi.
To keep these from happening, or at least to reduce its occurrence, here are some best practices you could implement.
- Control Access By Setting Up A Formal Registration Process
Want to curb abuse of your free Wi-Fi network? The first thing you need to do is to establish a formal registration process. Why? Because it enables you to collect valuable customer data, and of course helps you keep tabs on all your free Wi-Fi users. This way you can monitor and find those who are abusing your free Wi-Fi.
Try not to overdo this. Restricting your customers severely is going to make them think you never wanted them to use it in the first place. You want to make sure that you put restrictive measures in place for only those who abuse this service.
- Only Allow Access Based On Customer Needs
You can minimize abuse by limiting customer access to only what they need. Most captive portals collect information in real-time. This makes it easy for you to change/edit content on your landing page almost instantly.
Why do you need to do this? By varying your landing page content based on specific needs, you can cause your customers to only use your Wi-Fi network to search for products/services you offer or those related to or compliments yours.
This can only be done effectively using customer data you collected through your captive portal. The data helps you to know for sure what your customers want, and with it you can personalize the landing page content to reflect this need. Thus, making them maintain their focus on your business.
Want to know more about captive portals? Read Captive portal: a physical landing page for offline businesses.
- Put Content Filters And Bandwidth Limits In Place
Content filters are important in that they help you keep your customers’ focus on your content. They limit your users from accessing other content that will hinder them from engaging with yours.
Customers may be allowed to access content or sources that cater to their personal needs. You only need to make sure it is limited and doesn’t distract them from your offer.
With free Wi-Fi, many customers will connect to your network only to use it to download large files like movies, documentaries, software, etc. Some may live-stream their activities in your store or restaurant for minutes on end. This would cause your free Wi-Fi network to be slow and may annoy other customers.
Bandwidth limits will help you curb the activities of users who ‘hug’ your bandwidth. It restricts downloads and streaming to a predefined size which frees up your bandwidth for other users.
- Assure Your Customers Of The Security Of Their Data
One of the basic needs of life is security. The digital world is no different. Your customers need to feel safe using your free Wi-Fi network. You need to constantly assure your customers that all personal data entered into your captive portal is kept private, safe, and secure.
Always display the padlock icon and let your customers know that you are using the latest encryption protocols or VPNs that protects end-to-end data transfers.
You need to make it practical. Ensure that all your firmware is constantly updated and that your firewall is active. During non-usage periods, such as at night, disable all access points to reduce the chances of hackers gaining access.
- Put A Price On Use
I know this defeats the purpose of calling it ‘free Wi-Fi’ in the first place. But it can help curb abuse. Here’s how:
You can make your Wi-Fi free only to an extent. You could have certain speed available to all customers for free and then put a price on higher browsing speeds and bandwidth size. This way you can be rest assured that no one will ‘hug’ your bandwidth without paying for it.
You could also make higher bandwidth available to customers who spend X dollars per month. So, only high profile customers may have access to higher speeds and larger bandwidth portions.
Finally,
You need enough data in order to make using your free Wi-Fi beneficial for you and your customers. You need to integrate a Wi-Fi analytics and marketing tool (with a captive portal) to your Wi-Fi system. This will help you collect all the data you need to effectively implement these best practices. And not just that, the customer data will improve your marketing results and build customer loyalty.
Have more questions? Contact us and we will provide you with the answers you need. Feel free to request a demo to see how our platform works. It’s free!
POSTED ON August 30, 2019Share:
