One of the most frequent questions we get as a specialist supplier of Guest WiFi solutions, is, “What difference does it make? We can just use a password”.

Well, in our experience there are many differences, and in this article, we explore them with you.

The biggest, single most annoying element with simply using a password is that your consumer (Guest) needs to ask someone for the WiFi password. Generally, that means attracting someone’s attention, possibly waiting until a Waiter is available, then mis-hearing or mis-spelling the password until it’s entered correctly and they’re online.

Not only does your Guest have to wait to get online via an often-frustrating experience, it also takes your Waiters’ away from dealing with their main focus.

Another difference is back-office bandwidth. I mentioned in an earlier post, that one of the areas we focus on at Wigglewifi, is ensuring the back-office always has a minimum bandwidth locked aside for their exclusive use. This ensures that online orders, and all other important back-office tasks are not slowed by the success of your Free WiFi offering. Simply providing a password on an Access Point to your Guests will share your entire internet bandwidth, often meaning slow access for the office or online orders.

Looking in a slightly different direction, offering a simple password may appear to be a cheap option, but in fact that’s a false economy. Your WiFi should be working for you, providing you some ROI. The many ways to collect customer data and communicate with your Guests utilising Wigglewifi, are a simple method to increase your revenue. Customers don’t have to be overwhelmed with email, but a focused monthly or event-based newsletter or message will attract repeat customers. Furthermore, you can automatically send a message to your Guest, hours or days after a visit, requesting them to review you on your TripAdvisor page, or simply thanking them for their patronage.

More obvious benefits from Wigglewifi, are elements such as a customised branded login (Splash) page and asking non-repeating survey questions at login. Make your WiFi work for you, learn what your Guests think about the cleanliness of your venue, the speed of service, menu options and much more.

Less obviously, Wigglewifi can assist with Web Filtering on your WiFi network, preventing access to known malware infested or Adult/inappropriate websites. We can also restrict the amount of time that your customers spend on your WiFi in a 24-hour period. As one of our Wigglewifi Customers commented; “Ensuring you remain in the food business and not turn into an office”.

Collect the Guest data you feel comfortable with, from basic info, such as just a cell phone number or email address, to Gender or Birthday and more. Get analytics on your WiFi. Understand how many people are using the system, what time of day, how often they come back, how long they stay.

In general, it can be seen from the above that a managed Guest WiFi solution offers a huge number of benefits over and above a simple password-based system. Your WiFi system should be working for you, earning your business revenue, not thought of as a basic add-on service you have to provide to be competitive.

Wigglewifi is a specialist Guest WiFi provider across Africa. Contact us for more information on our services; we’ll have you up and running in no time.