Guest Wi-Fi is essential to keeping customers happy with your business. Customers choose businesses with good guest Wi-Fi over those without, they spend more time in businesses with good Wi-Fi, and they use Wi-Fi in businesses to further engage with the business. Here’s why it’s so important to provide your customers with the best possible guest Wi-Fi experience.
Guest Wi-Fi Is the Bridge to Engagement
You’ve planned a big event. Two hundred smartphone-slinging marketing professionals are converging on a well-appointed and not too cheap hotel event space for #VPCON2023. People have been using the hashtag for weeks. The stage lighting will ensure that the speakers look great in pictures and video. You’ve even set up a microsite just for the conference with timetables, maps, tips, and more. So what’s missing?
Well, if you don’t have solid guest Wi-Fi, everything will be missing. Yes, you’ve planned on meeting in what the kids call meat space (really, kids?!), but our IRL meetings depend on digital organization. Your guests aren’t just checking emails; they’re uploading pictures and videos, interacting on Instagram in real time, using your digital tools to make your analogue conference a success—so why risk all that with subpar guest Wi-Fi?
Our advice: talk to a professional. Make sure you’ve bought enough bandwidth, that there’s great coverage in your event space, and that your provider has a plan in place for when demand gets high.
Guest Wi-Fi Is an Essential Business Feature
If you run a café or other space where people like to work, such as a bar or restaurant open during the afternoon, you’re well aware that people who are working need access to the guest Wi-Fi, so you’d better have it. What’s worth pointing out is that people have started working in a wider variety of places than you’d expect, and they’re using guest Wi-Fi for more than work.
Let’s talk about the first point: people are working in more places than you’d expect. According to an informal survey of some of our remote-work friends, here are some surprising remote-work sites: an art museum, a community centre, a car dealership (this person was waiting for a two-hour repair), pool side at a private club, a make-your-own-pottery workshop (this person was waiting for a kid’s art class to be done), an ice cream parlour, and a laundromat (this answer showed up a surprising number of times). If you’re running a small business, the important question to ask yourself is: are people remotely working from here? The answer may surprise you. It’s not hard to imagine the neighbourhood laundromat with chairs, tables, and guest Wi-Fi getting more business than the other laundromats that just have vending machines.
Customers Take Their Digital Lives to Your Physical Store (Via Guest Wi-Fi)
And now for the second point: people use guest Wi-Fi for more than work. If you’re a small gym and you really want your socials tagged in a workout video posted by one of your customers, you’d better have some stellar guest Wi-Fi so they can post that right away. And you can extend this thought to most kinds of businesses. Are you selling a new drink you’re really proud of? Do you like it when people trying on the outfits you sell take a snap in front of the dressing-room mirror? Does your business have an app that customers use to better understand or buy your products or services? Do you want your customers engaging with your business on social media while they’re physically in your brick-and-mortar business?
As you can see, there are so many ways customers engage with you or others in digital space while they’re at your business. So make it easy for them by providing good guest Wi-Fi.
