Main advantages of In-store WiFi for retail

by Marketing Team | Jun 24, 2021 | Classic Hotspot, Public Hotspots, Wi-Fi marketing

Main advantages of In-store WiFi for retail

Having WiFi for retail drives towards a huge number of benefits that will help increase the footfall in your store. It is an excellent strategy to acquire customers and increase in-store engagement. Offering free wifi to your in-store shoppers will encourage them to stay longer, and also, the chances of them visiting again significantly will increase.

The success of any shop, departmental store, and shopping mall depends on meeting the customer’s needs. Customer satisfaction is the most important factor if you wish to see your business reach heights. WiFi is a valuable resource since you can collect the customer’s data. The usage of WiFi will allow you to provide a personalized experience to your customers. You will better know your shoppers, and it will improve your service towards them. WiFi helps you target your visitors, and you can also use it as a marketing tool.

Benefits of in-store WiFi for retail

Everyone wants to excel in their business, and shop owners try to use different strategies to attract customers. They often wonder what benefits WiFi brings to their retail business, but let us tell you, it is the best way to enhance the shopping experience for your customers.

Using in-store WiFi for retail will change the way consumers buy. A survey has shown that around 67% of the customers use the internet while shopping. With WiFi, customers will compare the product’s prices, read its reviews, and even browse the deals. Even when customers are in the store, they go online and research a product to compare.

Now shopping has been shifted to provide an omnichannel experience to consumers. Omnichannel retail is a multichannel approach to sales that provides a seamless shopping experience to the customers. Consider a scenario where an article is not available in the store, but customers can track it with a QR code to the online store. The customer will continue shopping after ordering the product, which is possible with a good and stable WiFi connection. Using WiFi as a tool will provide a better customer experience with an increase in sales.

Better market segmentation

WiFi marketing has been in demand for a long time now, and it has benefitted retailers to much extent. WiFi marketing means when a retailer provides WiFi access to its customers and then uses it as a channel to collect customer information.

By using in-store WiFi for retail, you would be able to build a database of customer contacts. When a user authenticates to your WiFi network, they have to provide their personal information such as name, email, age, phone number, gender, and more. The customer will become known to you, and network admins will use the data to identify and segment their customers accordingly.

With the Classic Hotspot platform, network admins would be able to create personalized captive portals. Classic Hotspot also provides network admins with an option to choose among various user authentication methods such as email authentication, button login, telephone number, or social login.

Using the Classic Hotspot platform, you will find multiple ways to set up your marketing campaign. It is the best way of increasing your social exposure and revenues. With the data collected, you can keep in touch with your customers in various ways. You can send them push notifications for special offers for their birthdays/anniversaries, and various discount coupons on their devices.

The Importance of Data Security of in-store wifi for retail

Data security is one of the major concerns which comes into the minds of retail store owners when they consider installing a WiFi network. Every customer visiting your store doesn’t need to login again and again since they can use social login, which increases the security of your business. However, customers visiting a store with an unsecured network can compromise the store’s confidential data and put risk on other customers’ data.

To improve WiFi security, network admins must constantly check their usernames and passwords to ensure that only authorized persons can connect to the network. The Classic Hotspot’s communication architecture and protocols are explicitly designed to provide the highest levels of security. The traffic coming from client devices and access point management passes through a 256-bit SSL encrypted tunnel separated for safety.

Improve your network security with Classic Hotspot domains that are certified. The platform is hosted on Amazon Web Services to ensure the highest levels of reliability in the market.

Enhance Customer Experience

It is no surprise that providing WiFi to users is not the first thing that comes to mind when expanding business. But it’s important to understand that it is not a mere tool just to provide free WiFi. It also helps enhance the customer experience, which will eventually benefit the retailers.

Network admins would capture and analyze the data they fetched from the customers to better understand them. The Classic Hotspot platform comes featured with an analytics dashboard where network admins can analyze all data collected from the WiFi network to detect the customer’s shopping trends. This will further help retailers to strategize their marketing campaigns accordingly.

For instance, if you see that families are the primary shoppers during the weekends, you can accordingly focus your sales strategy on the children’s section. Or if you believe more female shoppers are visiting during certain hours, you can target them with discounts on female clothing.

Increase Customer Loyalty

Using WiFi as a marketing strategy will take you a long way in expanding your business. Providing your customers with free WiFi access will let you know your customers better. The Classic Hotspot platform will help you collect the data effectively, and you can export the list of your WiFi users to any CRM and marketing platform such as Mailchimp.

Classic Hotspot allows you to generate new contacts and data in different ways. You can run high ROI marketing campaigns by sending users personalized emails to promote your new products, discounts, and collections. The ‘Remember me’ feature by Classic Hotspot lets users connect to the WiFi automatically once they return to the WiFi area they have already been in. This will increase the customer’s loyalty, and they will be happy to shop more. The Classic Hotspot platform helps you learn about your customers, which eventually enables you to target your shoppers based on their interests.

Increase Visibility On Social Media

With various authentication methods available within the Classic Hotspot platform, users can choose to log in from the most relevant one. Setting up the right login mode for your WiFi network is quite important. Social login is the fastest and easiest login mode for public places among all authentication methods. It is also the most suitable method to increase social visibility and online engagement quickly and efficiently.

With social login, you can also make the users like your social accounts such as Facebook Business page. It is an excellent way to get attention to your business. You will be able to provide more information about the business to the users regarding your venue, promotions, and discounts that you have on offer.

Through this, more people would be able to know about your business. The Classic Hotspot platform also allows network admins to get real-time data reports. They will personalize the client’s experience, monitor their social media hotspot usage, compare Facebook insights and social media analytics on their dashboards.

Over time the way consumers shop has changed drastically. To keep your customers engaged in your retail store, you have to look out for ways to keep up with your shopper’s demand. Offering WiFi for retail is quite beneficial, considering the perks that come with it. WiFi is an asset for your business that allows customers to connect to your business and directly influence them. It is the best opportunity to grow your sales and increase customer satisfaction. Enabling an omnichannel experience will result in more sales and will increase customer loyalty.

Start a free trial of the Classic Hotspot platform and personalize the consumer’s shopping experience while enhancing your brand awareness and boosting sales.

Manage the guest WiFi experience with Classic Hotspot. Start your 15-day free trial today

WiFi marketing for Bars and Restaurants

by Marketing Team | May 31, 2021 | Classic Hotspot, Public Hotspots, Wi-Fi marketing

WiFi marketing for Bars and Restaurants

WiFi Marketing is when a retailer or a restaurant owner provides wireless Internet access to its customers and then uses it as a channel to collect customer information. We might have observed that anyplace we go for dine-in, we get free WiFi. Well, this is a marketing strategy that will help you take a long way. For logging on to a restaurant WiFi network, network managers can provide users with an option to log in via their social media accounts or email addresses.

By providing free WiFi access to your customers, you are building a database of customer contacts. This database will be of great use as you can use it to send messages, promotions, or coupons to your customers. It is no surprise if WiFi marketing is not the first thing that comes into your mind.

Present a Customized Splash Page

With the help of WiFi marketing, you can grow your online presence by using a customized splash page. Classic Hotspot provides you with the software for WiFi hotspot management that allows users to turn their public hotspots into a marketing tool. It is the best way of increasing your social exposure and revenues.

Classic Hotspot provides you with a built-in captive portal that enables network managers to personalize the WiFi user’s login to the WiFi network. Classic Hotspot by Tanaza allows users to set up WiFi guest networks. It is up to the administrator to choose the login method to grant guest WiFi access through password, open access, or vouchers.

The captive portal or Splash page/login page/ splash portal/ landing page, is the page that a guest WiFi user sees before accessing a public WiFi network. With this web page, users authenticate themselves and then register to the WiFi network.

You can customize your splash pages accordingly by inserting the audio-video ads, displaying compelling messages that users will see during the authentication process. This captive portal is a powerful marketing tool that collects user data and segments it for tailored marketing campaigns.

The best part of using these splash pages is that you can either choose from the templates provided or create your own from scratch. With the various options for customization, you can design your splash page with a drag and drop feature that makes work easier.

Choose the right WiFi Authentication Login

Setting up the right login mode for your WiFi network is quite important. The users often look for the more convenient option for logging in to the WiFi network, which is not time-consuming. Classic Hotspot provides you with various options for login modes that allow you to gather different types of information regarding your customers. It all depends on the network administrator to choose from email authentication, button login, telephone number, or social login. The most famous and time-saving among them is a social login.

Most people access the WiFi by using the Social Login as it is the fastest and easiest login mode for public places such as bars and restaurants. Classic Hotspot allows you simultaneous types of authentication. You will be able to configure it in the Splash Page Editor by choosing the login button component. After selecting the button, select the desired login method from the login type drop-down menu. There are various types of authentication methods such as:

Social Logins (Logins via social networking sites)
Logins by Phone, Email, Email and phone, code and social, SMS, Form login
Paid WiFi (Couponing System)

Under the Paid WiFi system, the Classic Hotspot by Tanaza allows administrators to give users access via a code they create and customize. To enable this, you have to enable the Coupon authentication method on your splash page.

Generate Leads from WiFi

Providing your customers with WiFi access will help you know your customers better. By using the Classic Hotspot captive portal, you will collect data about WiFi users in a location. It allows the WiFi administrators to generate leads for the end-user customers. It is pretty simple and can be applied to any customer that has a physical location.

With the help of the Classic Hotspot platform, you would be able to position your brand and services better. Lead-generation through WiFi is quite cost-effective as there will be only fixed costs which will not be based on the number of collected leads.

Classic Hotspot captive portal comes featured with multiple authentication methods, and you can choose the one convenient for your users. With the help of WiFi, bars and restaurants would gather real and up-to-date insights about their clientele.

Network administrators can generate tons of leads through the Classic Hotspot captive portal. They can then export the collected data to a third-party marketing application like Mailchimp. The information of the WiFi users collected by the captive portal is automatically stored within Classic Hotspot’s analytic dashboard. It is a web-based tool to access social stats and client’s contact details.

Engage with your customer’s thanks to WiFi

Network administrators will be able to generate more online and offline conversations by engaging with their customers. When connected to WiFi, customers are more likely to look for discounts or offers. Using attractive splash pages can engage your customers to familiarize them with the brand and encourage them to make a purchase, and make them interact with the brand on social media by making them like your page.

Who doesn’t appreciate a genuine discount? So with the help of a WiFi network, administrators can encourage customers to come back to the venue by offering them discounts or coupons on the splash page. You can also provide them with information regarding any upcoming event.

With the data that the Classic Hotspot platform can collect, you will keep in touch with your customers in various ways. You can send them special offers for their birthdays/anniversaries, and various discount coupons on their devices.

Promote your Social Media Presence

The variety of authentication methods will let users connect to WiFi in ways they find convenient. Classic Hotspot by Tanaza provides users with a wide range of authentication methods to grant access to the Internet. The Social WiFi login allows users to connect to a WiFi network via multiple social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Linked In, and many more. It is one of the best ways to let your customers like your Facebook business page, which struggles to find the likes.

Using the Classic Hotspot platform, you will find multiple ways to set up your marketing campaigns. When customers choose to login into WiFi with Facebook, you can prompt them to like your page or do a check-in on your Facebook page. You can showcase your happy customers on your news feed. When your customers visit your Facebook business page and like your page, it increases the chances of getting noticed across similar audiences.

Manage and Control Access to WiFi

With the Tanaza, you’ll be able to manage and control the access to your WiFi. The Classic Hotspot by Tanaza will allow you to limit guest access to your WiFi networks. You can create your customized SSID by restricting the bandwidth per client. You can also distribute the WiFi vouchers with limited data and limit the number of devices connected to the network.

Distributing the data through vouchers is a good way to limit access to the Internet. By doing this, bars and restaurant’s owners can prevent unauthorized access to people who are non-customers. If unauthorized people are connected to the network, it will slow down the speed of the Internet.

Classic Hotspot platform provides you with various options among them. One is that you can provide your customers with voucher codes. This method will provide the users with a personalized password to access the WiFi network. The primary benefit of using the customized voucher codes is that you can keep unauthorized access away from your network.

Also, being a network administrator, you will configure data limit, duration, add an expiration date and quota limit. The Classic Hotspot platform also allows you to monitor your vouchers, remaining time, SSID connected to, amount of devices connected, and MAC address.

Verdict

By now, you have understood the importance of WiFi marketing. If you are still not taking advantage of it, you can miss an opportunity to improve your customer reach. WiFi marketing has its benefits in which you can turn your public hotspot into a lead generation and marketing tool. The public guest WiFi access provides marketing agencies with the unique opportunity to boost their business in a much short time. Join the Classic Hotspot platform today to manage and monitor the guest WiFi experience in the cloud.

Manage the guest WiFi experience with Classic Hotspot. Start your 15-day free trial today

4 rules to build the perfect splash page for your WiFi hotspot

by Marketing Team | Apr 16, 2019 | Classic Hotspot, Public Hotspots, Splash Page

4 rules to build the perfect splash page for your WiFi hotspot

Tanaza features a splash page editor that allows in few minutes the WiFi network administrator to create and customise the authentication page of a public hotspot. In this article, you will find the 4 rules to create an effective splash page for your WiFi users in order to leverage your WiFi network.

Easy and fast access to the WiFi network

When users visualise the splash page, you have a few seconds to convince them to log in. Accessing your public hotspot should not require too many efforts otherwise, you are taking the risk to loose potential WiFi users.

The best way to obtain an effective splash page is to make it simple and easy to use.

Don’t add too many items, focus on the essential

When creating a splash page, be careful not to confound simplicity with shortage otherwise, you could lose WiFi users with too many information on the landing page. This happens because we don’t respect a few design rules.

But which are these four design rules for an effective splash page?

1. Do not add too much content to the WiFi splash page

Less is more is the universal good design rule.

By putting just a few contents in the splash page you allow them to focus on the essentials items and you make the UI intuitive and immediate. When users click on your WiFi network name to access the internet, they expect a fast and easy way to log in.

Instead, they often deal with too complex pages, with too much information, which makes the login process too long and complex.

Add to the WiFi splash page only the essential items: logo, a welcome text, a few login methods. If you need users to accept your terms and conditions, ask your legal consultant to reduce the amount of text to a minimum (eventually link to the full text of terms and conditions).

2. Use a few colours in your WiFi splash page
The human mind needs time to elaborate the information, and this takes some effort. A splash page with five colours is more complex to understand than one with just one or two colours. Using a few colours, you allow users to relax and focus, making the WiFi access easier.

Choose monochromatic backgrounds or simple images, with just a few items and a uniform colour set. If you use many login methods (e.g. three social login methods) reduce the amount of space that each button takes, so that the page is less coloured.

3. Focus the attention on key elements

To make your splash page more intuitive, use some tricks to focus users on the most important elements.

Use the advertising tool to publish ads on your WiFi splash page

Use the Tanaza advertising tool to show advertising banners and videos. This way, you will focus your users’ attention on the show!

Use bold for titles

Help users to quickly examine the content in your page. Bold your titles (the most important message) and eventually complete the message with a normally formatted text. Using bold titles helps users read your message and login instructions.

Put some space between the elements

As in a book, distinguish the various elements in the splash page with some space and interline. Using white space helps to focus the users’ attention on single elements, such as your logo, text, or buttons.

Use images with a clear meaning

Don’t use images as a decoration, instead choose images that reflect the message you want to send and your brand image. Or, use them to drive emotions (e.g. the image of a smile, or a sunset).

4. Make your Wifi login page accessible

Make your WiFi splash page easy to access for anyone. Small text fonts, clear colours, or small buttons (hard to click from mobile devices) make the login experience too complex for someone.

How to make a WiFi splash page accessible?

Make the text readable

Use a larger font size, at least 20pt. Don’t try to be original by using complex font, for example, a font simulating handwriting, as they are less easy to read and less intuitive.

Create some contrast

Use a clear colour for text on a dark background, or the opposite. Create contrast by making the whole page clearer or darker and don’t use coloured rectangles under the text.

Create contrast between elements: if you use blue login buttons, use a red or yellow background.

Move buttons to the bottom

Make the experience better for mobile device users. Put the elements at the bottom by using the footer component in the Tanaza splash page editor, you’ll make the click from mobile devices easier.

Offer a way-out

If you use a social login method, offer an alternative method of authentication via email. Not all people have a social account or want to use it; some might prefer the email, instead.

Conclusion

Creating an effective splash page is not hard. Do not fill it with stuff: use just a few images, a few colours, a small amount of text and a few login methods.

Focus the attention on the key elements and make the UI simple, by using less colours. Make it also accessible, by using a large font size, contract, and moving buttons to the bottom.

If you want to collect users’ data through WiFi, use social login together with another authentication method such as the email login.

If you want to comment on this article, for example by adding your own examples of splash pages, we’ll be happy to provide some feedback!

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What WiFi hotspot growth means for your business

by Marketing Team | Mar 22, 2019 | Classic Hotspot, Public Hotspots

What WiFi hotspot growth means for your business

Business man uses wifi hotspot to growth his business

The world is quietly experiencing a “hotspot revolution.” Since 2015, the world’s total count of public WiFi hotspots has grown exponentially. A Cisco research found 64.2 million public hotspots operating at the end of 2015. And this growth is accelerating—by the end of 2022, Cisco projects 432.5 million global public hotspots.

Thanks to near-ubiquitous public WiFi, on-demand connectivity is no longer seen as a convenience or privilege. Just as you’d expect to find running water in every public bathroom you visit, you’re entitled to expect publicly accessible WiFi for your laptop or mobile device.

GM, an American automaker, includes optional WiFi data plans in many new vehicles. Comcast, an American telecom provider, is using its millions of home wireless routers to build a massive WiFi hotspot network accessible to anyone with a Comcast account. Cafes without WiFi are now virtually unheard of. Add to that the fact that potentially signing up to use a hotspot over registering for your own WiFi account in the US might be cheaper, and hotspots might just be the solution to the American internet provider problem.

Simply put, it’s impossible to ignore the incredible rate of WiFi hotspot growth and the public’s dramatically escalating standards for convenient access. Here are four potential takeaways for your business.

How WiFi hotspots can benefit your business

WiFi isn’t just for cafes and train stations

There was a time when WiFi was a novelty that could only be found at coffee shops and major public gathering places, such as transit hubs and city parks. But that hasn’t been the case for some time. In the past several years, WiFi has morphed from a value-added customer perk to a must-have feature for virtually any business with any sort of public space component.

Here’s a small sampling of the myriad uses for public WiFi in various economic niches:

Retail. In-store WiFi access points provide on-demand access for prospective customers as they browse inventory, allowing for easy price comparisons, photography, and peer consultations. Retailers with mobile pay platforms can capture more revenue with mobile “buy now” buttons that finalize sales before prospects leave the store.
Healthcare. Patients and their family members can spend significant amounts of time waiting for appointments and news in public spaces. WiFi in waiting rooms allows these people to stay connected during those long, often tedious periods. Likewise, patients well enough to surf the Internet (and allowed to use computing devices) appreciate on-demand access in hospital rooms and wards.
Hospitality. Hotels have turned the corner toward free, on-demand public WiFi in all public spaces, including lobbies, restaurants, lounges, conference areas, gyms, pools, and outdoor gathering places. For many hotels, guests and their associates represent a huge captive audience that may be receptive to branded marketing, such as ads for the hotel bar’s happy hour and room discounts for longer stays.
Transportation. Public WiFi is a natural fit in airports, train stations, bus depots, public plazas, and even trains and buses. Many cities have deployed public WiFi networks in underground rapid transit stations, subway cars, and other transit vehicles as well, creating new advertising bandwidth that complements existing billboard and wall ads in these places. And like hotels, airports’ gate areas boast massive captive audiences and dozens—or hundreds—of nearby businesses that could potentially market their services. Plus, airports are big places. To properly accommodate demand, airport restaurants, cafes, and lounges all need their own APs—a major opportunity for enterprising resellers willing to play in the transportation segment.
Education. Many university campuses are now fully covered by public WiFi networks, to the point where institutions that have yet to deploy campus-wide WiFi are viewed as laggards. Though data remains limited on this point, it’s conceivable that a lack of public WiFi could affect student enrollment decisions.
Sport. From youth facilities to professional arenas, sporting environments offer a rich opportunity for WiFi resellers. Fans snap pictures, share social status updates, and browse for information at incredible rates. What’s more, captive, often festive fans comprise an airport-scale audience that’s receptive to targeted marketing.

This stunning diversity of WiFi use represents a tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs who resell WiFi services and maintain APs. As public WiFi migrates from “optional expense” to “overhead cost” on ever more balance sheets in ever more niches, more use cases are sure to emerge. And that promises to make it easier than ever to sell operators on the benefits of onsite hotspots.

Social Engagement Is Exploding

According to Hootsuite, in 2018 the 88% of Facebook users accessed the platform via mobile device, and 95% of Facebook visits were made on smartphones and tablets. Only 31.8% of visits were made on desktops or laptops. And Facebook is just one example of the clear-as-day nexus between mobile devices and social media. Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and various regional social networks have become mobile forces to be reckoned with.

Much of this exploding social engagement is happening on public WiFi networks, as mobile users visit retailers’ websites, check in at cafes or restaurants, share pictures of merchandise with friends, or simply call out a venue in a social post.

As WiFi hotspot access grows, users will become increasingly accustomed to accessing social media via public WiFi—and thus for late-adopting clients to see the value of offering WiFi access to the general public. Clients can and should provide social login capabilities on their customized splash pages, allowing visitors to log into the network using their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or even VKontakte accounts. Every visitor who completes the social login process provides valuable demographic and contact information, opening up onsite and future marketing opportunities.

Demand for Premium WiFi Has Never Been Higher

Now that public WiFi is a necessity for businesses and institutions looking to remain competitive, it’s natural to assume that individual users—clients and customers—are no longer willing to pay for it. This is certainly true in fragmented markets, such as food service, where customers can easily leave an outlet that charges for WiFi and walk down the street to a competitor that does not.

But it’s not true everywhere. Captive customers, such as sports fans and air travelers, are still willing to pay for basic WiFi. More importantly, affluent customers and those who aren’t personally footing the bill for their data usage (such as business travellers with expense accounts) are willing to pay for higher tiers of WiFi service, notably in crowded environments with limited bandwidth. Hotels, convention centres, and transport nodes are particularly well-suited for tiered or premium WiFi services, which offer an additional opportunity for clients to monetize their networks and APs.

There may even be opportunity for downmarket clients: According to a Cisco white paper, Canadian coffee-and-donuts chain Tim Hortons provides faster connection speeds, an abbreviated sign-in process, and unlimited data use for customers who provided detailed demographic information at first login.

WiFi Roaming Offers New Data Capture Opportunities

The same Cisco white paper outlines an additional opportunity to forge new revenue streams from the ongoing hotspot revolution: WiFi roaming.

Like cellular roaming, WiFi roaming allows mobile users access to public hotspots (or home hotspots with public-facing access, such as the public-private network Comcast is currently planning) under other carriers’ purview. Many carriers now offer roaming arrangements, often on an international scale, for a fixed monthly fee. According to Cisco, “The ultimate goal is to make WiFi roaming as smooth and easy to use as the [cellular] network.”

As WiFi roaming becomes a standard component of mobile service, costs are likely to drop, enticing more mobile users to take advantage of the service and connect to out-of-network WiFi hotspots that they might previously have avoided. Every user who does so creates a new opportunity for WiFi clients to monetize their APs—particularly if they use a customized splash page with social sign-in capabilities to capture valuable data from prospective customers. Captured data from previously unreachable customers is an enticing prospect for advertisers—one that WiFi resellers would be advised to hit hard and often when describing the benefits of public WiFi to prospective clients.

Final Thoughts

It’s no longer debatable: The hotspot revolution is irreversible. For businesses with any sort of public space component, the situation demands an urgent, focused response. Lost time could equal lost revenue—and, perhaps, a permanent loss of market share to competitors quicker to embrace the power of public WiFi.

The good news is that the hotspot revolution creates a tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs who recognize the potential of cloud-managed WiFi networks. With public WiFi no longer an optional perk for businesses that want to remain competitive, the concept nearly sells itself. All you need to make your cloud-managed WiFi business work is a clear vision and a willingness to put in the necessary work.

If you need a software to easily set up and manage your wireless networks, Tanaza offers the best-in-class cloud-based software for WiFi network and social hotspot management. Its Hotspot System allows WiFi network administrators to set up and configure a captive portal for their public hotspots, which can be easily customized with Tanaza’s splash page editor. Through the captive portal, WiFi users can authenticate using their personal credentials (such as their email or phone number) or their preferred social networking account (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn…). Businesses that provide WiFi to their clients can leverage the captive portal as an advertising tool, by inserting image or video advertisement directly on the splash page, and as a marketing tool by collecting useful WiFi user data and segmenting it for marketing purposes. By integrating Tanaza with third-party applications, businesses can use the data collected to communicate information via targeted email marketing campaigns and to interact with users with engaging content that will be seen by them during the authentication process.

Published by Claudia Barbarisi, written by Flynn Robinson.
Flynn is a self-employed writer and programmer, whose days generally involve a coffee shop or two with excellent, free WiFi.

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Related articles:

4 rules to build the perfect splash page for your WiFi hotspot

4 ways to leverage your WiFi landing page

WiFi advertising: how to leverage WiFi networks in public places

The next steps of the WiFi4EU programme

by Marketing Team | Nov 22, 2018 | Classic Hotspot, Industry news, Public Hotspots

The next steps of the WiFi4EU programme

After the cancellation of the first call, put out by the European Commission on May 15th, the tender for WiFi4EU – the initiative promoted by the European Union for the diffusion of free WiFi connection in public spaces – officially reopened on November 7th at 13:00 CET, and closed on November 9th at 17:00 CET. Although, three more calls will be published over the next two years, about one every six months.

>> Find out more about WiFi4EU in our previous article

The reasons behind the first WiFi4EU call cancellation

The first call was extensively popular, but due to technical issues (a flaw that allowed some municipalities to apply before the call was opened while preventing others to do the same once the call had opened), the WiFi4EU portal was closed a few hours after.

Once the call reopened, all registrations already completed were still valid and registered municipalities were able to apply again with a click of a button. Over 13,000 municipalities registered to the call in order to become eligible for the grants.

If as a municipality, you applied during the canceled call and you want to check whether your application has been kept valid, just enter the WiFi4EU portal with your own credentials.

>>Watch our free webinar about WiFi4EU

Winners’ announcement and next steps

The winners will be announced approximately six weeks after the closing of the competition; subsequently, the selected municipalities will receive an email with the request to sign a grant agreement.

Update: the list of the 2,800 municipalities that won the first call has been published on the WiFi4EU portal on December 7th. A total of 42 millions in funds have been allocated for the first call.

>>Read the official announcement and see the list of winners of the first WiFi4EU call by country.

The projects are declared to be selected on a first-come-first-served basis, as each member state will have a limited amount of vouchers (around 2,500) available to give out to deploy free wireless internet access points.

Each voucher is meant to cover the equipment and installation costs (CAPEX) of the Wi-Fi hotspots, up to a maximum of 15,000 euros: if the costs exceed this amount, the difference will be paid by the beneficiary. Other costs, such as subscriptions, maintenance, and the cost for internet connection, are on the municipality itself and cannot be covered with the European Funds.

The beneficiaries of a voucher will have a year and a half to install and operate the hotspots, selecting the public spaces that will be equipped with WiFi and contracting the equipment installation to one or more suppliers. After the hotspot deployment, the municipalities must guarantee free WiFi for at least three years. The voucher assigned to a municipality must be collected by a single supplier, and cannot be split among multiple suppliers.

Municipalities will choose their suppliers of WiFi hardware and installation services from a selected list of suppliers, which is already published on the WiFi4EU portal.

Tanaza is in this list and provides its WiFi services across all the EU member countries, through its extensive network of authorized partners.

How to apply to the next WiFi4EU calls

Even if the first call is now closed, it will be possible for municipalities to register for the upcoming ones.
Municipalities and local institutions intending to take part in this project must register on the WiFi4EU portal to be promptly informed about the timing of the request.

The application will need to be accompanied by the «proof of approval» from the legal representative of the institution, from the copy of the act with which he was nominated and his ID card.

The future of WiFi4EU

After the announced calls, the second phase of the WiFi4EU scheme (due to start in 2019) will be about making remote monitoring and seamless login available across all the deployed networks. The plan is to introduce a single authentication and authorization platform that allows users to register their credentials and seamlessly roam between WiFi4EU hotspots, without having to constantly log in or to sign up to new hotspots.

Moreover, there will be a remote monitoring system that will ensure that all networks are up and running during the 3-year period; through this platform, the Commission will be also able to remotely monitor the connectivity quality of all the WiFi4EU hotspots.

Leverage the WiFi4EU opportunity with Tanaza!

120 Million Euros for free Wi-Fi in Europe

WiFi4EU initiative update

Tanaza wins WiFi Now’s Best WiFi Startup and Best Enterprise WiFi Solution awards

Collect more WiFi user data through social login and custom forms

by Marketing Team | Oct 11, 2018 | Classic Hotspot, Public Hotspots, Social WiFi

Tanaza has developed a feature to help WiFi network administrators collect additional custom WiFi user data in addition to the data already collected with authentication methods like social login, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

Once collected, this data can easily be leveraged to execute in-target marketing campaigns, such as email marketing.

Why is it important to collect WiFi user data

Once a user logs into a network using a popular authentication method like social login, the system collects personalized data about the WiFi user, like their gender, age, name, surname, email address, location to name a few. However, since social media platforms have adopted strict policies for user data protection, users can now customize their profiles’ visibility and can choose to keep private the personal information on their social media profiles.

As a result, Tanaza has combined two existing authentication methods to compensate for the lack of data provided by having just one. This latest update known as pre-filled form-based authentication provides a system that allows network administrators to request additional information about their WiFi users by enabling custom form authentication after social login that users must fill in before connecting to the WiFi network.

How to implement this feature in a public WiFi network

To collect more specific data about WiFi users, aside from the one collected with initial authentication method (i.e. social login), WiFi network administrator can simply enable custom form authentication, which consists on asking the users to fill in a custom form to complete the login, as seen on the image below of the Tanaza splash page editor’s Advanced Settings for Facebook Social Login.

This pre-filled form-based authentication is a handy captive portal configuration in public networks located in places like retail stores, supermarkets or educational institutes. By requesting a student number or a fidelity card number, the WiFi network administrator can be offer targeted discounts and share information tailored to the user. What is more, this tool can also serve as a verification system in order to identify that the user is a real user, using their personal phone number.

Thanks to the data retrieved from the WiFi user’s social profile (if its privacy setting allows that) and the information collected using the custom form, WiFi professionals can run various types of targeted marketing campaigns.

Check out a short GIF of the login process below:

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