Omni-Channel user experience

Retail Wi-Fi provides customer insights. It enables targeted advertising, tailored to the shopper’s interests and location. As a result, retailers and shopping malls get more sales and more revenue from advertisers.

Retail Wi-Fi services lead to 61% more time on premise and 46% of customers spend more money after getting free Wi-Fi.

About 27% of US shoppers looks for deals and vouchers on their smartphones while shopping. Intent to visit store increases with 116% when the offer is location based.

About 30% of us are checking prices online while shopping. As a result, retail Wi-Fi drive in-store sales. Because, 50% of shoppers feel comfortable making large purchases, knowing the price is right.

Sources: Accenture, Thinknear, IPG Media Lab, Mediapost and IGR

Aptilo Retail Wi-Fi

USER STORY – DAVID 23

This is David. David is 23-year-old and very interested in fashion. He also loves latte and hanging out with friends. David always wants to be sure to get the right price, so he connects to the retail Wi-Fi service first thing he enters the shopping mall.
As always, David login to the Wi-Fi service using his Facebook account. Because it is convenient. And, because he knows good and relevant offers will come to him as he walks through the mall.
Close to Starbucks David gets an SMS with an offer he can’t resist.
It is the shopping mall that welcomes David to his first visit. They offer him a free coffee at Starbucks if he downloads their loyalty app which also have a store map with good information about the different stores.
David loves fashion apps as much as he needs a coffee, so it is an easy choice.
David use the app to navigate through the stores in the mall. He gets good and relevant offers pushed to him based on his Facebook profile and his current location. David is amazed of how accurate the offers are and he likes the experience.
A few meters from the H&M entrance, the app sends a notification. He has got a 25% discount voucher from H&M that is valid only for today. He enters the store and comes out 1,5 hour later with his hands full of bags.
It is 3pm. David realizes that he is about to skip lunch. Not good, he search in the app to locate different restaurants. Pling! It’s the shopping mall asking him how the day has been so far. And, yes he gets another offer. If David can get friends to sign-up for the mall’s loyalty program and download the app, they will get a 2 for 1 lunch deal for every new sign-up at any of 5 selected restaurants.
David use Snapchat to find friends nearby. Soon David, Jennifer, Amy and John are sitting enjoying the lunch together. But, as we all know. There is no such thing as a free lunch. It’s all business.

RETAIL Wi-Fi IS THE TOP TECH PRIORITY

Eleven of the most influential shopping mall specialists in the UK were interviewed by Retail Week for their May 2017 analysis ‘why shopping centres need Wi-Fi for profitability’. Among the respondents, 88% listed retail Wi-Fi as their top tech priority to better serve visitors. Personal communications and digital in-mall messaging were close behind.

AND IT´S FUELLED BY ANALYTICS

All leading Wi-Fi vendors offer heat-maps and footfall analytics that shows general trends of movements in the shopping mall. The user do not even have to be active on the Wi-Fi network, it’s enough that the Wi-Fi is switched on.

Retail Wi-Fi powered by social media login through a captive portal or app, provides valuable insights that no other technology can. The Wi-Fi analytics include rich opt-in demographics such as e-mail address, mobile number, age, gender and interests. This information is not only interesting for the Wi-Fi service control and engagement system. But, also for other systems such as loyalty apps and digital advertisement signs.

The same user and location analytics are also useful when integrating with professional advertising networks such as Google Adwords and Axonix. And, of course with the shopping mall’s existing campaign system. It’s all about triggering the right ad for the right person at the right place.

Do you not have the ambition to use advertising networks or your own campaign system? Use the built-in Wi-Fi marketing functionality in Aptilo’s guest Wi-Fi solution. Engage users with your own messages through SMS and e-mail, and schedule portal updates with different banners at different times. Download the Wigo case study to learn more how they monetized their free retail Wi-Fi service.

INTEGRATE WITH OTHER SYSTEMS

To maximize the value of your Wi-Fi analytics, you need to integrate with other systems. Aptilo has long experience integrating with external systems through our service provider Wi-Fi offering. The Aptilo Service Management Platform™, with Aptilo SMP Venue Wi-Fi Manager™, is ideal for building a tailored retail Wi-Fi service with advanced integration. We also have a streamlined cloud-based offering with the most requested functions–the Aptilo Guest Wi-Fi Cloud™.

IS LOYALTY APPS THE SILVER BULLET FOR RETAIL?

Yes, we think so. There are few business segments that can benefit more from a loyalty app than shopping malls. With so many different brands and the need for location-based services. As we could see from the example with David, the loyalty apps are useful and almost addictive to users ones they are installed. It’s only that. How do you get users to install your app? One good way is to push an incentive for downloading the app to users via SMS as in the case of David. Users that refuses to use your app, can still be engaged via captive portals, SMS and e-mail.

Infographics guest-Wi-Fi in retail
Results from Aptilo's survey and other sources.
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