How to Provide WiFi for your customers

If you want to provide decent WiFi for customers or visitors to your venue or location, you need to think about how you would do it.  The experience they receive using your WiFi will colour their impression of you and your service, so you need to get it right.

Why does this matter?

WiFi is more popular than ever, and in some areas, it’s expected or even a necessity.  Online connectivity is important to people.  And when it doesn’t go well, they notice.

Providing WiFi is a good idea.  It provides an additional service to enhance your space.  It engages your customers and extends your brand, and can generate additional revenue.

So, it matters.  It’s another way to represent yourself to your customers and users. WiFi coverage, reliability, bandwidth, content, they all now become more important.

Surely setting up WiFi is simple?

Just sticking up a WiFi access point somewhere may get you some coverage.  But is this enough? WiFi coverage is difficult to predict and often leaves areas of poor or zero signal.

How stable and reliable is it?  In many locations offering WiFi, users can’t get online.  It’s often hit-or-miss, take-it-or-leave it.  Staff are unaware when its down, and are unable to fix it.  It gives an impression of not really caring.  Which is not the case, but it’s a bad impression.

You need to carefully consider security too.  WiFi can be another way for people to access your business.  The WiFi might also be needed for other devices; tills or point-of-sale, office network. These all should be kept separate and secure from any public facing WiFi.

Get the Basics Right

Whatever service you want to add to your WiFi, you should start with getting the underlying WiFi correct first of all.  Here are some pointers:

• Locate your WiFi access points for optimum coverage.  They should generally be above head-height and away from obstacles (especially any metal objects) but accessible for maintenance.
• Identify where you ideally want coverage, and the number of peak users you need to connect. Use WiFi coverage software to verify where your WiFi signal covers and capacity
• You will need to run data cable to your WiFi access points from your internet connection (you can use meshing, but this has limitations).  You may need to add data switches, ideally with power-over-ethernet.
• Consider your internet connection and router.  It needs to provide enough bandwidth for your expected peak number of users and the services you want to connect over it.

Offering WiFi Services

Once you have established optimal WiFi coverage, you now need to consider how to look after it and what it needs to do for you and your customers or users.

Even with providing simple connectivity, you need consider how you want users to access your WiFi.  Do you want to provide a simple password (which you will need to administer), or consider a more detailed on-boarding approach?

You should consider setting up a landing page to provide terms of usage and liability, and to promote your brand or experience.

Does your network need to be partitioned to separate out sensitive data away from public data?  What other devices need to access your WiFi?

Importantly, how is your WiFi service supported if you have issues, or if you need to apply ongoing updates to protect against cyber-attacks?  How do you know if you have WiFi issues?

Novahub is a WiFi Managed Service Provider

If you want to concentrate on running your business or venue, let us take the pain out of running your WiFi.  We can provide everything, from your WiFi systems, internet connectivity, and security.

We carry out a professional WiFi survey and installation, and make sure your WiFi provides optimum coverage.  We monitor 24/7 and fix any issues.

We can add in other devices and securely partition separate services and networks.  We can set up custom splash (landing) pages, supporting your own advertising and promotions.

Whatever your location; high-capacity venues, multi-tenant properties, temporary events, hospitality, education, Novahub is a trusted WiFi partner that guarantees the performance and effectiveness of your WiFi solution.