So, you’ve made the decision to utilize a captive portal platform to run alongside your guest WiFi – congratulations! Captive portals are solidifying themselves as one of the smart and simple ways to engage with guests and promote your brand all through the WiFi you offer.
But did you know that a captive portal has the potential to perform even more features besides a branded login page that gathers insights to reach back out to guests? Here are five features you’ll want to add to your captive portal and optimize your customer engagement.
Survey and Form Builder
Have you ever wanted to ask your customers a specific question – maybe find out how they heard about your business or their favorite menu item – without being intrusive? A survey/form builder feature gives you the ability to gather unique insights from your guests right through your captive portal page.
Using a survey or form can help collect just about any type of information – such as postal codes, qualifying questions, or level of interest in a new product or menu item – from WiFi guests. Insights from surveys and forms are great when it comes to building a unique mailing list or making improvements to business operations. A smart captive portal platform provides you the survey customization similar to that of Survey Monkey or other popular survey platforms
Smart Tip: Make sure to include a consent fill-in option in your forms and surveys when asking to email specific content over to WiFi guests. A consent agreement informs you to who is agreeing to receive your content and who is not willing to that time.
Guest Flows
One of the best benefits of using a captive portal tool is turning your WiFi access into a digital billboard. Logos, marketing banners and promotional content can all be displayed right in front of the eyes of your WiFi guests. The trick to making the most of this feature is to not clutter up your captive portal page to where your guests feel overwhelmed with content.
Guest Flow showcases branded content in an easy-to-navigate format for WiFi guests, rather than attempting to clutter a single splash page with multiple competing messages. Using Guest Flow, you can enhance the WiFi login experience for guests by displaying branded content including interactive graphics, text, video, and even surveys and forms.
Smart Tip: Best of use of practice when utilizing a guest flow feature is to keep the number of pages on the low end rather than a high-end number so WiFi users won’t feel like the flow is a hindrance to access your WiFi. We recommend a two-page flow as the optimal number of captive portal pages to use, and no more than three.
Payments & Vouchers
Do you want to offer upgrades to premium levels of guest WiFi speeds for your guests? Looking for a more direct ROI from the high-speed WiFi you already offer? By backing your captive portal with either a payments or voucher tool, you can offer guests different speeds and timed sessions of your WiFi network.
With payments, guests can access faster versions of your WiFi by paying for the different options you set in place.
Using a payment feature if perfect for venues where fast WiFi speeds and lengthy time sessions play an important part in a guest’s experience. Providing different cost structures can help you over the cost of what’s needed to create a WiFi network for multiple users who can take up a large amount of bandwidth
Vouchers works by creating an option where guests access the different WiFi speeds and timed sessions you offer by inputting a 6-digit code into the captive portal.
Vouchers codes are generated from the captive portal platform you are using and should be able to be expected as an Excel Spreadsheet. From there, you’ll want to get creative on how you offer these codes to guests to access faster versions of your WiFi. You can offer a code after an in-store product purchase. Hand them out to customers who are enrolled in your loyalty program. No matter your format, vouchers are a great way to tie customer engagement with accessing your guest WiFi.
WiFi Scheduler
A scheduler tool helps brick-and-mortar stores take complete control of their WiFi network and when it’s offered to guests. With a WiFi scheduler, you decide what specific days and time your WiFi network is available for access.
A WiFi scheduler is the perfect tool for venues that prefer to keep their guest WiFi open only during hours of operations or need to keep the WiFi unavailable for specific day or time.
Access Code
Brick-and-mortar stores that desire to use a captive portal platform but still prefer to keep their WiFi network password-protected get the best of both worlds with an access code feature.
Using an access code is a perfect tool if you prefer to allow WiFi access to those who directly patronize your business. EXAMPLE: Once a customer makes a purchase, simply share the code and provide them powerful WiFi access. You can also have the code posted somewhere in your venue so you know that guests are entering your establishment to gain WiFi access.
Interested in adding of these smart features to your captive portal-powered WiFi network? Here at GoZone WiFi our Marketing4WiFi platform comes with fully equipped with all of the features listed above so your captive portal is fully decked out to run at the most optimized level possible. If you’d like to learn more, reach out today or even schedule a demo with us so you can see why we put the ‘Smart’ in Smart WiFi