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If you've made it here, you're probably already aware of the many advantages of providing WiFi to your customers and guests.
In the beginning, many venues used consumer-grade equipment and an open network to offer wireless.
Today, forward-looking organizations work with guestBOX to build branded WiFi offerings that provide maximum community
benefit, while protecting both the host location and its wireless users from security threats.
In collaboration with each client, we follow these four steps to develop their wireless offerings:
Step 1: Free vs. Paid
The great debate in the WiFi industry- is it better to charge customers for WiFi access or provide it as an amenity?
The answer, of course, depends on your priorities, your customers, and your location.
The good news, is that guestBOX will let you do either - paid or free - or even a hybrid of the two
(paid for certain users, free with purchase, free at certain times, etc). What's more, you can set your own
pricing plans and decide whether or not to join any aggregate roaming networks.
Since we operate a large number of paid and free hotspots, we can provide you with helpful data to make your decision. You'll see the expected number of connections per month, anticipated growth rates, and projected revenue per connection, taking into account customer demographics, the local competitive marketplace, and your existing average ticket. In the end the decision will be yours, but it will be an educated one. (and not set in stone - you can switch modes and pricing as the market evolves)
Step 2: Branding Possibilities
Whether you offer free or paid WiFi, we can customize the look and feel of the service around your existing brand, its logos, color schemes, and fonts. This lets you introduce ancillary products and services to your clients, while linking the WiFi service to your brand.
When users first connect to your network they will see your welcome screen in place of their typical home page. The design of this page is completely up to you - our developers and artists will put your vision on the screen. Typically this page includes instructions for going online, as well as information about the location and any promoted links.
The content of the welcome page is managed by you, via a simple web-based control panel. It is also customizable based on location, time, or even individual user.
Our clients have used their welcome screens to link their customers to:
- email newsletter registrations
- e-commerce store
- online coupons
- location directory
- service menus
- employment applications
- corporate information
- unique local content
- and other onsite or internet offerings.
The welcome screen is one of the most valuable assets created by making the strategic decision to deploy WiFi at your locations. Instead of allowing a third party to design this screen to advertise their own brand and services, guestBOX grants you direct control to ensure that the WiFi offering promotes your identity in the fashion most valuable to you. A collection of our clients' welcome screens follows.
Step 3: Security
guestBOX employs a variety of security safeguards to protect your network and your wireless users.
A network firewall ensures that WiFi users are able to send and receive data from the internet only and are prevented from accessing any local network resources. For redundancy, we can also block WiFi users from using any corporate resources while on the public network. This enables a location to use the same internet bandwidth for public WiFi and store functions, saving the cost of a second backbone.
guestBOX monitors the types and volumes of transmitted data to insure that drive-by-spammers cannot take advantage of the network to send bulk unsolicited email. This and other malicious activity, such as excessive downloading, and unreasonably long connection times, is prevented and the infringing users banned from your network.
Finally, guestBOX prevents the spread of viruses amongst your users by individually firewalling their connections. Network worms and other malevolent code cannot proliferate between users. Additional security controls, such as access time restrictions, content filtering, and user variances are easily configurable on the platform.
Step 4: Support
guestBOX provides toll-free technical support to help your customers through any issues they may have connecting to your wireless network. This support line relieves any training and technical burden from the local staff. Customized table tents with simple connection instructions and the support number can be provided, branded with your logo as requested.
If you choose a paid network, we can handle all online payments in a secure fashion and provide customers with an interface for managing their accounts.
Bonus: Control, Reporting, and Installation
guestBOX enables you to control all aspects of your wireless networks from any internet connected computer. Our hardware is configured to send and receive data with our network operation center, enabling real-time modification of any remote wireless network without being onsite. The web-based control-panel will let you quickly modify welcome screen content, security settings, pricing plans, and more.
Online access statistics will report connection, revenue, and transmission data, broken down by time, location, and other criteria. Custom reports can be exported into Excel or other applications for further analysis.
There are a variety of ways to install guestBOX hotspots. In many cases, our technicians will perform the entire installation on-site. When preferred, we can deliver to you the appropriate hardware, preconfigured to work with your network settings so you can plug and play.
Next Steps: Contact Brian Mariani
If you'd like to learn more, or schedule an online demonstration, please contact our Director of Sales, Brian Mariani. Brian's been on top of WiFi since its inception, and would be happy to speak with you about wireless possibilities for your locations and answer any of your questions. You can reach Brian at:
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