A graduate of the Jolt technology accelerator has two new solutions that can help businesses monetize their Wi-Fi networks.
While Wi-Fi has become a customer expectation and competitive differentiator for many retailers, restaurants, and coffee shops, Toronto’s Turnstyle Solutions says it doesn’t have to be a cost-centre. It has launched two new solutions that help businesses leverage their Wi-Fi to learn more about their customers and help drive higher spend in their stores.
There are two plans: the Basic Plan offers Turnstyle’s Social Wi-Fi to businesses free of charge, and the Partnership Program lets hardware, software and service providers introduce the Turnstyle platform to their customers.
With the freemium model, businesses can have a customizable landing page for their customers to log into Wi-Fi, rather than the poorly designed, not user-friendly splash pages many businesses have. It’s also a more professional look than having to ask a staff member for a password. The Turnstyle landing page allows customers to log in with an existing social profile, an e-mail address, their phone number or by connecting their Facebook credentials, which also allows them to “check-in” at the business.
“In today’s digital climate, there is a huge incentive for businesses to offer free Wi-Fi to their customers. According to a 2012 JiWire Insight Report, 80 per cent of mobile customers are influenced by the availability of in-store Wi-Fi when deciding where to shop,” said Devon Wright of Turnstyle Solutions, in a statement. “By offering our Basic Social Wi-Fi plan at no charge, we’re allowing businesses to experience the value of our service for themselves, while exploring the breadth of our offerings to find something that helps them monetize their Wi-Fi, expand on customer loyalty and increase sales.”
Turnstyle’s partner network is designed to complement and expand the reach of the basic offering. It has developed a new partnership program designed to work with developers and partners that can add to and customize the Turnstyle solution for different markets and use cases.
Turnstyle also offers an analytics platform powered by the Wi-Fi service that allows businesses to measure metrics such as overall foot traffic, visitor network trends (what other venues interest your customers), new vs. repeat visitors, visitor duration, outside opportunity (devices passing outside the venue) and daily visitors.
Turnstyle was profiled in 2013 by ITBusiness.ca as part of Jolt’s third cohort. It described its solution then as a location-aware platform and analytics tools can measure consumer traffic patterns and behaviour.