Strategies to deal with Wi-Fi table campers

My Friend Dana Spiegel picked up on my pointer to the Daily News report of Cafes shutting down wifi during busy times to keep people moving through their stores.  Dana makes some good points, but is missing some of the important aspects of the cafe business from the owner's perspective, especially in New York.  A person that comes in, buys a single cup of coffee, and proceeds to occupy a table space for an hour or more, using the free wi-fi, is not a good customer.  Moving people in and out of the place is paramount because of the overhead involved in a cafe, especially a small one.   However, he is right when he says that turning off the wi-fi is not a solution, because it throws out and turns off the good customers with the bad.  Many independent venue owners haven't been able to get their heads around how to really use wi-fi as a marketing tool, and when they reach out for help, they just get sales pitches from vendors, who just want to move boxes.

Venue owners need to find a way to balance the need for table turn with the marketing advantages of wi-fi.  This means putting in a different system than a simple wireless router.  Let me introduce you to the UrbanHotspots wi-fi machine.  It is basically a payphone for computers, and a virtual billboard.  So for a little less than the price of an off the shelf hotspot gateway that you have to manage yourself, you can offer access for free, for pay, and advertise your shop's products and services ( or your downtown's stores and restaurants) to people that discover your wi-fi network, instead of just calling your network Joe's Coffee or linksys and hoping that they spend some money.

If you want to sell prepaid cards, we can help you do that.

If you want to give away short term access ( 5 minutes, 10 Minutes, 15 Minutes, 1/2 hour, 1 hour ) to people that buy something, we can help you do that.  "Time ran out?, I can give you another card if you purchase a refill, how about a muffin?"

If you want your website to come up when people use your wi-fi, we can help you do that.

If you want somebody to help clueless customers use the network, and not bother your staff, we can do that for you too.

Telephone:631-462-0821
email: info@urbanhotspots.com