This article was contributed by Techflipp, winner of the 2022 Meraki Hackathon.

Every successful retailer strives to answer the question, “What do my customers want?” It’s been a relatively easy task for online retailers. They know exactly what their customers are buying and how they connect on social media, enabling them to build precise shopper profiles—or personas—that give them a clear idea of who their customers are, which products they want, when and how often they shop, and what kind of marketing motivates them to buy.

Now, brick-and-mortar retailers can play that game too, if they have the right tools.

Digital, physical… or BOPIS?

Gathering data for in-store personas is even more important thanks to shifts in shopping behavior. With nearly 40% of shoppers making an in-person purchase each week, retailers have a unique opportunity to capture insights and understand their behaviors and buying habits.

Connecting with in-store shoppers also gives retailers an incredible opportunity to close the loop between digital and physical shopping thanks to a skyrocketing trend in retail: BOPIS, or buy online, pickup in store. A 2020 survey revealed that half of consumers said they used a “click and collect” service, and of those, a majority said they use them often. More recently, 70% of consumers report they prefer the convenience of BOPIS. 

One more stat underlines why this is important for physical retailers: Two-thirds of people who pick up orders also buy one or more additional items. Knowing how they spend their time in store—and connecting it back to their online shopping—could give you a powerful edge.

Unlocking the in-person persona vault

You can start to gather those valuable insights by offering your shoppers guest Wi-Fi access. Not only does this provide an elevated service, it also enables customers to do product research while in store. For the retailer, offering in-store Wi-Fi unlocks valuable insights that can be used to better serve customers and improve sales. 

In addition to learning about your shoppers’ mobile devices, visit duration times, and applications used, the sign-up splash page allows consenting customers to provide contact information and other details you can use to build out an ideal customer profile. 

Guest Wi-Fi also makes it easy to deploy a post-sign-up welcome page, where you can present a service rating survey, solicit product feedback, or offer wishlist capability. 

The need to know

Guest Wi-Fi can also go beyond individual visits by identifying frequent visitors with precise information (aggregated or per guest) on a number of physical visits, branches, or locations visited, and dates and times of those visits.

You can also extend your analysis with third-party integrations. For example, connect with your point of sale (POS) system to further classify your customers based on their purchases or correlate those purchases with their online presence. 

This unique solution by Techflipp, called Kaptifi, won the 2022 Cisco Meraki Hackathon. It integrates with POS systems to help retailers break down guests’ online behavior in connection with their purchases.

A powerful tool

Guest Wi-Fi is an accessible, flexible, and powerful tool that’s becoming essential for businesses that want to stay competitive. The better you understand your customer, the more effectively you can design products, services, promotions, social media campaigns, and other marketing initiatives that speak to your customers in the ways they prefer and offer the products they really want.

With Kaptifi’s suite of guest Wi-Fi services, powered by Cisco Meraki, it’s easy to design customer interfaces to collect the information you need to answer your burning customer questions.

To learn more about how Kaptifi can help your business gain full visibility on customer online behavior and usage trends, visit the Meraki Marketplace or request a demo.

If you are a Meraki reseller interested in participating in the 2023 Meraki Hackathon in September, visit the training page on the Meraki Partner Portal and register for either the AM or PM kick-off sessions. You’ll get a complete rundown of what you need to know before you dive in and get started.