Boost your Wifi to boost your sales

In-store mobility is transforming the way retailers engage customers. These new customer engagement programs are resulting in dramatic changes to the store network to ensure successful rollouts. Customers will seek out stores that easily enable them to use their mobile devices to research products, read reviews, and check prices to gain the confidence required to make the right purchase.

Retailers also want to create compelling in-store experiences by equipping store associates with tablets and mobile point-of-sale devices. All of these factors are driving stores to beef up their network capacity, security, and Wifi capabilities.

The need for more capacity

Mobile initiatives such as Sears’ ShopYourWay Member Assist allow customers to “chat” with their favorite sales person. Pharmacies are testing two-way video solutions (kiosks and tablets) to address a customer’s primary health care needs. But investing in these kind of new mobile applications is all for naught if the network is unable to provide customers with a high-quality experience. Insufficient store capacity results in degraded performance of all traffic categories, from poor voice to stuttering images of premium video assets.

The problem is customers expect the same kind of Wifi performance they enjoy at home. Yet when they visit a store, they may suddenly find themselves sharing a 1.5 Mbps connection with dozens, if not hundreds, of other shoppers.

Retailers are caught between two difficult choices. The industry norm of MPLS/T1 provides consistent enterprise-grade performance at an expensive premium. A T1 (1.5 Mbps) is proving insufficient to satisfy aggressive omni-channel content requirements.

The alternative is broadband such as DSL and cable, which offer cost-effective bandwidth, but with varying levels of performance. The key is how to configure broadband to achieve consistent, enterprise-grade service.

The ideal network would provide high capacity up to 10 Mbps or more and include add-on enhancements such as Quality of Service (QoS) with traffic prioritization and compression technologies to deliver a consistent, premium customer experience. Enhanced broadband can make a decent-capacity connection feel even larger, often up to 5 to 15 times greater.

Security is job No. 1

Security is as important as high-capacity bandwidth for in-store mobility, especially in these days of increasingly frequent cyber-attacks. Customers won’t shop at stores they don’t trust.

Prior to in-store mobility, store networks were simple: a private network to support credit card traffic and overnight polling. Today’s in-store mobility initiatives are more complex. Store-in-Store promotions require third-party access to semi-secure resources. And guest Wifi requires open Internet access. The risk is significantly different between unrestricted Wifi where users can “see” each other versus a Wifi network where users are isolated from each other.

With the emerging “Internet-of-Things,” even the merchandise itself requires Internet access. Evaluating a product’s mobile app has become part of the purchasing process. Customers want to quickly download the app, and see if it contributes to a product’s appeal. Retailers do not want an unacceptably slow download from a congested store network to interfere with the purchase process.

There are also legal and social concerns. To satisfy stringent PCI compliance requirements, all of this activity must be fully isolated from each other. Downloading inappropriate content (by a guest or employee) is a problem too, potentially damaging the retailer’s brand and exposing it to legal liabilities.

When it comes to network security, the strength and scope of the solution must exceed the severity of the threat. Powerful Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) with Unified Threat Management (UTM) capabilities are required to deliver the strongest security needed.

Robust Wifi is key

After network capacity and security, the final piece to supporting in-store mobility lies within the store itself—in the air. Retailers need a flexible and robust Wifi infrastructure that can deliver great performance with no dropped connections or dead zones and can easily adapt to rapidly evolving market requirements. This requires more than a simple wireless connection between a smart phone/tablet and a wireless access point (AP).

The ideal model for in-store mobility starts with a high-performance guest and associate experience, which often includes streaming multi-media content to the user’s device. Content must appear quickly on-screen. These devices all compete for the same network capacity. A robust solution must provide proper access management to ensure a great experience for both user groups. Both wired and wireless networks must work together, automatically and dynamically, to ensure this level of performance and experience.

Peak store traffic will likely create periods of severe network congestion. During such times, hard choices will be made. For the retailer, all customer Wifi traffic does not represent an equivalent business opportunity. For example, a customer “showrooming” for a lower price should always take a back seat to a customer trying to buy a product not available in-store from the retailer’s online site.

In addition to performance, there is a matter of intelligence. Marketing wants to learn more about customer behavior in the store. What websites are they using to evaluate which products? What prices are competitors offering? How are customers physically navigating the store? Human Resources wants to provide employees with greater accessibility to training from the sales floor. Store Operations wants to ensure that the sales team has effective access to product information required to successfully engage with the customer. Future initiatives such as location-based marketing, concierge services, and even live event broadcasts may be under consideration. These types of retail analytics are only as smart as the data the Wifi solution is capable of capturing.

In-store mobility requires a powerful network

In-store mobility initiatives represent a strategic opportunity for retailers to differentiate their customers’ experiences and gain a competitive edge. The bottom line is that to ensure success retailers need a powerful network with cost-effective, optimized bandwidth, comprehensive security, and capable Wifi solutions flexible enough to adapt to rapidly evolving market requirements.

Tim Tang is director of product marketing at Hughes Network Systems.