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Why Restaurants Should Consider Offering Free Wifi

July 10
Restaurants Free Wi-Fi

If you are the owner or manager of a restaurant, this can work in your favor. In fact, restaurants that offer free wifi often enjoy many great benefits, and some of the best benefits are discussed below. 

Increase Your Customer Base

Before deciding to offer wifi in your restaurant, take some time during your day and pay attention to the people around you. Chances are that many of them will be studying their smartphones. Regardless of what they may be doing on their phones, the fact is that staying connected is essential to their daily lives. 

With that said, put yourself in these persons' shoes for a moment. Do you think that these individuals would prefer to dine in restaurants with wifi or those without? If you answered restaurants that offer wifi, you are most likely correct. The hard truth is that if you decide not to provide wifi, potential customers will probably choose to dine in one of your competitor's establishments. 

Boost Your Sales

It goes without saying that increased traffic often leads to increased sales. However, another thing to think about is the amount of time that customers may spend in wifi restaurants as compared to restaurants without wifi. The answer here is simple: Customers dining in free wifi restaurants typically stay longer than customers dining in traditional establishments. 

Now, think about this: the longer a person stays in your restaurant, the more likely that person will be to order more food or drinks than a person who eats quickly and leaves. Depending on the amount of people who visit your wifi restaurant each day, this can add up to a lot of additional sales! 

Enjoy Free Marketing and Promotions

In days gone past, marketing and promotions could be quite tedious and at times, expensive as well. Fortunately, this is no longer true. Through the power of the Internet and various social media sites, today's businesses can now enjoy free marketing and promotions. 

Word-of-mouth has always been a powerful marketing tool, and today's social media usage has not only made it more powerful but has made it much quicker. When customers "check in" with an Internet restaurant, their connections will see this check-in and may very well consider visiting the restaurant themselves. 

Furthermore, when customers like, share, or retweet posts pertaining to restaurants with wifi, their social media friends are often notified. And if these friends, like, share, or retweet the posts, their friends will be notified. In these types of cases, the potential for widespread word-of-mouth can be nothing short of amazing. 

Learn About Your Target Market

Another great benefit of becoming a wi fi restaurant is that you can learn a bit more about your target market. An important aspect of any marketing plan is getting to know your target market. And by offering free wifi, you can gather such information as what times of the day wifi users most often visit free wifi restaurants, how long they stay, what they prefer to eat and drink, and how much they spend during one visit. 

Of course, this all can help you in a variety of ways. For one thing, this type of information can help to determine what types of inventory you need to keep on hand. However, it can also help you to determine such things as when you will need to schedule additional staff members and when you may not need a full staff. 

Strengthen Customer Relationships

One of the main goals of any business plan is to strengthen customer relationships for the purpose of encouraging repeat visits and customer retention. In most cases, you will find repeat visits and customer retention goes hand-in-hand. If people are happy dining in wifi restaurants, there is a good chance that they will visit again and become long-term customers. 

However, the best thing about this benefit is that loyal customers often encourage the development of all of the other benefits discussed above. The main difference between a one-time satisfied customer and a loyal customer who enjoys restaurants with free wifi is that the loyal customers are usually those that share their experiences more often and on a larger scale. 

There are many terrific reasons why restaurants should consider offering wifi. In fact, restaurants that offer wifi often enjoy such valuable benefits as an increased customer base, increased sales, free marketing and promotions, a better understanding of their target market, and stronger relationships with customers.