As a small business owner, you are focused on providing the best products and experiences for your customers. Whether you provide products or services, great customer experience is what will turn first time customers into loyal customers. For every business, this means different things. However, to support the customer demands for a more digital business model, the need is universal—faster Internet speeds to support the growing number of devices and applications needed to run your business. This starts with providing free WiFi service throughout your brick and mortar locations.

Providing free WiFi to your customers, clients, guests and visitors takes a relatively small investment, but can result in big dividends by helping to drive both new and repeat business. For businesses with waiting rooms, such as mechanic shops, doctors' offices, and professional services firms, it gives customers a way to stay entertained while they wait. For businesses with general public access like retail stores, restaurants and hotels, it lets customers stay connected with and share their experiences on social media during their visit and gives them a reason to linger and order more. Robust WiFi networks can also support conveniences like contactless payments, QR-code menus and curbside pickup.

Free WiFi is more than just a great way for customers to stay connected when they’re at your business. It’s also a great tool to help enhance and personalize your marketing efforts and provide bespoke experiences to customers. Guest WiFi can be a marketing tool to provide personalized experiences that will delight guests, and get rich insights into the behavior of your customers.

Offering free WiFi to your customers doesn’t need to mean sacrificing your own business WiFi speeds or security. For example, with WiFi Pro, Comcast Business Internet customers can set up separate WiFi networks for public and business use. With fast connection speeds, your staff will be able to continue to use mobile devices to get their jobs done, regardless of the volume of guest traffic. You can also set the public or guest WiFi to only be available during certain hours and to filter out certain types of content. To help secure connected devices, Comcast Business SecurityEdge™ scans for new threats every 10 seconds and allows you to help block employees and guests from accessing compromised sites and links.

When deciding on a WiFi strategy for your place of business, consider the following:

• Desired upload and download speeds: Does your business work with large files or computationally sophisticated data processes? Do your customers want to stream content like music, video or TV? Do you need to process online transactions?
• The square footage of the desired coverage area: Do you need to cover multiple floors and/or basement areas? Outdoor areas?
• Flexibility and scalability for future growth: Is your staff size growing? Are you looking to increase customer foot traffic?
• Your marketing goals: Will you use WiFi for promotions, special offers, social media and location-based marketing? Do you want to custom-brand your free WiFi connection?
• Security: Do you need to filter content for family-friendly internet access? Limit access to business hours only? Help keep client connected devices secure?
• Analytics and management: How much time and expertise can you devote to managing your WiFi service? How do you plan to use it to identify customer trends?
• Today’s consumers expect connectivity to apps, email, streaming content and social media no matter where they are. Give them the experience they expect by making free customer and guest WiFi a key offering of your business.

Comcast Business has the largest, fastest, reliable network providing speeds of up to 10 Gig to small businesses. See how Comcast Business can help your small business today.