Retail Store Heat Maps using New Smart Wifi Technology

In this hyper connected and mobile everywhere world, Retail brands and users want experiences that are simple and real-time. Check out this new technology from Cisco which is a game changer for retail stores – it even gathers Heat Maps (Hot Spot) data on users without them opting in by pinging devices in store.

If you are a brand or business who also sells offline then you want to if know your customer as quickly as an online visitor. Big Data is the key to all Data Driven Maketing and certainly something we champion here at AndMine. But for retail, most transactions occur offline instead of online and you want to reach out to the right customer at the right time: real-time.

As retail brands and store owners, you want to know the interest and intention of store visitors before or while they are there. Consider this – you could know whether someone is a new or a returning VIP customer from your recent online ad campaign. Or know the time spent by a user on a particular section of the store. This gives an immediate opportunity to drive customer loyalty programs and measure the impact of campaigns that drive store visits.

You can have it now with this disruptive technology by Cisco Meraki with their business extension called CMX Analytics Platform. What is great about this is that it can detect and engage with users and provide on store, online and social insights all at once.

There are already brands taking advantage of this. Westfield have deployed the technology to check if a visitor purchased an item in store – and deliver a digital display ad within few minutes to them if they haven’t (very futuristic, product ads following us around the centre… are we ok with this?) – What else did they do? uploaded a floor plan to the Meraki platform. Now they can see user insights on the store plans – including which product shelves the users lingered around the most. It does this purely without users opting in to interactions – it just “feels-out” or pings devices in the store – see the presence heatmap of store visitor above.

What does this means for your Retail Store?

Just some of the connectivity available via Meraki ?

– Valuable information about a visitor to your store is achieved effortlessly.
– You can engage with a visitor who is just passing by your store, they do not even need to have WiFi enabled.
– Enable social login and on store check-out using Free Wi-Fi integration.
– Provide and Manage Wifi Access
– For returning users, this becomes an even more seamless experience.
– This is my favourite – Even without users logging, just by having their device in store –  in see the hot-spots on your store map of customers which can be used to upgrade your store plan (this is game-changing technology, which would cost a fortune to do manually in store planning previously)

Aside from ‘pinging’ devices to see where customers are in store anonymously, all active user actions are optional with ability to opt out for the privacy conscious. Even without direct interaction or WiFi access, you could have access to insights about their product interest or preference. There are wide reaching possibilities with this technology and we are certain to see this or similar technology make a major play in retail this year onwards.

And the cost? well not much more than you’d spend setting up a standard Wifi network – In fact, Meraki enables an enterprise level solution so simple you could run it at home to see where your kids spend most of their time on devices!

Read more about the Meraki Technology here: Meraki Technology and get in touch if you’d like to be referred to one of our local partners for a live demonstration.