With the increasing popularity of laundry owners offering Wi-Fi access to their customers, securing your network and marketing this now-common store amenity are critical for today’s operators. As a result, Thomas Reamer, a systems engineer for Chicago-based IT Lighthouse, presented “Wi-Fi in Your Laundromat: Best Practices for Security and Marketing.”
Here are some of the keys to securing your Wi-Fi network, according to Reamer:
- Separate your private and public networks.
- Change the default password on all of your equipment.
- Make your passwords difficult.
- Always use WPA2 AES Security with a wireless network.
- Install security patches and firmware upgrades.
- Secure your networking equipment — lock it up.
- Above all, put up a firewall. “If your data is important, protect it,” Reamer said.
He then went through the pros and cons of the various service providers — from cable to cellular — followed by offering the different technical requirements needed for each separate Wi-Fi option available to laundry owners.
With regard to marketing Wi-Fi access, Reamer suggested that laundry owners do the following:
- Advertise their stores’ Wi-Fi through clear signage.
- Keep it simple, and make it easy for customers to get onto their networks.
- Utilize site redirection to a company landing page.
- Leverage social marketing and Facebook.
This hour-long, afternoon presentation was the third CLA-sponsored educational session during Day Three of Clean 2017 in Las Vegas.
