Role of Content Filtering in WiFi Monetization

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A sound strategy of monetizing WiFi resides upon a three-legged stool, and these three legs are Captive Portal, WiFi marketing and WiFi security. WiFi security, specifically the security aspects to do with web content and the user experience thereof are especially vital to the overall success of WiFi monetization platform for any size venue.



What is Content Filtering on a public WiFi?
Internet is as open as an ocean, with excellent web content comes the bad. Many customers visit the venues with their family and connect to the free guest WiFi. Loading objectionable web content on the browser is the last thing that these customers expect after logging into the public WiFi. One of the most critical elements attached to the better customer experience is preventing the guest WiFi from rendering the websites or URLs with such objectionable content as porn, violence, malware, spyware.  WiFi content filtering is a feature of a guest WiFi solution that restricts users from loading websites with objectionable content. 

How is WiFi content filtering linked to monetization?
Monetization and customer experience over WiFi are directly linked. Better WiFi customer experience helps to have more engaged guest WiFi users at the venue. Highly engaged guest WiFi users are more likely to welcome and act upon the promotions driven from the venue’s free WiFi. Impact of WiFi content filtering on users is beyond its direct benefits. Restricting harmful web content builds a subconscious trust between the venue’s free WiFi and its users, helping with better adoption of guest WiFi. With WiFi content filtering, the users tend to feel more secure online, and that helps them build trust to respond to a WiFi promotion. WiFi content monitoring and filtering are very relevant and the most expected feature, especially for customers who visit venues with their children. 

WiFi Content Control Options
You can technically enable WiFi content control and filtering with four specific options. Some of these are direct content blockers while others are more about monitoring, learning which content to restrict and which content to exempt from blocking on WiFi.

Category Based Blocking
For content filtering to work, you must expect your WiFi content blocker to incorporate the most current categories and domain for blocking. The best WiFi content filtering solutions would have about 50+ categories pre-configured for content blocking out of the box. As mentioned earlier, examples of these categories are malware websites, spyware websites, websites with pornographic content, websites with violent content. 

Domain Level Blocking
Security of the WiFi user data in the browsing session is one of the most critical aspects that users consider while on a free guest WiFi. Domain level blocking enhances the user experience by blocking bandwidth heavy websites such as youtube, netflix. This allows all users to have a fair share of bandwidth on the free WiFi. Domain level blocking plays an important role in content filtering over the free WiFi.

Reports and analytics
Periodic monitoring of the traffic data is useful in assessing the online profile of the visitors and their web behavior. The high-level strategic reports, as well as drilled-down granular reports on web traffic assessment over the free guest WiFi, is helpful in gradually learning which websites, categories, domains to restrict and which ones to exempt.

Domain whitelisting
WiFi Content blocking and filtering is a double-edged sword. While the intention is to eliminate the possibility of users loading-up objectionable web content, at times, blocking of some good content happens due to a false-positive. Therefore content filtering on the WiFi should provide a dashboard to manually add exceptions through domain whitelisting, for such websites that are part of expected user experience.

RaGaPa has integrated WiFi content filtering as a feature in its WiFi monetization platform CaptiveXS. Let’s connect to explore more about the role of WiFi content filtering in your WiFi monetization journey.



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