Purple is working in partnership with Networxs Software to provide a guest WiFi and analytics solution for malls in Australia. One such installation is at Waterford Plaza, a mall in Perth, Western Australia. Networxs installed Purple’s content filtering, enabling Waterford Plaza to become the first venue in Australia to achieve the Friendly WiFi accreditation, which ensures that inappropriate material cannot be accessed at any time.
About Waterford Plaza
Waterford Plaza is owned by the Lease Equity group. The mall has been refurbished in recent years and is home to big brands like Domino’s, KFC, Nandos, Subway, Vodafone and Specsavers, along with a number of boutique retailers, supermarkets, cafe’s, bars and restaurants.
The mall is right next door to Curtin University, the biggest university in Western Australia. There are over 60,000 students enrolled at Curtin University, and many of them visit Waterford Plaza during their free time. For Waterford Plaza, this meant that offering free, fast and family-friendly guest WiFi at the mall was a necessity to meet the needs of their visitors.
Waterford Plaza also attracts a large number of Asian visitors from Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong due to the university’s multicultural student community.
Fuss-free deployment
The deployment of the solution was managed by our partner, Networxs Software, who were able to achieve excellent coverage with only 10 Cisco Meraki access points. The access points were placed carefully in order to provide reliable WiFi coverage at the mall’s indoor and outdoor areas.
The experience of the team at Networxs, implementation of a trial period and the quality of the equipment meant that deployment was a smooth process.
Networxs + Purple = a recipe for success
Together, Purple and Networxs Software can offer over 30 years of technical experience with best in market analytics to provide a tangible return on investment for Waterford Plaza.
The joint solution has meant that running costs have been halved. Although another Australian WiFi analytics company bid for the deal, Purple was chosen as our analytics dashboard was easier and more intuitive for Waterford Plaza’s marketing team to use.
Another factor in Waterford Plaza’s decision to choose Purple was the ability to cater for its student visitors using an array of social login options.
The solution in action
Waterford Plaza are primarily using Purple to improve the customer experience and influence dwell time in the mall. This is being achieved by identifying patterns of footfall, analyzing demographic information about visitors and pinpointing which zones they spend most of their time in.
All of this information is helping Waterford Plaza’s marketing team to personalize their campaigns, increase dwell time and communicate with customers effectively.
A clever revenue sharing model
Purple and Networxs were able to present a cost-neutral solution, as Waterford Plaza are providing an advertising package through Rubicon, with a percentage going back to the mall.
Rubicon have a portfolio of large advertising clients looking for third party ad space filtered by demographic data, and this is provided through the WiFi service both on the login page and e-shots. Revenue is generated for both Waterford Plaza and Networxs Software on a per-click basis.
That’s pretty cool stuff, but how do the numbers add up?
For every minute a customer spends at the mall, retail sales equate to 75 cents, according to recent Australian shopping mall research undertaken. It’s therefore encouraging to see that the average time a WiFi user spends on the network at Waterford Plaza is a staggering 1.37 hours, which works out at an average spend of $61.65 per customer per visit.
In just four months Waterford Plaza has recorded 1895 users; if we multiply the average spend of $61.65 by the number of users, the additional revenue stream is potentially worth $116,826.
The number of profiles collected from December until March (including those users accessing WiFi on multiple devices) has increased by 450%, whilst the number of unique users has increased by 441%. Waterford Plaza have been able to identify that their most popular users are females between the ages of 18 and 34.
Looking at the mall’s presence data, we can see that on an average day, 106 male visitors and 157 female visitors log in to the WiFi. We can also see that at the mall’s busiest recorded time, 4872 male visitors and 7331 female visitors logged in.
What do the team at Net-worxs think?
“Net-worxs Software have been extremely encouraged with the reaction from clients by combining Net-worxs and Purple into a single platform. As a result of the outstanding performance showed at Waterford Plaza, Net-worxs Software has been inundated with clients reviewing their current Wi-Fi solution and are looking at changing to the Purple + Net-worxs solution.
Net-worxs Software look forward to the combined effort from both companies to provide the premier solution for our clients and the continued development for the WiFi industry.”
Alan McAndrew, C.E.O Net-worxs Software and Chairman of McAndrew Enterprises Pty Ltd.
Comment from the Customer
“During the past 10 years or so I have been saluting the efforts and ongoing works of Net-worxs for their WiFi solutions platform and their ongoing efforts to improve the use of free WiFi through the shopping centres I have managed. The analytics available to us to use for marketing our products both as a whole and for individual retailers to promote them and increase both their sales and therefore the centre asset is just amazing.”
Leanne Chaproniere, Senior Asset Manager Lease Equity.
WA Shopping Centre Awards 2013 Shopping Centre of the Year; WA Shopping Centre Awards 2013 Excellence in Marketing
(Quote from LinkedIn 3/17/2016)