Geolocation in the Mobile App: What are the Benefits for Business?

Geolocation technology in mobile apps allows their developers to locate devices and people, and use this information to provide a better user experience.

Location-based services already make our life much more convenient than it was in the recent past. The integration of the geolocation option is considered to be one of the trends of mobile app development.

Virtually any smartphone nowadays is equipped with a built-in GPS-module which makes it possible to:

• identify the device’s location in real time;
• detect user’s movement from one place to another;
• measure the distance between objects (or map a route).

Such information can be used for the benefit of both the business and its customers. Additionally, the ways to achieve these goals in practice are innovative, unobtrusive and beneficial.

There are a number of reasons why many enterprises should use geolocation in their mobile apps (if they don’t already).

Travel and Tourism

If you are about to go to some unfamiliar place, visit a new city or just plan a long walk, it would probably be nice to have such useful information as:

• where exactly you are at a particular moment;
• how to get from one place to another, and whether there are shortcuts;
• what weather is expected in the near future;
• are there any interesting places near you that are worth visiting?

For such purposes, location data is a necessary tool for the company to provide the user with accurate and useful data.

Taxi and Transport Services

The best example of using geolocation in the app is ordering a taxi from the smartphone, for example via Uber or another similar service. The customer can see where the car is located, who accepted the inquiry, and how long it will take for him to arrive. The driver also gets the exact coordinates of the client’s location.

It is also useful for various transport services and companies that are engaged in logistics. They can track the driver’s location, make changes in routes, and predict delivery time.

Delivery Services

Mobile devices are actively used to deliver orders from online stores and services such as food delivery. You can quickly track the order delivery status, as well as find out when it was sent and when you will receive it. For courier services such an opportunity is no less useful.

Event Planning

Having determined the number of potential participants based on their geographical location, the organizers are able to point-send invitations. The users showing interest in offline activities in their city can now easily find an interesting event. Many of you are probably already familiar with this option from the “Events” function on Facebook.

Community Building

Geolocation is the basis of many social apps’ popularity, allowing people to create, share and discuss local content. This is a great tool for creating communities, which allows you to create additional value for their members.

Geolocation services help the dating industry prosper by enabling users to find interesting people nearby and arrange a meeting.

Recommendation Apps

The best advertising for business is the reviews of satisfied customers. That’s why the recommendations of friends is something we often pay attention to, especially if they are related to places near you. Apps such as Yelp stimulate people to share their impressions of the places they visit, and then use this information for recommendations to their friends.

Another use is recommending places to visit or offline stores based on current location. This is one of the modern shopping drivers and is also in development for the entertainment industry.

Local Services

Entrepreneurs can use mobile apps based on geolocation as a powerful marketing tool to promote their business. Targeting the audience based on its geographical location allows you to retain existing customers and attract new ones. You just need to make them an attractive enough offer.

A sale in a nearby store, calling a taxi service, ordering a delicious pizza from a nearby pizzeria, booking a table in a cozy restaurant in the town square – the range of possible ideas is limited only by your imagination.

Benefits of Having a Geolocation-based Mobile App

Geolocation technology has changed many industries, opening the door for new start-ups and services that never existed before. Using this feature in the app for your business, you get a number of important benefits.

Profit growth. Specialized offers to existing customers, appealing to the target audience users, offering discounts – all this contributes to the company’s sales growth.

Brand awareness and new customers. Apart from interacting with existing customers, narrow location targeting allows businesses to gain new customers. Providing there is a competent marketing campaign, this is a good way to increase brand awareness, which positively affects the company’s image.

Personalized offers. Products promotion will be especially effective for the business if the offer falls into the bullseye of the client’s interests. This is one of the important advantages of personalization, and geotargeting gives the entrepreneur an opportunity to take advantage of this bonus.

Increase customer loyalty. The ability to track the location can help some businesses significantly improve customer relationships. This increases the inquiry processing speed, minimizes the human error factor, and so on.

More data. Collecting and analyzing the information about your customers location, their preferences and other useful statistics, you can form conclusions concerning which retail outlets give more sales, how the demand differs depending on the location, where there is potential for business expansion, etc.

Summary

The implementation of the geolocation function in the app is not particularly difficult from a technical point of view. It allows the business to more effectively serve its customers, retain existing customers and attract new ones, thus developing their brand. This is a modern, convenient and useful technology for various industries.

By implementing geolocation technology into your business, you can take it to a new level and start earning more. This is a good option for investment and an opportunity to positively change the interaction of the brand with its target audience.

If you are interested in full-featured and scalable development of mobile apps based on geolocation, contact us and the Lvivity team will help you implement this task!