The GPS technology allows businesses to offer diverse services based on knowing their users’ current location. Most are presented as standalone services:
- maps and navigation apps (like Google Maps or Waze)
- so-called on-demand apps (for instance, Uber)
- health and fitness apps (like RunKeeper)
- weather forecast apps (for example, Weather Underground)
- social networking and dating apps (Tinder)
- games like Pokemon Go and Ingress Prime,
and many others.
But rarely can you meet an app that utilizes users’ location to improve the primary service its offering. Yet such an idea might bring a breakthrough in your sales; being a mobile and website application development company, we’ve seen it at least a few times.
1. Try Geo-Conquesting
Geo-conquesting is a relatively new technique helping you to divert clients’ attention from your competitors to you.
Let’s see how it works on a real-world example.
Starbucks allows finding the closest coffee shop and making an order in advance, so it is ready by the time the client enters the store.
Dunkin Donuts offers the same opportunity, but backs it with geo-conquesting. So when a person approaches Starbucks, they receive a message from Dunkin Donuts with an ad and a discount coupon.
The result? Having reached a 3.6% coupon redemption rate, Dunkin Donuts inspired many Starbucks clients to change their favorite coffee shop.
You might say: this example dates back to 2014! Well, in 2019 Ulta Beauty did the same trick. The result? Newly opened stores reached state average weekly visitation rates 2.5x faster than those without geoconquesting feature enabled.
If you decide to use geo-conquesting and target your competitors’ location, make your offer compelling enough. Coupons, discounts and hot offers are a good choice as long as they are not offered by competing location-based services in the same manner.
2. Allow Users to Track Their Orders
This trick doesn’t require an explanation and is useful mostly for on-demand services.
If you’re a taxi service owner, let clients track a car approaching them, just like Bolt.
If your app is somehow related to delivery, take a look at services like Glovo and Uber Eats. These food delivery apps have a feature of real-time order tracking.
The good you’re offering doesn’t matter, you only have to give your customers an opportunity to follow the progress of their orders. In this way, they will feel more comfortable and confident when using your app. And like with the previous recommendation, this means rising loyalty, growing profits and increasing number of clients.
3. Use Geolocation for Targeted Advertising
This idea fits mostly for e-commerce applications, when you need to improve your advertising campaigns and can utilize location-based services for that.
Instead of creating surveys and calling your customers to discover what they need, implement the geolocation feature. With it, you will quickly discover how your clients spend their day and what places they usually visit. Then, you will be able to develop a targeted advertising campaign (or improve the existing one).
For instance, do some of your users visit gym on a regular basis? Then promote the goods they may need: tracksuits, trainers, weights, and so on. Do they travel a lot? Then offer them any travel-related goods like suitcases and travel pillows.
Note: enforce getting users’ consent to provide such data for you and consider your local laws defining how such data collection should be implemented first.
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4. Give Users an Opportunity to Meet New Friends
People – well, most of them – are social creatures. Having friends is crucial for us. So why not give them a chance to find new fellows?
You can go the same way as Tinder, a location application which allows users to find someone close to them.
For example, you have a fitness app with all the essential features: steps and routes tracking, sleep analytics, food and water consumption journaling, wearable device integration, and so on.
Now, add a feature of finding sportsmen from your area or those ones who prefer the same routes or parks for sports activities. Many people prefer doing sports in the company — in this way, they feel more motivated and inspired than practicing alone.
Your users will be happy to spread the word about such location-aware apps if they help make new friends and thus change their lives for better.
5. Reward Customers for Visiting Your Stores
This tip can help you in case you run a shop, a coffee house or a restaurant. In other words, you need some kind of a venue here.
You can equip your app with a geolocation feature and automatically reward your users every time they visit your place – even if they forget to open that app during the visit.
As a mobile and web application company EGO worked on projects that would also reward people for their activity with points that could be exchanged for a discount or one of the products available for sale. That helped increase loyalty.
By the way, other gamification techniques may also help you further increase customers’ engagement, so you might want to find out more about it if you’re into location marketing.
6. Calculate Exact Shipping Expenses
Knowing your users’ exact location, you can set up your ecommerce app to calculate the expenses and shipping time of the order made automatically.
This trick not only improves customer experience and satisfaction, but also lets them feel more confident when shopping with your app. It’s much easier to make a purchase, when you’re 100% sure of the end total cost of the order.
7. This is Where Your Unique Idea Should Be
Unfortunately, many of the location-based app ideas we described above are not universal. But if you think there’s an idea waiting to be invented specifically for your app, drop us a line.
At the EGO mobile and web development company, we consult businesses on their digital strategies and help them find ways to improve their apps, attract more customers and increase sales. Our geolocation domain experts will be happy to do that for you. The first conversation is free.
