How to stand out with Geolocation

Without Geolocation you miss out on countless opportunities and risk losing customers!

Nowadays, having an online presence is not enough. To stand out amongst the overcrowded digital world, you need to give your users a full experience. It’s not just about having a website for your business, it’s also about giving your customers ease and convenience. This gives you an edge from your competitors.

How does Geolocation correlate to your online success, you ask?

Well, it makes a huge impact on your business. Let’s put things into perspective.

Imagine you’re perusing through a website and you receive an online promotion. Sweet! But wait, it has no relevance to where you live. You head on over to select your country on the website, but you find yourself scrolling endlessly through country flags just to find yours. Alternatively, imagine your customers’ frustration when, after they place an order, they wonder why it’s taking so long. Turns out, there was a typo in the delivery address! Frustrating, right?

Without Geolocation you miss out on countless opportunities and risk losing customers! In this article, we talk about the wonders of Geolocation and how it can help your business stand out.

What is Geolocation

Haven’t been properly acquainted with Geolocation? Let us make an introduction.

Geolocation is a useful technology that pin-points the exact position of a device. It takes this device’s information, which is its longitude and latitude, and translates it into meaningful data such as a postal address. When a website or app utilizes Geolocation, this allows the platform to interact with the user based on where they are in the world. This gives each user a unique and tailor-made experience.

Have you ever gone on an app that conveniently shows you the nearest petrol station or branch of Costa? That’s Geolocation working its magic! It saves a ton of time and saves you from any errors.

How can it help your business?

This powerful tool can help the different facets of your business. Geolocation not only gives your customers ease-of-use on your app or website, but also gives your marketing and security a big boost! We’ll talk about each of the different ways Geolocation can be a huge help in powering your business.

Localization

This gives your customers a smoother user experience! Without having to enter their postal code, Geolocation will open the correct country website and show the nearest physical store for your customer. Geolocation will also automatically convert the prices to the customer’s currency and autofill addresses.
Ad Targeting

Want to get the best bang for your buck on ad spend? Geolocation helps your ads become more profitable by targeting specific audiences, ensuring that your promotion is applicable to the viewer. Take for example a special offer that’s only available at a certain store location, Geolocation makes sure that the ad is delivered to users who are based in that area.
Rights Management

This one might come as a surprise for you, but Geolocation helps control the distribution of your digital content! This ensures the content you use is only accessed in the countries that it should be. Helping you adhere to copyright and licensing agreements, and protect against online piracy.
Fraud Prevention

Fraudsters have nowhere to hide! Geolocation is popularly used in the financial industry, and for a good reason. Most banks offer a mobile app with user-enabled location tracking; Geolocation helps authenticate this user’s identity by matching the user’s device location with the location of where the payment card is being used. Thus, detecting any possible payment card theft. Pretty handy when you’re handling sensitive customer information.

How does it compare?

So how does Geolocation compare to other tools out there? If you’re deciding between tools, we’ll help you list out the pros and cons of the alternatives!

IP to Location

An IP-based Geolocation is the mapping of an IP address to the real-world geographic location of an internet-connected device. It’s available for every web request without requiring special permission. IP to location works best with desktop and tablet (as your laptop doesn’t have a GPS chip!). This is used for businesses who cater to customers from different regions. It allows their websites to adapt their content according to the user’s current location, giving them localized and relevant content depending on where they are! However, as the world moves to IPv6, you run the risk of it not working on other devices (IP addresses will change frequently for client devices).

GPS to Location

GPS is the precise latitude and longitude of a device on earth. Latitude and longitude are the standard currency for geographic locations. There are many technologies available to work out these positions with varying degrees of accuracy. Here at 51Degrees, we take care of the complexity for you.

In comparison to IP to Location, GPS to Location requires user permission. It must be obtained in context to increase chances of success, for example the user sees the value exchange in tapping “allow” and getting an address back.

The pros, however, of GPS to Location is that customers are only asked for their location when it’s needed, for instance, when they navigate through the Contact Us page or click on “Find my Address”.

51Degrees will help you leverage the power of GPS to location data so that you can confidently reach mobile users. Let us show you how with the 51Degrees Cloud Configurator today!

Here at 51Degrees, we are your one-stop-shop for real-time data! Our Geolocation is reliable and accurate thanks to GPS coordinates and databases for postal addresses. We offer more options for you to choose from - you can pick the geolocation services you want! On top of the awesome benefits of Geolocation, you can also combine this tool with Device Detection, making your website adapt based on GPS availability.

And because innovation never stops at 51Degrees, we have recently partnered with Digital Element to integrate their GeoMprint solution into our new real-time data pipeline. This allows digital professionals to add location data to analytics, address capture, and targeting systems all in a matter of minutes. Read more about our partnership with Digital Element.

Already using our Device Detection?

You’re in for a treat! Our new cloud service also includes Geolocation. We want to give you the bang for your buck by adding Geolocation to the cloud package. For an awesome upgrade with great value, try us out with a free trial!