The use of geolocation is increasing each year, with retailers among the top users. In fact, geolocation technology is one of the reasons why retailers bag huge sums of profits. The benefits of geolocation for businesses are many, which makes it a powerful tool for any business.
You might wonder how knowing a user’s location benefits a business. After all, it’s just an IP address and coordinates, right? While geolocation data may be seemingly trivial, underestimating its value would be a grave mistake.
The benefits of geolocation can help businesses flourish from the ground up by enhancing customer experience and operational efficiency. This article explores the many ways geolocation can benefit your business. So, let’s begin.
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One of the main benefits of geolocation technology is how easy it has made marketing for business owners. Before geolocation, marketers broadcasted advertisements randomly on all channels, hoping to attract potential customers.
For example, if you publish a newspaper ad, how likely is it that everyone who sees it is your target customer? Highly unlikely, right? This method generated some leads but wasted much of the marketing effort due to a low return on investment.
With geolocation technology, specifically geotargeting, advertisers can target customers who have a genuine interest in buying their products or services.
You can also use geolocation APIs to find the physical location of users along with their purchase and browsing history.
Using these valuable insights, businesses can show ads to potential customers that highly resonate with their products or services.
For example, if your products only ship to specific cities, geolocation APIs can help you target those cities only. This ensures your ads reach the right audience.
Another benefit of geolocation marketing is that it reduces marketing expenditures. Previously, campaigns targeted the entire country randomly. With geolocation technology, you focus on a select few cities, which naturally lowers costs and increases profits.
Get in Your Customer’s Shoes
Businesses can use geolocation technology to track where customers go and how they move. For example, a retail store can see which aisles customers visit most often. Restaurants can track how often customers return and where they come from.
Understanding customer movements can help businesses improve marketing and tailor services to meet customer needs. For example, if a shop finds that many customers are visiting from a specific area, it might open a new store there.
Starbucks also uses geolocation to send personalized offers to customers near a store. They know where customers spend generously and focus on selling premium menu items there.
Geolocation also tracks website visitors’ paths from page to page. Combined with other tools, it shows where visitors come from, which pages they view, and how they navigate the site. It even tracks clicks and scrolls depth.
This information helps businesses improve website design and content to keep visitors engaged.
For instance, if a user keeps switching between two pages, the site can use session recording to replay the experience. This helps identify and fix issues, thereby improving customer experience.
Tackle Fraud Preemptively
Geolocation can help detect and prevent fraud by using real-time location data. When a transaction occurs, the system checks the mobile device’s location against the cardholder’s known location.
For example, the system will flag a transaction if it happens in London while the cardholder is in New York. This helps identify anomalies quickly. Businesses can then take action, such as sending an alert to the cardholder or blocking the transaction.
Another benefit of geolocation technology is tracking multiple transactions. If a cardholder has a pattern of purchases in one city, a sudden faraway purchase might indicate fraud. Real-time location data helps detect these anomalies immediately.
Geolocation also helps detect VPN usage. Some geolocation API vendors maintain pools of IP addresses belonging to proxy servers. Businesses can see the IP addresses of accounts logging in.
If they detect a login using a proxy’s IP address, they take further steps to authenticate it.
Put Virtual Fences Around Your Business
The benefits of geolocation in enabling geofencing are many.
Geofencing creates a virtual boundary around a geographical location using GPS or RFID technology. The system triggers an action when a mobile device enters or leaves this boundary.
Businesses use geofencing for various purposes. Retail stores that dominate the geofencing market send promotions to customers who enter their geofenced area.
This encourages shoppers to visit more, increasing foot traffic. Similarly, restaurants use geofencing to notify nearby customers about special offers.
Geofencing also improves security, so it is massively used by state organizations. Companies can set up alerts for unauthorized access to restricted areas. If a device enters a sensitive zone, the system can notify security personnel immediately.
Country IP blocking is another use of geofencing. Companies restrict access to their websites based on the user’s physical location.
This prevents unauthorized access from certain regions. For example, streaming services often use geoblocking to comply with licensing agreements.
Spotify makes extensive use of geofencing for its songs and features. It recently launched music videos, but only in 11 countries.
Spotify even kept the United States in the dark about this new feature. The company also uses geofencing to provide a different variant of the free version to users from developing countries.
Fleet management also benefits from geofencing. Businesses track vehicles and ensure they stay within designated routes. If a vehicle deviates, the system alerts management.
Keep Bad Website Traffic at Bay
Have you ever tried to access a website but couldn’t because it was too slow or completely down? There might be a DDoS attack at play, and it disrupts website availability by overwhelming it with traffic.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are common and can hinder a website’s functionality. Particularly, these attacks have detrimental repercussions for e-commerce businesses and fintech websites.
One of the key benefits of geolocation is its ability to enhance website security through geoblocking. Geoblocking restricts access to your website based on the user’s physical location.
If a DDoS attack originates from a specific region, you can use geoblocking to block traffic from that area. This reduces the load on your servers and ensures your website remains accessible to legitimate users.
Increase User Convenience
Don’t you get confused when you’re on an e-commerce website and the currency isn’t in your local one? Geolocation technology solves this by displaying prices in the user’s local currency. This ease improves the shopping experience, as users don’t have to manually convert prices.
Displaying local currency based on user location increases user satisfaction and reduces cart abandonment.
One of the benefits of geolocation apps is automatic form filling. Geolocation can auto-fill addresses and other location-based information in online forms. This convenience saves users time and reduces errors.
For instance, when a user starts typing their address, the form can automatically complete it based on their location. The form can also pre-determine your city and zip code. This makes the checkout process smoother and quicker.
Reap the Benefits of Geolocation With GeoPlugin
If you’re a business owner and not leveraging geolocation, you’re missing out big time. With geolocation technology, you can reap the benefits we discussed above and serve your customers better.
GeoPlugin helps you collect geolocation data without any hassle. It provides accurate real-time location data about your visitors down to the city level.
By integrating GeoPlugin API, you can personalize content, display prices in local currencies, and geoblock specific regions. This has multiple benefits for your business. It boosts engagement, customer satisfaction, and profits and guards against fraudsters and cyberattacks.
Don’t miss out on the benefits of geolocation technology. Sign up for GeoPlugin today and improve your business.
