In a world where you can talk to someone half the distance of the planet away, why are we so concerned about where you physically are?
Why should it matter whether I live? Whether it’s in New York, Paris, or Sydney, a web application is still equally accessible.
Whether it’s using your phone to browse interesting facts about the building you are standing outside, or merely looking up local pizza services to get a delivery, location data is a very powerful tool. An ever increasing percentage of the population carry smart phones which can calculate our exact GPS coordinates. Just 10 years ago, this wouldn’t have been possible. GPS data used to be the specialist tool of professionals or devoted hikers/sailors.
What makes location data so powerful? One powerful facet is certainly personalisation. With the location data, you can tie into your users life outside your application, tie into what they do, where they eat. Your application can make a meaningful impact on what they are doing.
The limits and possibilities of location data are still being discovered. From Foursquare, to Facebook, to Google, integrating location data into your services is something that all the biggest companies in the web are looking to offer. As a result, there are standards being built up, and an ever increasing array of libraries and resources for applications seeking to also join the world of location based services.
Location based services can come in any number of forms. The most obvious form is a map, usually a Google Map embedded into the page. As you may have seen, Google supports tools to add your own custom pointers and shapes to a map, allowing you to mark out areas of interest, local meeting places or places that have interesting historical information associated with them.
You can also have a list of local items, or even an iPhone app that looks for other people using your app nearby and prompts you to make contact with them!
Pros:
- Fashionable: Location data is at the heart of one of the major tech trends right now. It’s new enough that to many users, just the fact that you are able to tie your service to where they are currently can be enough to give your application that wow factor, boosting your marketing efforts considerably
- Personable: You can make your application personal to them by showing local services they are more likely to be interested in. If I log into your company site, and see that there are stores that are are very close to where I live, I’m far more likely to drive down to check one out than if I can see a map of the entire country covered in tiny dots.
- Visualizable: There’s an old fable that a picture tells 1000 words. In a similar way, if you want to show where your points physically are, there’s nothing like plotting them on a map to draw attention to everything.
Cons:
- Content: One thing that often isn’t considered is the effect on areas you haven’t expanded your business to cover yet. Let’s take for example an eBay style auction house who had started in London, and had a map with every item on it. Being able to log in and see items inside driving distance to pick up creates a chicken and egg problem. The first few users to log into your product will see an almost empty map, and they won’t hang around to list their own product. There are ways around this...but by accurately showing where you have a large presence, you also imply where you haven’t expanded your business to yet.
