Indoor Navigation: how to take advantage of indoor navigation in your business

What is Indoor navigation?

As we said at the beginning of this post, it may be the case that the public which you want to attract to your Retail business doesn’t know how to locate you in the large area you’re in. In an urban context, there are already geolocation tools which allow a user to easily locate themselves, find where they want to go and head directly there.

The great handicap of many of these tools was that they did not have the capacity to offer these same functionalities of indoor doors, in an environment which we could qualify as “closed”. And it is the case that GPS technology, on which these applications base their operation, loses efficiency when we use our smartphones inside public facilities or closed buildings.

To overcome this situation, the technology facilitates the systems of Indoor Navigation. This type of solution is spreading with great speed in large commercial and public spaces, especially in closed environments.

An example of this type of environment:

·         Shopping centres

·         Airports

·         Hospitals and social health facilities

·         Corporate offices

·         Educational institutions

·         Cultural and leisure establishments (museums, stadiums, theme parks…)

These interior navigation tools do not use GPS technology to perform the user’s automatic positioning process. Instead, they use other types of technologies, such as Wi-Fi or beacons, which even allow determining the level within the building where both the user and the place they are looking for are located.

There are already specific solutions for Indoor Navigation on the market, but users are also taking advantage of the fact that the geolocation tools they have been using are incorporating this functionality. One of the best examples is Google Maps, which allows us to know the interior of buildings and shopping centres by simply enlarging the place where they are inside the application.

9 benefits of Indoor navigation… to start

How many times have we heard that phrase “It’s what’s inside that counts”? In the case of Indoor Navigation, this is 100% true, as shown by the advantages it provides:

1.      Optimising the experience of the buyers. It simplifies and streamlines the process of finding your business in the environment where it is located (for example, a shopping centre), as well as the products which most interest the client within it.

2.     Consolidating sales and increase buyer satisfaction. With Indoor Navigation, there will be fewer and fewer people leaving a large commercial area without buying anything: the client is happy to find what they’re looking for and doesn’t waste time.

3.     Quick return on investment (ROI). The investment made by a business in Indoor Navigation recovers with great speed thanks to the increase we have seen previously. In addition, in the case of shopping centres, the investment is less burdensome because it is distributed among the businesses which make them up.

4.     Loyalty to visitors and customers. Indoor Navigation provides an added value which many centres do not have, which represents a very positive impact on their image. Also, eliminate queues at information counters or informational signs to find businesses.

5.     Increasing the occupation of commercial premises. The more buyers go to a shopping centre, the more retail businesses will be interested in having a direct presence in it. In this way, the shopping centres occupy all their premises and increase their income by renting these spaces.

6. Boosting associated sales. If the customer quickly locates the store and the product they’re looking for, they have more time to buy other products in our store (for example, accessories in the case of fashion businesses) or other services in the commercial area (for example, catering or leisure).

7.     It improves the commercial strategy and the management of the installation. An app which incorporates Indoor Navigation allows our business to understand how shoppers move within it (for example, through heat maps). With this it is possible to allocate resources more efficiently and adopt marketing and sales strategies which take advantage of this information.

8.     It combines with other technological advances. Indoor navigation is 100% integrated with other new technologies, such as augmented reality (which allows us to add information about sales and promotions to images captured within a store) or the capabilities to help people with visual disabilities.

9.     Improve the management of security and risks. Your buyers can react quickly to any risk if they know the exact situation of the emergency exits.

At Intelligence Partner, as certified Google partners, we have an outstanding level of expertise in the Google Maps Platform and its capabilities to enhance Indoor Navigation in your business. Explain your needs and we will show you how to take advantage of the indoor navigation functionalities in your business with Google Maps.

Do you want to look at it together?