As a business owner, no matter how big or small your operation is, it’s important to keep up with the latest technology that can enhance your products or services. With advancements in technology becoming more sophisticated, Apple’s new iBeacon has the potential to transform the retail shopping experience and much more for customers.
The push for development in mobile technology increases the need for further convenience for personal and business inclined smartphone users. What if there was a device in your iPhone that sensed your location in a grocery or retail store and sent you reminders or promotions at products nearby?
No one wants to tirelessly search for coupons, deals, and bargains. Also, it’s so easy to get sidetracked at the grocery store by the endless isles of food and forget about what you needed. This technology dares combine online and physical shopping together for an ultimate experience.
What is the iBeacon?
The iBeacon is a new location-based technology included in iOS 7. Developed by Apple, it uses Bluetooth Low Energy to find mobile devices in stores or other places and provide useful information to smartphone users. Apple has toned down its promotion of this feature because it is not yet fully ready and operational with the stores and mobile apps that have started to invest.
Yet significant strides have been made with U.S. grocery food stores Giant Eagle and Safeway. In over 200 stores in Seattle, San Francisco, and Cleveland, the technology is functioning with the use of the mobile app called Checkpoints. Grocery store shoppers are engaged with sales ads, deals, bargains, and reminded of items to get at the store as they walk through each isle. As they approach particular items, information is transmitted to their mobile devices relevant to the products and their location in the store.
This groundbreaking technology has the chance to make a major impact on the mobile world. Apps such as Google Maps also utilize GPS to target a person’s location and provide them updated information on travel directions and options, restaurants nearby, local stores, businesses, and even reviews of those establishments.
Apple’s iBeacon is representative of the overall technological push to create a fluent and convenient transfer of useful information for mobile device users. This new technology will change the retail shopping business and even everyday life.
What Does this Mean for Small and Big Business?
Businesses of all sizes look to boost their marketing presence and authority online through new and good search engine optimization or SEO tactics. Yet the SEO game always changes with Google’s new guidelines, the development of technology, and how targeted consumers and audiences search for information.
As technology with iBeacon becomes more convenient and sophisticated, businesses must tailor their products to the consumer’s shopping preference. Entrepreneurs should absolutely invest in mobile application development for their services/products. At the very least, a mobile website is a necessity.
Yes SEO experts call for businesses to blog engaging content, spread their influence naturally through social media channels, but the new wave of marketing approaching with location technology in stores indicates that businesses must focus on mobile users.
Image Source – iphonehacks.com