Ble-Beacons with Indoor Positioning System | How it Works and Transform the User Experience

GPS Satellite technology become publicly available in late 90’s and popularly used for navigation in various sectors and technical fields. This GPS System is extremely poor for indoor navigation in buildings, railways and airports etc. to combat this need there is a sudden need to resort other method to implement the IPS Indoor Positioning System for such places with higher number of visitors and large spaces to be navigated. Indoor positioning system played a major role in people lives; almost every individual has a positioning device like mobile, tablets, GPS Tracking devices etc. the GPS System recolonized the outdoor positioning system, but with trends in technology new possibilities emerge for indoor navigation and GPS signals don’t work with indoor.

Indoor positioning system trending and standardized the overall user experience in Indoors. People spent their huge time in indoor in buildings, shopping malls, stadiums, airports museums theme park, where these could bring great benefits to people. Indoor positioning system with ble beacons can benefits many people with way finding and navigate easily in big malls, this could definitely revolutionize navigation indoor. Indoor navigation given valuable benefits to organization with more gathering customers and increses in sales, with location based advertising and many more features.

Some Indoor Positioning Technology

Ble-beacons - BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) devices this devices broadcasts different and deep information to nearby portable devices. The technology enables smartphones, tablets and other devices to perform actions when in close proximity to a beacon. Also called as ble beacons having log battery life with small physical device which do not require external energy source.

WI-Fi- used a similar way of ble beacons, but require external power source with more setup cost. The signal power is stronger than Ble beacons and can cover more distance.

Beacons for indoor navigation: How it happens actually?

With the technology advancements, we can see a lot of flip flops in Bluetooth market as well. Well Bluetooth is not a new trend; it’s been in the market since 1990. But recent years of digitization have shown different application scenarios to this Bluetooth also. The energy saving Bluetooth version BLE is the recent example. Apple with ibeacons and Google with Eddystones have adopted this advanced Bluetooth technology.

Beacons have been in boom since its launch back in 2013. Now these small transmitters have become a part of life with their increasing usage in indoor navigation. Since GPS doesn’t support indoor navigation, these Bluetooth enabled devices are a good alternative for the purpose.

Indoor Navigation with Bluetooth Beacons!

Bluetooth Beacons can transmit signals within an indoor perimeter of 30 meters, but they can’t receive them back. They are relatively cheap and can rup upon button cells upto 2 years. But the accuracy remains up to 1 meter only. In a client based application several beacons are installed inside a building. They exchange unique signals among them with which the app having beacon determines the position. And then beacons take required action like displaying an advertisement or offering some coupon.

Application Areas of Beacon Indoor Navigation!

Stationery trading is the most common niche that uses Beacon for indoor navigation. They act like a bridge between the online and offline world and there they are supposed to increase sales by using coupons or advertisements. Apart from this, we can also see its involvement in museum and trade fairs.

CCD’S, Restaurants, Hotels is the best place to use the beacons and convert more customers by giving offers, discounts, coupons and many more services when they pass out within your outlets. Indoor navigation Beacons are gaining more and more attention in retail and food industry. But food service (cafe, restaurants) industry must look at some real-time applicability of Beacons. Because we believe, if there is a way to seduce your customer with the aroma of their favorite coffee or burger even without entering inside your outlet, your sales will boost significantly.   

With Beacon indoor navigation you can analyze how a visitor flows and base on that analysis, products can be arranged accordingly and walking route can be optimized. Technical advancements have opened up a lot of opportunities to provide customers,visitors, employees, patients and even travelers too a lot of information on their demand.

How retailers can take advantage of Ibeacons?

In June, 2013 Apple introduced the Beacon concept and from then till today Beacons are generating huge buzz around the world. iBeacon technology, a new technology standard of Apple, can help mobile devices to track their position by using low-frequency bluetooth transmission. The concept of reacting according to the signal received from physical world is so widely accepted that every niche from retail stores to malls, to events and to museums everywhere you can witness the involvement of this technique. Infact these are becoming more frequent as time rolls on.

 

Among a number of early adopters of iBeacon technology there is one sector that always stands out: Retailers. Yeah, you heard it right, our own retail sector! Beacons are no doubt a smart move towards the local marketing. So let’s see how our modern retail stores can take advantage of this technology:

●       Asking for customer feedbacks is one of the most tedious tasks for a retailer. But with iBeacon, they can trigger a push notification in the app that travel in mobile form to people when they are in the stores and ask for their experience towards the service they get in the store. The information is then stored in a form of report which is further analysed by managers to fill in the gaps where the improvement is needed.

●       Indoor mappings and guides is another benefit that a Beacon provides. Big malls having multiple sections confuse customers and they face delays to get their favorite stores. iBeacon technology here make it easy for us to find our ways indoor.

●       This Apple feature displays an information related to a product when you make pass to that product. It may be in the form of a video on a phone instead of some boring usual manual or guide thing.

So you can see these are some of the awesome benefits a retailer can offer to its visitors by using ufobeacon with this amazing feature of Apple. There must be more ways that a retailer could benefit from. Leave your opinions and use cases that you find useful below in the comments.