iBeacon apps: How is it Shaping the Future of the Shopping Industry for Good

Personalized interaction

You get to deliver personalized user experience with iBeacon apps. You can easily get to know the users’ shopping habits and their preferences through the collected data. Moreover, your users are present all over social media like Twitter and Facebook with their social profiles. Once you have collected all the information from different channels, you can use it when your customers show up at your store.

Say, for example, if you know that your customer has recently bought a house then you can send them those offers on items like furniture or utility items or home decorators. The personalized offerings will create a greater interest in the customers.

Tracking the customers

Knowing the level of customer satisfaction you have delivered is something that every business looks ahead to know for. Now the best thing is that iBeacon technology can help you know the exact thing. As the iBeacons are connected to mobile apps present on the smartphones of the users, it is possible to collect various data. The data can then be analyzed and different statistical numbers can be generated about the customers without disturbing them in any manner. This way, once the customer has entered your store, you will be able to easily meet their needs even without having to employ a human agent. You can also keep track of your employees using iBeacon technology. You can know when your store had maximum footfalls or what time your employees came, etc.

Tracking the in-store movement of customers

It can be possible for your business to build a combined in-store and online experience through iBeacon technology. Based on how the customers are reacting within the store and what products they have viewed, it will be possible to offer precise information and discounts by tracking the in-store movement of customers. Such personalized information will influence the customers when it comes to making a purchase. Now, this can help the business with better conversion rates.

Finding the way around in the store

It can be overwhelming for the shoppers when they are walking around the aisles in big department stores. If they are not able to easily find what they are looking for, they may end up their shopping spree within a very short amount of time. With iBeacon technology, you can easily find a solution to this problem. You can offer the indoor mapping experience to the customers so that they can easily find what they are looking for in a very less amount of time.

One of the best examples that you can give in this regard is the use of beacon technology by Target. Target went ahead to come up with a location-based shopping cart for the customers. So by using the app of Target, the customers can easily build their own shopping list and easily find the location of the items they mentioned in there. The app also helped the customers to identify the distance of the products from them when they are moving around in the store. This helped them know whether they are moving towards the products or farther away from it.

A virtual salesman

Having a virtual salesman is always a good thing for your business when it comes to saving money while delivering customer satisfaction. Now you no more have to depend on your salesmen to reach the potential customers. Again, this will help you keep the salesmen at a distance so that they don’t intrude into the private space of the shoppers.

Just by checking the app, the customer will get all the information. Here the app works as the virtual salesmen and so all that the customer needs to do is to bring the app to the product and he or she will get all the information related to the product which even includes discounts. The customer can even compare the products based on price, features, etc.

Automation

Automation is said to be one of the main benefits of iBeacon technology. Whenever the customers using your mobile app will enter your store, the iBeacon will identify them and the doors of the store will be opened automatically. Apart from offering such a personalized facility to the customers, you can consider it as your apt advertising medium. Say, for example, once the customer has entered the store, you can welcome the users by sending in the list of recently added products at the store.

Marketing assistant

Now it is possible to offer an interactive experience to your customers and keep them engaging at your store using iBeacon apps. Say, for example, you can offer certain points to the customers when they walk through a certain aisle. The earned points can then be redeemed by the customer when they buy the product from that section. It is also possible to send push notifications to the customers when it comes to informing about the earned points. Such a thing will keep the customers engaged with the stores and they will keep coming back for more.

Micro location

We have been using GPS over the years for tracking and navigation. However, things are much different when you are inside a building complex. This is where iBeacon technology fits in. It comes with micro-location geofencing which helps you with easy navigation within the building when you have the mobile app installed on your smartphone.

Cost-effectiveness

iBeacon technology can quite be a cost-effective solution when compared to NFC. iBeacon device has a range of up to 50 meters while NFC only has up to 0.20 meters. This means you should be ready to spend more if you plan to set up NFCs for your business instead of choosing iBeacons. Moreover, the hardware that is used to build beacons is cheaper and you can easily install it anywhere you want without spending more.

Gathering feedback

Feedback works as a great resource for businesses to plan their future. Now the issue is that you cannot walk around people to ask for feedback so that you can make some improvements. Now you can easily collect feedback from the customers once they have left your place and iBeacon technology can help you with it. The customer can send back in their feedback whenever they want and this increases your chances of getting one. Based on the received feedback you can design offers for your customers and thus keep them excited towards your business.

Helps know about customer types

With the help of Beacon technology, it is possible for the store to know more about the customers and recognize them. They can easily recognize the unique customers, the loyal ones, the repeated customers, and the frequency of every customer visit. The store management can use such information to tailor their loyalty programs and rewards to be set for the customers. The customer with frequent visits should be the repeated customer of the store. So the retailer can send in unique offers as per the loyalty program directly to the app of that customer.