Geolocation: What is it, and what does it mean for my online business?
Speed and convenience have become driving factors when it comes to online behaviours, particularly on smart devices, so being able to provide these will stand retailers in much greater stead.
Recognising this demand for convenience, Loqate has created an innovative new feature –geolocation – which helps eliminate the need to type address details in your mobile optimised forms, minimising cognitive load and greatly reducing address entry errors.
So, what is geolocation? Well, put simply, it is an add-on feature to Loqate’s address verification tool that is currently available in the UK, specifically designed with mobile users in mind. When your customers reach the address entry stage of a website, rather than having to manually type an address, geolocation allows them to simply click a button and the user’s current location is found.
Not only is the feature great from a UX perspective, it is also brilliant from a data quality perspective. Accurate addresses are fully-formatted using AddressBase Premium - the UK’s most comprehensive data set.
The AddressBase Premium data set holds an additional 3 million addresses to Royal Mail’s PAF, cross-referencing third-party data sets. As the most accurate geographic data set in the UK, it allows a property to be located to within 10 cm.
Geolocation uses smart technology that allows addresses to be returned in real-time. These addresses are based on geocodes that come from the location services on your device, mainly the GPS (the Global Positioning System). GPS is a global navigation system that is made up of a minimum of 24 satellites, which orbit the Earth.
Constant streams of data are transmitted to Earth, and this data is received by smartphones and other devices. The position of a device from satellites is measured by trilateration, and allows access to global local information, such as road directions.
Once your customer’s current location has been determined, we are then able to convert it to the most accurate longitude and latitude to return a complete address, based on a radius of 50 metres. This means the data you capture will be clean and accurate, and services and products can be delivered directly to your customer’s location.
Find out more about how geolocation will help optimise your mobile forms.