Wayfinder
Boosting business with indoor wayfinding advances
By Joe Fernandes, founder and CEO of BuzzStreets,
Whether a business needs to move people (customers, clients or staff) from A to B efficiently, or make the most of their business space (retail units or meeting rooms), digital wayfinding and the data it gathers is a gateway to the future and also the tool that will guide you there.
Outdoor navigation technology has been in your pocket for years; you have to make a real effort to buy a phone that isn’t capable of providing a detailed map of the world. But as fantastic as this technology is, the navigation—which is enabled via GPS—drops out when you enter a building. Despite the cool tricks dreamt up by Hollywood, satellite technology is actually not very good at picking up phone frequencies from within buildings.
That shouldn’t be a problem, because that’s where wayfinding comes in, but traditional wayfinding, delivered through signage and on-wall maps (the classic ‘you are here’ arrow or dot), has limits to its effectiveness.
Wayfinding helps people navigate from one section of a physical space to another area in that space via effective communication of relevant information. In addition, wayfinding should also augment a person’s experience of the environment and boost their understanding of the space they are moving through.
If wayfinding is doing its job:
- you know where you are
- you know what your destination is
- the route to your destination is clear and easy to follow
- your destination is easy to recognise when you reach it
- and your way back is clear
How does digital wayfinding work?
Frustrated customers, wandering around aimlessly looking for specific services or brands, or not knowing which services and brands are available is not good for the businesses operating in a shopping centre or mall. Yet 69% of customers who visit a shopping mall get lost at least three times. Employing digital wayfinding can help reduce the number of lost shoppers, plus boost footfall: a 41% increase in footfall has been attributed to wayfinding technologies in shopping malls.
Indoor wayfinding, developed by companies like BuzzStreets, uses a system of BLE Beacons, Wi-Fi signals, and the Earth’s magnetic field to pinpoint the person’s location, giving them real-time directions, both spoken and visual, to allow them to navigate through a building, both horizontally and vertically.
When the person arrives at a shopping mall/sports stadium/office building, etc., they open the app and key in the location they want. The app then calculates a route from their current location to the point in the building they need: it shows a map of the location, and their route is clearly marked. Just like traditional car sat-nav systems they then press ‘start’ and the app visually shows them where to head and audibly advises them.
As they progress along the route the app constantly updates showing them where they are and giving them regular voice and visual updates to show them where and when to turn, go straight-on, or change floors. It will also let the person know when they have arrived at their destination. However, unlike car sat-nav the system is accurate to 1-2metres as the ‘sensors’ are within the building (not 12,000 miles away in space).
This means it can take a person direct to their seat, or a specific shop, or even a location within a shop.
Additional data availability
There are advantages to retail businesses beyond keeping customers chipper; digital wayfinding technology can gather extremely useful anonymous navigation data:
- How do people move around your shopping centre?
- Where does your shopping centre get the highest footfall?
- What route do they take to the car park?
- When are people most likely to buy food?
Data can help answer all of these questions and many more. Shopping centres can use this data to optimise their environments to improve the user experience, save money, and market their available retail spaces.
If a specific area of a shopping centre gets particularly high foot traffic, the retail space around it may be worth a lot more (in terms of rent) than areas with less footfall. Centre owners can then maximise the value of their space. If an event is being planned in the shopping centre (perhaps a fashion show to promote the centre’s clothing brands, or a concert by local schoolchildren to raise money for charity, or a Christmas grotto), data can help determine the ideal location to host the event that will cause the minimum of disruption and/or identify the areas with the type of footfall that is most appropriate for the event.
Airport wayfinding
Digital wayfinding provides similar solutions to similar issues for airport operators (even if they may baulk at comparisons to shopping malls). There is no reason to expect finding the correct gate at an airport should be anything other than easy, but 74% of travellers report having had a bad experience trying to find their gate. Airports tend to be complex places; often airports have been extended several times. They are extremely busy places with numerous retail and food & beverage outlets competing for the attention of travellers with their own eye-catching signage, and frequently there are ongoing construction projects or temporary restrictions, and when abroad, signage in a foreign language is added to the mix.
By easing the flow of travellers (most of whom will be much less familiar with the airport than they are with their local mall), digital wayfinding can improve the experience of being in an airport environment, and data gathering can answer similar questions about footfall, routes taken and demand on facilities, perhaps identifying if improvements or expansion of car parking or public transport options are required. A digital wayfinding app can also help outlets sell more by making vouchers and discounts available.
Additional wayfinding opportunities
In addition to aiding the businesses based at airports and shopping centres, digital wayfinding can also bring benefits to hospitals, sports stadiums, entertainment venues, university campuses, fairs and large offices. Clients arriving at an unfamiliar office environment can become lost in a maze of floors and corridors. They can arrive late and flustered to meetings without any time to set up their laptop for a presentation or even make a pre-match visit to the little boys’/girls’ room. The result is stressed clients and ramshackle presentations.
Again, data gathered by digital wayfinding technology can be very useful:
- How do people move around your office?
- What route do they take to the train station?
- Is there a better way to manage meeting rooms?
- Why are people visiting your office in the first place?
- Where do staff tend to congregate?
- Are certain spaces underused?
By providing answers to all of these questions, wayfinding gathered data can allow businesses to optimise their environments and also their resources – the technology is so much more useful than just moving from A to B.
About the Author
Joe Fernandes is founder and CEO of BuzzStreets, an award-winning navigation platform, that enables organisations (hospitals, shopping malls, airports, offices, stadiums, etc.) to offer their customers an indoor way-finder that allows them to navigate inside the building. The client arrives at the entrance or reception and then uses the bespoke app to navigate to the specific location (room, shop, check-in, office, or even seat) they need. BuzzStreets also supplies movement analytics that can help improve building efficiency and keep track of vital equipment.
https://www.facebook.com/buzzstreets/
Sponsors
