Backendless Geolocation is a system that can store and manage geospatial information in your backend. With geolocation, you have the ability to build applications that utilize location information to deliver a variety of services, from delivery and vehicle tracking to user segmentation and notification targeting. Read on to learn how we make it easy to build location-aware apps for a variety of real-world applications.
Use Case
Location Aware Apps
Location-Based Experiences
The Problem:
Your app needs the ability to run a geography-based search. This could be searching on a map, within a radius or by distance. Your users may need to be able to locate people or businesses, need to identify certain landmarks such as hotels, gas stations, restaurants, etc. Or perhaps you need to get more specific with your search, including details such as user rating, brand/chain, or property type to filter the results within the given area. Geolocation searching has a wide range of uses.
The Solution:
Backendless Geolocation gives you the flexibility to search for geopoints within a map, radius, or a certain distance from a given point, as well as the ability to narrow that search using specific criteria. For example, if you want to offer users the ability to search for a hotel in a given area, you can also allow them to narrow that search by star rating, price, brand, room size, amenities, and anything else you need.
Location Tracking
The Problem:
Your app is going to communicate the location of an item to the backend. That item may be a driver (such as for a ride-sharing service), a package or groceries (such as for a delivery service), or an employee (such as for a business with a mobile workforce). Gathering this information is necessary to give your customers accurate locations of your drivers or their orders and to track your employees to ensure they are staying on-task.
The Solution:
With Backendless’s geolocation service, you can easily track the location of a mobile device, or give your app users the capability to log locations through an app. That way, whether you’re the next Uber or DoorDash, or wanting to offer a solution to other services companies with their own mobile workforce, you have that capability within your backend.
Proximity-Based Solutions
The Problem:
If you run a business with a storefront or provide a proximity-based service, you want to entice customers with your app to respond when they are nearby. Your app knows the location of the customer, so you just want to know when they’re nearby and ready to buy.
The Solution:
Backendless gives you the ability to target notifications based on location-based criteria. Not only that, but you can get even more specific, only sending those notifications during business hours, for example, or tailoring the offer to vary based on the customer’s behavior, such as frequency of visits or average purchase value. Backendless supports both a beacon approach (for highly accurate locating) and geofence approach (for casting a wider net).
Understanding Your Users
The Problem:
No matter what your business model, knowing where your users are can be invaluable. Whether you want to offer location-specific deals, inform users about local events, or better understand the cultural background of your userbase, knowing their location is a key to all of the above. The ability to target notifications and offers as well as curate content based on user location information is a powerful asset for any business.
The Solution:
We live in a connected world, where all entities are interconnected with relationships. For example, an individual has related “data points” such as an address, credit card account, bank accounts, etc. Your application is no different; every user has other data that may be connected with them. If your backend doesn’t handle these connections automatically, then you must rely on your own code to do so. Backendless gives you the ability to easily create those connections through the use of relational data tables, where you can tie your users’ locations to their other information such as username and habits within your app. You can explore your user location effortlessly through our graphical location management interface. You can also search for users by location, then target push notifications or pub/sub messages based on that location.