How location technology helps developers create exceptional app experiences

Advice for developers on navigating the new era of location-permissions, improving your understanding of your users, and much more.

Introduction

Experience. It’s arguably the most important factor to any app's success. Users crave personalized, engaging content and features, and marketers want to serve users with compelling, relevant messaging that augments (not detracts) from the overall app experience.

This puts a lot of pressure on developers to create apps that:

1. Deliver an enriching consumer experience from day one.
2. Provide the brand or enterprise behind the app with the consumer insights needed to constantly improve user experience.
3. Help brands/enterprises better engage with users through personalized messaging.

Achieving success across all three categories is no easy feat -- unless you’re using a key not-so-secret ingredient: location data and technology.

Read on to learn more about how location data and technology can help developers:

1. Tips for success in the new location-permissions era.
2. Understand who your users are, where they go, and what their interests are by gathering detailed behavioral insights and visit histories.
3. Create engaging in-app experiences.
4. Reach users with contextually relevant and geo-aware content.

Burning questions developers may have about their users:

• How often do they visit restaurants, gyms, or shops? • How far are they willing to travel for certain goods and services? • What kind of lifestyle do my users live? • What hobbies, activities, and interests do they have? • What previously unseen behaviors do they adopt over time?

Five steps for a better, more engaging app experience that benefits users and developers alike.

Step 1. Getting to know the “permission” landscape

For location technology to unlock its full experience-enhancing potential, developers need access to users’ location data. Naturally, most developers want users to opt-in to "always-on" location sharing, as this gives the developers a persistent view into users' movements, and therefore a deeper understanding of their behavioral preferences. As a result, developers can create more personalized marketing and outreach efforts and continuously improve their app to better meet user needs.

But as more consumers pay closer attention to how their data is collected and used and big players like Apple and Android make moves to give consumers more control over their privacy, developers are worried that the number of users who will willingly share their location data may dwindle.

In order for developers to get an "always-on" view into their users' movements, they first need them to consent to share their background location data. To boost user opt-in, we recommend that developers first become familiar with the user-permission practices for each operating system (OS):

Apple iOS: With iOS 13, app users were given three options for location sharing: "Only when app is open," "Always allow," or "Don't allow"—but Apple's permission standards are changing. iOS 14 introduced the option of sharing their precise or approximate location. These new permissions allow users to specify the precision of the locations they share, choosing between an approximate region and a precise location coordinate. This creates an even further segmented permission matrix: all the old permission options about when the app may access location crossed with the new permission options about how precise those locations should be.

Table of iOS location permission options

If a user opts out of “Precise Location,” an app will receive low-frequency, imprecise data about the user’s location. For this reason, it is very important that an app identify when a user has opted out of “Precise Location.”

In the new Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) flow, an app can request access to the IDFA via a prompt to the user. If the user opts to allow tracking, the app will be able to access the IDFA via the same method as before. The user also has a global “Allow Apps to Request to Track” switch which they can toggle to suppress all IDFA prompts moving forward. As users upgrade to iOS 14, their permissions will be maintained but iOS prompts will periodically remind them of their background location being shared.

Google Android: With Android 11, Android's most recent OS, users have three location permissions options:

• "While Using this App"
• “Only this time”
• "Deny" access

If the user has selected "While Using the App" the next step is to push them to Settings to enable "Allow all the time" -- this can be done immediately following the native location prompt or on a subsequent launch with a primer to give the user more context on the need for that permission.

Android also requires that if app developers require background location tracking, that they have a valid use reason for capturing that data. It needs to be user-facing and properly disclosed to users. Google specifies that the language in the disclosure MUST include the following elements:

• The term “location”
• An indication that the nature of usage is in the background by using one of the following phrases “background” / “when the app is closed” / “always in use” / “when the app is not in use”
• A list of the feature or all the features that use location in the background
• If you extend permitted usage to ads, you must include the following: “used to provide ads/support advertising/support ads.” (Choose the most accurate phrasing).

Step 2. Boost opt-in rates

Once you understand both Apple and Android’s user-permission practices, developers can take certain steps to boost background location-sharing opt-in rates. Here are a few tips:

Tell users ‘why’: Historically, users are happy to grant permission because they understand that location powers the app, and simply want to clear the dialogue box to explore. Use notifications to tell the user what app features location powers (e.g., location-based notifications), see its value, and are less likely to deny location permissions when prompted.

Demonstrate value: Additionally, developers should demonstrate the value of location in the first few days of the app's use. By showcasing the value that users receive from "always-on" location and Pilgrim SDK, developers can ensure that users won't disable background location-sharing when the next OS prompt appears.

Choose your words wisely: To increase background location-sharing opt-in rates, developers must craft effective consent language.

When it comes to opt-in language, users are most receptive to direct and transparent messaging that explains how data is collected and what the app’s sharing practices are. The most impactful opt-in language will be short—about 50 words or less—and clearly explain the following:

• Why the app needs the user’s location information
• How location data is used
• What your sharing practices are
• What the value of sharing location is to users

Foursquare put this theory to the test with our own apps -- check out our experiment to see which language worked best.

Here’s what we recommend:

1. Display the opt-in prompt before the OS displays its prompt. That way, location permissions are only requested after users have already indicated they will agree.
2. As Apple's guidelines suggest, show users the location-enabled feature before asking for location permission, so they have the correct context for the feature that their location powers.
3. Alternately, display a series of onboarding screens that explain the use of location and/or notifications. We’ve found that explanations of pings dramatically increase the number of users who opt-in to them.

Step 3. Get to know your users.

Developers are often on the hunt for features that will enable them to build better app experiences and create more relevant content by helping them to learn more about their users.

Now that you’ve assured your users of the value of opting-in to location sharing, location-based features can help you uncover where your users like to go, why they make purchase decisions, and how to reach them with powerful messaging. Indeed, visibility into users’ precise locations and venues they visit (supplied via foot-traffic data) helps developers paint a picture of each user’s lifestyle and affinities based on the frequency and recency.

Here are just a few ways that location-based features can deliver immediate value to developers:

1. Generate detailed behavioral insights and visit histories

Say you’re a popular quick-service restaurant (QSR) chain, and you’d like to send push notifications for a new healthy salad offer to users who visit fitness centers two to three times a week.

With Snap-to-Place, which is a core part of Foursquare’s Pilgrim SDK's visit detection technology, developers can determine, with a high degree of confidence, when a user has visited a specific venue. Snap-to-Place uses machine learning to passively identify when someone has visited a place, without any direct action from the user. Such location-based pings consider the frequency and recency of when users have visited specific chains or venue categories (i.e., fitness centers) to create more targeted communications.

2. Ping users the moment they approach or enter a location

Developers often want to equip an app with the ability to know when a user is nearing or has entered a venue.

With Pilgrim SDK's geofencing feature, developers know when a user is nearing or has entered, a venue depending on set thresholds. This is invaluable information for developers who want to ping users the moment they enter a location, instead of waiting two to three minutes for Foursquare's visit detection technology (i.e., Snap-to-Place, featured above) to provide a more accurate prediction. Developers can also ping users who are approaching a venue, helping to convince them to stop rather than walk past.

3. Understand when and where consumers move through the world

a. To help developers understand when and where consumers move through the world— which in turn provides them with actionable data and the context needed to drive better app experiences and allows them to reach people on stops that already are a part of their weekly routine -- Foursquare created three user states: Home/Work, Commute, and Travel.

b. Home/Work and Commute: When developers understand where consumers live and work, they can reach them at the right place, at the right time. With Home/Work, you gain deeper context into daily patterns. After 3-7 days of use, Pilgrim SDK will determine the user's home and work location. Commute knows when consumers leave home or work—automatically flagging these repeat destinations—between the hours of 7 to 10 a.m. or 4 to 6 p.m. on weekdays.

c. Travel: This feature empowers developers to cater to consumer travel preferences, as well as reach consumers as they move to new locations. Travel understands when consumers move farther than 200 miles from their homes such as when users are on vacation. Consumers are considered "traveling" until they return to a 200-mile radius of their homes, or when they establish a new "home"—defined as a new area that’s visited for more than 17 days.

Step 4: Give users fun features.

Your users can also enjoy the direct benefits of powerful, accurate, and rich location data. Point-of-interest (POI) data tools -- such as Foursquare’s Places API -- can be built into an app to enable users to:

• Navigate and explore: Let users see what places are in the surrounding area when searching for a place to eat, drink, or explore. • Need-to-know facts: Provide users with all the info they need about a venue -- including how far away it is, prices of goods/services, and operating hours. • Geo-tagging: Enables users to geo-tag their photos and add detailed, contextually relevant information about the location in the photo. • Find reviews: Help users to surface curated photos and other place-related content directly in users’ guidebooks, giving them a fuller depiction of what is surrounding where they are staying. • Add venue social handles: Let users easily add the venue’s social media handles to posts with ease.

Step 5: Reach the right audiences with the right message.

To build effective marketing campaigns across platforms and devices, developers need to target the right audiences with personalized messaging. Pilgrim SDK Segments provides the data-driven insight needed to reach specific consumer groups and cater directly to their needs.

Using 750 predefined user segments—such as the Super Shopper, the Technophile, and the Foodie— enterprises, and brands can target audiences with highly tailored messaging, or even empower advertisers to send behavior-based campaigns.

There are several options for user data-delivery methods, including:

• Webhook to an MMA partner including mParticle, Braze, and Iterable
• Export via Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
• Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

Foursquare can help you create custom user segments, improve targeting and personalization, or employ a data-centric approach to engage with key customer segments and improve customer loyalty. Segments can be based on different windows of time, looking back 30, 60, 90 days, or beyond. Once Segments are turned on, they are updated and published to your AWS S3 bucket every two weeks. Note that users must opt-in to location permissions for developers to use this feature.

How we do it

Foursquare uses a data-driven approach to build these segments, analyzing several consumer attributes, including:

• Demographics—age and gender
• Category depth—the types of places, like restaurants or gyms, that users visit
• Ratings—the popularity of the places that users visit
• Pricing—the amount that users are willing to spend
• Visitation history—the frequency and recency of user visits

The key takeaway

Location data and technology can go a long way in helping developers achieve their mission of delivering superior app experiences. By using tools like Foursquare’s Pilgrim SDK and Places, developers can:

• Understand who your users are, where they go, and what their interests are by gathering detailed behavioral insights and visit histories. • Create engaging in-app experiences. • Reach users with contextually relevant and geo-aware content.

To learn more about how developers can deploy location data and technology, reach out to us at Foursquare.com.

A word on privacy

To use the features discussed in this e-book, developers must follow laws and regulations that protect consumer privacy. That means including a privacy policy for users that’s transparent about laws, regulations, and industry standards, and clearly mentioning that the app uses Pilgrim and data can be transmitted to third parties. It goes without saying that the app needs to follow the guidelines of data protection laws when processing relevant personal data, and abide by the Privacy Shield Principles.

Lastly, it’s critically important that anyone using Pilgrim SDK has a privacy policy that covers location consent. If a privacy policy doesn’t exist, please connect with a legal professional. Before building with Pilgrim, remember to review Foursquare’s privacy policy.

Foursquare is the leading independent location technology company, powered by our deep understanding of how people move throughout the world. Our solutions help businesses make smarter decisions, developers create more engaging experiences, and brands build more effective marketing strategies.