Peculiar times we live in. We’re happy to share our lives through social networks, letting Facebooks and Twitters of the world gather our personal information and yet we’ve become extremely vocal about protecting privacy and wary of allowing apps too much access. Location data is something people are particularly cautious about, so how do you, as a developer, put their minds at ease?
We’ve looked at a couple of successful examples of asking for Location Services permissions.
With great data, comes great responsibility
Fine-grained location data is a superpower. If anyone still doubts that, just read the Foursquare analysis of Chipotle foot traffic. They predicted a 30% YoY drop in revenue for Chipotle’s first quarter. The actual result? Sales plummeted 29.7%. Wealth of location data and traffic patterns let an app for discovering places predict performance of another business.
But location is not only powerful because of data. Location is also a crucial part of understanding user’s context and delivering a better experience. Examples like Google Maps and Uber are obvious, but there’s much more to location-based services than that, ranging from aforementioned Foursquare and Facebook’s Place Tips to a neat Slack extension called note.cntxt. And beacons make location even more potent. Foursquare’s data is based mostly on GPS. With beacons, you can take a much deeper look into traffic patterns. Estimote partners use our new Analytics API to gather information about what happens in store sections or even individual aisles. This is a superpower squared: like Wolverine bit by a radioactive spider.
The problem with superpowers is that it’s not only heroes who use them. As any fan of Jessica Jones will tell you, it’s villains that get the coolest powers. And consumers don’t want to bestow superpowers upon villains. Especially the annoying, digital ones like spammers or bad marketers who think the most effective way to drive conversions is shower people with notifications nevermind the context. And so we are reluctant to grant apps permission to use Location Services. If someone can predict company’s revenue from aggregated traffic information, what could they learn about your life?
Becoming a superhero
Both iOS and Android apps require users to opt in for location-based services. So you need to make sure users trust that you’re a a good guy and your app will provide them with something valuable. Here’s the trick, though: you only have one shot at this. If a user opens your app and dismisses the Location Services permission, you’re unlikely to ever get them back. And you only have a couple of seconds of their attention, so use it wisely. Cluster’s Brenden Mulligan summed it up well:
In other words, if the user denies access, the app won’t work properly — and it’s nearly impossible to explain how to fix it. This means developers need to do everything they can to get users to tap “Allow”.
Notify Nearby, a retail app that’s using beacons to deliver offers with 67% engagement rate, has a good approach. They need three types of permissions: notifications, locations, and Bluetooth. That’s a lot and they’re upfront about this.
The app automatically detects what is disabled and allows you to enable it from the same screen without overwhelming you with information:
Stealz is an app for discovering local deals that works with almost 1,000 businesses, including the likes of McDonald’s and Taco Bell. When the app is running, it uses GPS data to show offers nearby. If it’s the background, it passively scans for beacons to alert users of available deals. The app explains this in two steps. First it encourages users to enable Location Services and discover offers in vicinity.
Then it explains the difference between GPS and iBeacon scanning. It’s clever: many consumers are still unaware of beacons, so the pop-up also serves educational purpose.
It is usually a good idea to display a customized notification to make it more polished. But sometimes you’re just as good with a default OS-level template. This is how Close.by, an app that introduced the idea of Merchant Pairings to local businesses in New Jersey, does it. No bells and whistles, just short value proposition laid down in front of the user:
The above are examples related to commerce and marketing. But location data can be useful in a host of other contexts. Robin helps companies manage conference rooms and track presence across the office. The app lets you quickly check where are your colleagues and enables them to find you. But it would be creepy if it didn’t allow you to go offline anytime you wanted. Robin does a good job of addressing that. They use a single screen to not only ask for Location Services permission but also educate users how to take care of privacy.
Be cool, but also be warm
That subheading is one of the loading messages displayed by Slack and it perfectly sums up how you should design your location permission request. Don’t hesitate to create a custom, polished pop-up explaining why you need to use Location Services. But above all, remember that people value their privacy and understand that location data is a superpower they’d rather not bestow upon a villain. So empathize with them. Be crystal clear and concise. Make it easy for them not only to grant you permission, but also to understand why they’re doing that.
And remember: with great power comes great responsibility!
Wojtek Borowicz, Community Evangelist at Estimote