Running an online business is tough with many competitors around. Seems like most traditional businesses are either already in the online space or transitioning in order to survive in the current challenging times. Integrating IP geolocation into your business can bring about multiple benefits which we’ll cover below.
What is IP geolocation?
In case you don’t know what is IP geolocation, it’s a process of determining a web visitor’s geographical information based on their IP address. Given an IP address, information such as the country, region, city and ZIP code for that web visitor can be found. The info mentioned can be very useful for marketing, sales conversion, fraud detection and much more.
Helps to improve marketing efforts
With ads campaigns playing a huge role in attracting Internet traffic to your website, it helps when you have data about what the audience likes to see and what works for various localities. Geolocation enables the merchants to pinpoint what kind of advertisements are effective for a particular region. Armed with this info, they can opt to boost their advertising budget to capitalize on that. Geo-targeted campaigns not only saves money but also improves sales conversion when done right.
Highlight relevant products for the region
Often, people get overwhelmed when presented with a huge variety of products to select from. Therefore, a highly curated list of featured products can work wonders for the customer’s decision-making process. Geolocation and historical buying patterns can predict what items will sell very well. E.g., a region that is known to have heavy snowfall might be more inclined to purchase snow gear like warm parkas, skis and so forth. Show the right items to the right folks and you’ve got a sale.
Adjust pricing by location
In a world where demand can affect pricing, merchants can optimize their pricing to maximize revenue. People staying in areas of higher disposable incomes tend to choose more expensively priced goods. Hence, merchants can increase their price markup for these areas.
Detect online order fraud
This is one use of geolocation that should be mandatory for all online stores. When orders are made online, the geolocation of the IP address where the order originated from can help pinpoint possible fraud. For example, the billing address states Los Angeles but the geolocation shows Nigeria, that’s a huge sign of credit card fraud. Every online merchant should protect themselves against such fraudulent activities.
Tip: FraudLabs Pro can protect online stores easily against fraud.
Licensing compliance
Nowadays, it’s common to sell digital goods like software, music and movies online. The merchant will have signed a contract with the provider of said goods. In the contract, there is usually a requirement to limit sale of items to only specific countries or regions due to licensing restrictions. By utilizing IP geolocation, this requirement can be easily met.