iBeacon is one of the most recent and hottest technologies today, the benefits of indoor micro location accuracy open many doors to all sorts of advantages, analyses and different ways to enhance user experience. The first and most basic part of the implementation is the installation of your beacons. After choosing where to install the devices, the general 2,5 to 4m height locations will require you to install the beacons carefully in order to achieve long-term durability and effectiveness.
The idea of managing this technology on a creative level in order to get the most out of it means the simplest parts should be dealt with, swiftly and properly. Your creative efforts will be in vain, should your beacons fall down and get lost along the way.
As means of installation, most devices you can get your hands on either have double-sided tapes or require some sort of montage with screws etc. Since the tape solution provide you with a less “permanent” solution and gives you the opportunity to change your decisions with minimal physical change to your surroundings, this is the way we prefer when providing our services to the customers.
As simple as it may sound, there are a couple of points you should pay close attention to, in order to avoid unnecessary inconveniences later on: choice of surface for installation and concealing your devices.
The surface you need to choose, considering the average double-sided tape, should be as smooth as possible. Excessively ragged surfaces will make it harder for the adhesive to bond the beacons, resulting in unwanted misplacement. Also, surfaces such as the ones painted with whitewash, that have an excessive amount of dust particles on them will also affect the tape in a negative way. Other than these, metal, wooden and plastic surfaces that are clean and smooth enough are more than adequate to choose as an installation point for the beacons, regardless of whether you install the device sideways or upsidedown – based on our experiences with our very own devices. Another point that you should be careful about is to avoid glass, since wet cleaning can result in undesired situations – whether your device is waterproof or not – it is best to minimalize the risks as much as possible. If you are planning to install your iBeacons outdoors, be sure to keep them safe from precipitation as much as possible. It is evident that some beacons claim to be weatherproof, but we strongly recommend to be safe than sorry.
The other critical point you should take into consideration is concealing your devices. As an end-to-end service provider in the iBeacon sector, we care and stick by our customers in the event of lost devices due to petty theft or vandalism, however this is not the situation in many of the devices you can procure. The design of an iBeacon is important, no doubt about it, but one should not forget that this is a technological service, and the longevity of the system and the end results are more important – substance over flash. Therefore, instead of exhibiting your beacons out in the open where everyone can see and easily access them, we recommend you conceal the devices with respect to the use case scenario you have in mind and find the optimal spots for installing them.
The end user experience will depend solely on the notification and content quality you
pursue, instead of proudly showing off the beacons. High up surfaces, or concealed spots like behind the counters shoud provide enough concealment while leaving the signal strength unhindered. It does not mean that you should have each and every device hidden away from sight, but it goes without saying
that it is logical to slightly conceal them as much as you can. Do not forget – you are not trying to promote the iBeacon company, you are trying to utilize this technology to promote your very own, and stolen devices will not make this process easier for you.
Being an end-to-end service provider for iBeacons gives us, Blesh, a unique opportunity to experience each and every step from the most technically complex ones to the simplest things you need to do. Therefore, being one of the few companies of the iBeacon ecosystem, we believe that sharing experiences and warning about soft spots is a must to all companies in this sector, in order to get to a point that the optimal effectiveness can be achieved by the most critical part of any business – the customers that we serve.