The standard cocktail of wireless services — dial tone, text messaging, e-mail, Internet browsing — offers communications service providers few opportunities to set themselves apart from the competition. But what if they could offer customers a way to find a conveniently located restaurant with specific amenities when they’re traveling — one that serves Angus steak and their favorite beer and accepts their Discover card? What if a service provider could warn a customer against wasting a trip to the local mall because none of the stores carry the running shoes she wants, then direct her to a shoe store close to her office that does?

 

These are the kind of services consumers want their providers to offer through mobile devices: Practical applications that make their everyday lives simpler and more convenient. Consumers are going to the Web to find businesses the way they used to go to the Yellow Pages. Businesses — especially small local businesses — want to take advantage of that trend with Web presences that provide detailed information delivered through computers or handheld devices. Communications providers are in a strong position to be the essential conduit between consumers and the merchants.

 

They can do that through a new generation of hosted services that expand their portfolios without capital expenses or long implementation cycles. The only obstacle to widespread adoption of these “location-driven services” is the dated perception among some businesses that maintaining an updated Web presence is too labor intensive. Operators, however, are increasingly offering services that make establishing an active, detailed Web presence even easier than buying an ad in the Yellow Pages. This is the right time for them to expand their portfolios into a profitable new area that represents Web commerce’s next major flavor — location-driven services.

 

Most businesses have some kind of Web presence these days, be it a full Web site or listings in niche portals specializing in a geographic area or a specific industry— anything from restaurants to law firms to hardware stores. These listings usually cover the basic information: name, location, business, description of services, contact information. They are either free or inexpensive, so price is not often a barrier to entry.

 

The problem with these listings is that they don’t give deep levels of detail that enable businesses to distinguish themselves from the competition – and they can be laborious to update for every relevant search engine and portal. Essentially, today’s Web listings and search engines are the White and Yellow Pages for the Internet — but without taking advantage of the Internet’s inherent flexibility. Without that flexibility, what’s the point?

 

For example, consider a local clothing store that’s changing over from summer to fall inventory. The owner wants to promote end-of-summer discounts to clear out last season’s inventory and bring in customers to look at the new merchandise. She is also carrying new brands by a popular designer. She could advertise in the mainstream media, but that’s expensive and done in one shot. Yellow Pages listings have a longer shelf life than media advertising, but they only change once a year. Web listings have long shelf lives and are easily updated, but at a high cost in time and repetitive labor.

 

Or at least that has been the perception. The reality is that providers have now married the Web’s flexibility with conventional advertising’s convenience and economy to offer easily accessible location-driven services.

 

The aforementioned clothing store owner subscribes to a location-driven service through her phone provider. The location-driven service provides a broad array of tools for attracting business. A simple Web-based check-off menu enables her to describe her business in terms of brands, products and services carried. Free-text fields let her type in the detailed terms that make her store unique — special services she offers, her store hours, seasonal promotions, etc. Now, if a customer within 50 miles of her shop types a phrase like “fall fashion,” “summer discount” or “Hermes scarf” into a browser, the store owner’s Web listing will appear, complete with a link to her own Web site.

 

But how does this business owner avoid the redundant labor of entering the information into as many search engines and niche portals as she needs? This is where a service-provider offering shows its value. By subscribing to her service provider’s location-driven services, she has one-stop access to as many as 85 percent of the local searches she needs through the most popular search engines and niche portals. Adding content that attracts consumers — payment types accepted, hours of operation etc., — is just as easy. Updates are “one and done”: one change is distributed to all of the portals and search engines to which the service provider is connected.

 

Location-driven services are a potential advantage for service providers attempting to distinguish themselves in a competitive market. By offering location-driven services that are readily available, service providers can stand out from the standard mix of mobile and fixed-voice and data services that are equally associated with most of their competitors.

 

There is a growing need in the market for a richer array of new-generation search services. As many as 80 percent of consumers say they do some of their local searches online. The next generation of successful service providers will be those that help them find the right shoes and the right food at the right place and time.

 

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