Beacons

Interaction on demand

Coaster CMS is a beacon enabled content management system. Beacons amongst other purposes, allow your website to directly interact with your customers within a physical location such as a shop. Customers will be able to receive special deals, news and other offers when they come into proximity of a beacon. Beacons can also direct your customers to specific web pages on your Coaster CMS powered website such as a product page or contact us page.

Coaster utilises the Kontakt.io API to integrate with their beacon technology. Any beacons you possess can be added, monitored and administered through Coaster's administration panel.

What are beacons?

A beacon is a small Bluetooth radio transmitter. Think of it like a small lighthouse: it constantly transmits a signal that devices can see. Instead of light, they emit a very short-range radio signal transmitted on a regular interval of approximately 1/10th of a second. A Bluetooth-equipped device like a smartphone can “see” a beacon once it is in range. Depending on both devices’ proximity, a smartphone can perform several different actions. It can update an indoor map with your location, open a lock, or even change the music in your house as you walk from room to room. Beacons are a key technology in connecting the power of the Internet to our everyday life.

The key to the power of Beacons is that they are ‘location aware’ meaning that the information they broadcast is tailored to their location. This means that the user experience is incredibly valuable as there is no need to sift through irrelevant data. The experience can also be very personal to the user, as mobile phones are very personal devices.

Why Proximity?

Proximity data is incredibly valuable to both the end user and the owner of the Beacon. Users gain access to much more specific data and Beacon owners have access to how that data is being used and interacted with. The level of engagement that is possible and the data that can be collected are like nothing previously available. How people move through venues and locations, what they do whilst they are doing it are just the top level of detail that can be collected.

Per BI Intelligence, there will be about 4.5 million active beacons by the end of 2018, with three and a half million of these in use by retailers. Airspace Network reports that UK brands value proximity marketing so much that 79 percent of them are considering investing in it in the next six months. Nearly four in five respondents are currently investing in or trying it. For the clear majority of brands, the ability to gather rich data about their customers is a key driver for these actions. Apart from data-based opportunities, there are two other reasons behind this immense interest in beacons: affordability and flexibility.

Beacons are relatively low-cost and easy to implement compared to other Internet of Things solutions. Ronald L. Bowers, senior vice president for business development with retail consultant Frank Mayer & Associates, said in an interview for NRF: (https://nrf.com/news/brave- new-world)

"Kontakt.io helps build the world’s best proximity solutions. Our platform puts the real world in contact with the Internet of Things by connecting devices with proximity awareness to the cloud. Kontakt.io goes beyond beacons to do this, and has a full suite of innovative technology, starting with Bluetooth Low Energy beacons and moving on with a variety of other hardware and software technologies, and we make it simple for any business or serious hobbyist to create the Bluetooth application or business of their dreams."

Buy your beacons from Kontakt's online store here - https://store.kontakt.io/.

Find out how to manage your beacons with Coaster CMS here.

Other Beacons

We have also added support for Estimote beacons (http://estimote.com/)

More information

What can I use beacons for?

"Interact with your customers using beacons."