Location Services in Your App: What Business Owners Need to Know

Delivery and logistics, where real-time tracking helps coordinate drivers and customers, optimize routes, and provide accurate ETAs

Social networking apps that help users find nearby friends or events, enhancing local community-building

Fitness and health apps turning everyday activities into engaging fitness journeys

Travel and navigation solutions, from finding nearby attractions to providing turn-by-turn directions

IoT and smart devices that use location data to manage and monitor distributed networks

Augmented reality experiences blending digital content with real-world locations

But here's what we've learned about building location-based apps: the challenge isn't making your app location-aware, choosing the right GPS technology, or coding the perfect algorithm. The actual complexity lies in building a sustainable business around location services. Let's look at what this means.

What does it take to build a geolocation app?

Beneath the surface of every successful location-based app lies a complex web of technical and business decisions. Take our recent project - a delivery service app. The client came to us with a straightforward request: 'I want to see where my drivers are and connect them with nearby customers.' Simple enough, right? But as we dug deeper, we discovered how this apparent simplicity hides layers of business-critical decisions.

What level of location functionality do you need?

Location features exist on a spectrum; not every business needs real-time tracking with meter-level precision. Let's look at different levels of location functionality:

1

Basic location awareness - when you just need to know where something is:

Store locators just need a one-time user location check to show nearby outlets

E-commerce apps might only need delivery address validation

Content apps might need basic geofencing to handle region-specific content

2

Periodic location updates - when you track movement but not in real-time:

Fitness apps recording running routes

Fleet management systems tracking vehicle maintenance locations

IoT systems monitoring equipment movement between facilities

3

Real-time tracking - when immediate location updates are crucial:

Delivery services coordinating drivers and customers

Emergency response systems

Live asset tracking in logistics

Your choice dramatically impacts development costs, infrastructure needs, and ongoing expenses. In our delivery app case, we implemented real-time tracking because connecting drivers with nearby customers was the core business value. But investing in real-time tracking would be overkill if you're building a store locator, adding unnecessary complexity and costs.

What are the hidden costs?

Beyond initial development, location-based services come with ongoing operational expenses that can surprise business owners:

The good news is that there are ways to optimize these costs. Caching strategies can reduce API calls, and intelligent update intervals can balance precision with resource usage. Understanding these costs early in your planning process is key so they don't become unexpected burdens as your business grows.

Build custom or use existing solutions? 

This decision impacts far more than just your development timeline and costs. Let's take a moment to understand why working with maps and location data is more complex than it seems. What seems like a straightforward problem ('find the best route between multiple stops') is one of computer science's most complex challenges because each calculation requires evaluating countless possibilities to find the optimal solution, and this complexity grows exponentially with each additional stop.

That's why we chose Google OR-Tools for our delivery app's route optimization for our geolocation app development. When industry giants have invested years into solving these mathematical challenges, reinventing the wheel is hardly the best use of your resources.

The same principle applies to other location features. Whether mapping services, geocoding, or traffic data, established solutions often provide better results for a fraction of the cost of custom development. Custom development makes sense when you have unique requirements that existing solutions don't cover - but for core location functionality, proven solutions usually offer the best balance of reliability, performance, and cost.

How will your service scale? 

Location-based services face unique scaling challenges. Unlike traditional apps, which generate data only when users are active, location tracking creates a constant stream of data from every user. This means your infrastructure needs to grow with user count, tracking frequency, and precision.

Think of it this way: doubling your user base doesn't just mean doubling the servers—it means doubling the location updates, route calculations, and storage needs. And some costs grow even faster. In our delivery project, we discovered that route optimization complexity grows exponentially—calculating routes for ten deliveries isn't twice as complex as calculating routes for five deliveries; it's significantly more.

What happens when things go wrong?

In an ideal world, every device has perfect connectivity and infinite battery life. However, your location service needs to be resilient to many real-world problems. Your users will experience poor GPS accuracy in urban areas, spotty network coverage, unexpected app crashes, and battery drainage.

This isn't just about technical reliability - it's about business continuity. Do you need offline mode? How do you handle poor connectivity areas? What happens if location data is delayed or inaccurate? For our delivery app, offline mode wasn't just a nice-to-have feature – it was crucial for maintaining reliable service across different areas and conditions.

More importantly, what happens if location data gets compromised? Location data is among the most sensitive information you'll handle. A security breach could expose users' daily routines, frequently visited locations, and movement patterns. This brings us to our next crucial consideration...

What data will you collect, and how will you protect it?

Before you start collecting location data, you need clear answers to several critical questions:

1

Data collection and usage:

What location data do you need to provide your service?

How long do you need to keep this data?

How will you turn this data into business insights?

2

Privacy and security:

How will you protect user location data from breaches?

What privacy controls will you offer your users?

How will you handle data retention and deletion requests?

What regulatory requirements apply to your service (GDPR, CCPA)

The potential for business intelligence is enormous, from understanding movement patterns to optimizing service areas. However, this potential must be balanced against privacy concerns and security requirements. Your users trust you to know their whereabouts, and this trust needs to be earned and maintained.

What's the launch timeline? 

Location features creep into every part of your service, affecting your entire development timeline. You'll need time for infrastructure setup, core development, thorough real-world testing (crucial for location features), and an optimization period. The complexity increases if you build separate apps for different user types, as we did with courier and customer apps.

What kind of team will you need? 

This goes far beyond 'hiring a few developers.' Your needs will depend on your service type but expect to build or hire a diverse team. For a delivery service like our case study, you'd need mobile developers for user apps, backend specialists for real-time processing, and data engineers for route optimization. Even seemingly simple features like showing nearby points of interest require both front-end and back-end expertise.

Final words

Building a location-based service is complex but can transform your business when done right. The key is making informed decisions early about the required level of location functionality, your technical approach, your team composition, and your operational strategy.

It's a good thing you don't have to figure everything out alone. Working with experienced partners who've navigated these challenges can help you avoid common pitfalls and build a geolocation-based app that your users will love. Whether you're building a delivery app, a social network, or any other location-aware service, the right technical partner can help turn your vision into reality.