Location data is rapidly becoming an indispensable analysis resource for large and small businesses. MapBusinessOnline enables the import of any industry’s location-based data. As long as the data includes a column(s) for location, you’re good – address, latitude/longitude, or other geographic fields. Just import your data and play with symbolization and color-coding tools on a business map.
A case in point is a billboard advertising business’s requirement for traffic data. Many of you reading this blog haven’t considered who is responsible for setting up billboards along a major highway and how they do it. Well, don’t feel bad, neither did I.
Multiple clients have used our business mapping software to support billboard marketing. Recently, a billboard management client requested that we help them import a dataset of points representing traffic concentrations along a major highway.
Our billboard marketing client, armed with a shapefile dataset showing traffic history along a significant corridor, sought to determine where the highest traffic locations happen. This data would represent the highest number of potential human eye views that could perceive the proposed billboard advertising. Their simple data story is a testament to the power of location-based data in marketing.
Traffic data is available through city and state road and highway maintenance agencies. Usually, these agencies have a GIS employee or group that manages geographic data collection. That data is often deployed in shapefile format. Not all business applications can ingest shapefile data pulls. Thus, MapBusinessOnline required conversion to Excel to access the data points by latitude and longitude coordinates.
Upon receipt, our sales team leader, Jason Henderson, reviewed the data and sent the shapefile to our technical team for conversion into an Excel spreadsheet. With the data now importable into MapBusinessOnline, Jason suggested they visualize the information based on the data collection station columns within the Excel sheet. The client map user imported the location points, which geocoded the latitude and longitude coordinates onto the state of North Carolina within a MapBusinessOnline North America map.
The MapBusinessOnline user used MapBusinessOnline heat map tools to transform the map display into a heat map showing point densities at station collection points where passing traffic was most highly concentrated. Because there were roughly 45,000 latitude-longitude points to plot, the data fit nicely into MapBusinessOnline Standard, which enables up to 50,000 location points per map.
y data
This heat map shows concentrations of collected data points along a highway.
For imports of up to 250,000 records and for more advanced driving time and distance queries, upgrade to MapBusinessOnline Pro.
The Process for Visualizing Collected Location Data
Unfortunately, MapBusinessOnline does not support shapefile import. However, a GIS or IT specialist can convert the data to a point dataset in CSV or Excel formats. Armed with this standard spreadsheet, the MapBusinessOnline user can easily import the location data through typical data import processes.
- Along the Master Toolbar, under the Adding to Map section, click the Dataset Button.
- Navigate to your saved data file and select it for import.
- Follow the dialogue box options for geolocating the data in MapBusinessOnline.
With the converted point layer overlaid onto a MapBusinessOnline business map, there are multiple ways to symbolize, color-code, and view the map data layer:
- A color-coded point layer, perhaps with varying symbol sizes and colors.
- A heat map dot-density map view that shows the dot concentrations in high-density areas.
- A heat map weather-map view shows hot or cold activity based on numeric data.
- Numbered circles of varying size and color.
- A ZIP code map with a color-coded scheme based on coordinate densities within each ZIP code.
The marketing client will consider traffic data collection densities when determining the optimum placement for billboards.
There could be other non-municipal uses for the side of the highway traffic data:
- Retail and service station potential site location analysis.
- Rest stop, site location analysis.
- Vehicle breakdown location analysis for call boxes.
- Endangered species protection analysis.
Marketing users of MapBusinessOnline also have territory-creation tools at their disposal. Marketing and sales professionals apply dot density maps, like the above-described billboard map, to study areas of interest or territories for sales groups or field technicians. Territory analysis is used to research billboards and other marketing initiatives – results vs. investment.
Look for available location datasets relevant to your industry.
