Building the Physical Web: A Campus Tour Using Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons

Estimote Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons deployed throughout a university campus enabled the creation of interactive tours for prospective and accepted students at Fall and Spring open house events. By configuring their mobile devices with an app to detect the beacons’ signals, participants could view webpages containing information based on their current physical locations from the web addresses pushed to their devices by nearby beacons. Google Analytics and relational database reporting functions provided information related to the behavior of campus guests. This study presents lessons learned from deploying a Physical Web and results of analyzing user behavior based on the analytics data. The conclusions drawn from this data can be used to improve campus visits for prospective students and supplement decision making in university admissions offices. Participants in a follow-up survey shared their impressions of the Physical Web as an emerging technology. By joining in the project, participants said they learned more about the Physical Web and its application to real-life scenarios.