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The Dubai Mall: Navigating 5M sqft of Premium Retail Space

Oct 28, 2019

3 min read

By: Mappedin

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A leader in retail innovation and proponents of best-in-class technology, Emaar Properties sought to provide a seamless wayfinding experience for its customers to navigate The Dubai Mall's 1,200 stores and 5.9 million square feet.

Introduction

Much like the current retail landscape, Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) are constantly evolving. IPS platforms offer modern wayfinding to shoppers by acting as GPS for the indoors, while also providing useful data including traffic patterns and dwell time to property owners and operators. These insights enable businesses to provide additional consumer benefits such as targeted promotions, predictive search, and more.

While Mappedin does not have a stake in indoor positioning, we have a unique front row seat to the rapid evolution of the IPS market.

We're excited about the experience that The Dubai Mall has built for their visitors and hope that you find it a helpful example in navigating this space. 

The Customer

A pioneering developer of integrated master-planned communities, Emaar Group has transformed the real estate sector in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Emaar’s world-class project development competencies are underlined by its iconic assets in Dubai and other international markets. The Dubai Mall offers an unparalleled retail mix combined with world-class dining, entertainment and leisure attractions.

The Challenge

A leader in retail innovation and proponents of best-in-class technology, Emaar Properties sought to provide a seamless wayfinding experience enabling customers to easily navigate The Dubai Mall’s 1,200 stores and 5.9 million square feet, as well as provide its facility managers with a flexible solution for property management. Having accurate maps in a space as large as the Dubai Mall is critical to a positive visitor experience.

The Solution

Mappedin created a fully-integrated solution to power wayfinding on the Dubai Mall's website in addition to an in-app experience that caters to their active user base. 

1. Seamless integration

Custom Web Integration: The Dubai Mall uses Mappedin's Web SDK to power the wayfinding on their website. Leveraging the Web SDK tool-set, The Dubai Mall was able to create a custom experience while leveraging best practices for navigation. Mappedin's SDKs are easily integrated into customer websites with all map rendering and navigation done in the Mappedin cloud. They've been built by developers, for developers. The Dubai Mall’s website features 3D maps with zoom and tilt features. This enables users to easily locate the store, amenity, or destination they are looking for.

2. Real-time wayfinding

Turn-by-Turn Navigation: In partnership with Senion, Mappedin extended its full suite of features and capabilities to The Dubai Mall Mobile App. This app integration was the first of its kind and offers a completely interactive 3D wayfinding experience with the help of indoor positioning technology. Beacons throughout The Dubai Mall provide positioning updates to shoppers' smartphones twice a second, enabling an incredibly accurate navigation experience. 

3. Shopper journey insights

Web and Mobile Analytics: The Mappedin CMS includes a detailed analytics dashboard that provides information on user intent. The Dubai Mall is the only Mappedin customer to track "journeys completed." When a user of the mobile app searches, navigates to, and arrives at a location, a completed journey is counted. 

The Results

Since implementing Mappedin, there have been over 2.8 million wayfinding sessions between web and mobile at The Dubai Mall to date.