Go Local Asheville Mobile App puts Asheville’s local independent businesses at the world’s fingertips. With a user experience designed to be taken on the go, the Go Local Mobile App is set to become the favorite for locals and visitors for convenient, insider access to the best of Asheville.

With Go Local Asheville Mobile App your customers can:

• Discover local independent Asheville businesses and organizations.
• View Go Local Asheville businesses on the map and get directions.
• See which Go Local Asheville businesses are near them.
• Access business information including hours, location, contact info, and more.
• See the discount or special offer each business gives to Go Local Asheville cardholders.
• Purchase and manage their digital Go Local Asheville card.

What does all this mean for you, dear business member?

You asked for a mobile app and we listened! With the added convenience of this app for your customers we expect the usage of cards to greatly increase over the next year. So let’s look at some important ways you can leverage the app to get the best results from the app.

Home Screen Highlights

The home screen is prime real estate to highlight our business members and timely news. You’ll see the posts near the bottom of the screen, and you can tap them to read the full article. If you have useful info to share with your customers, such as a holiday promotion or seasonal sale, let us know and we will try to include it in our posts.

The Digital Go Local card is here.

That’s right! Your customers will soon have the option to buy a Digital Go Local card. The digital card and the paper card do not overlap – meaning that each will have to be purchased separately, and business members can accept either at point of sale. The paper cards will work as they always have, and there are more details about the digital card below.

The app pulls from your listing on the website.

The information you fill out on the webform for your business is what gets sent to the app. If you want to make changes to your listing in the app, you can log into your account at https://golocalasheville.com/dashboard/login and update your information. It will update both the website and the app, though it can take up to 24 hours for the updated information to appear on everyone’s device

So, make sure to keep your hours, contact info, business description, and categories up to date and relevant! 

How does the app work?

Filters

The typical user flow for finding a business is to start by selecting one of the categories on the home screen, then filtering further with subcategories and collections. Results can be seen in a list view or on the map. This is very similar to the way the website works and is the fastest filtering method in the app.

From the list and map views you can see the filter icon in the top left that shows how many filters you have applied, and you can tap the icon to go to the filter screen to edit or clear your filters.

Search

In addition to category, subcategory, and collection filters, a search field is available on the home screen and the filters screen for text searches.The search works in conjunction with the filters. As an example, you could select the Eat & Drink category filter and search for “falafel”, and the search results would be businesses in the Eat & Drink category that mention “falafel” in their title, description, slug, or keywords.

Digital Card

Your business will be able to accept both the paper card and the new digital card. As mentioned above, these two formats don’t cross platforms, so likely your customer will have one or the other. They both cost the same, and both are good for the current calendar year.

When a customer comes to your business and presents their valid digital card, they will show you the Card screen on their phone, which will look like this:

If the customer’s card is inactive (they have not yet bought it or they have not activated it on a new device,) the Card screen will prompt them to do so:

If the customer gets a new device after purchasing their digital card they will need to activate their card on that new device. They can tap the button seen above, Already Have a Digital Card? Sign In, where they can enter the email address they used when purchasing the card.

If they want to buy their digital card the app will walk them through the purchase process:

From time to time the app checks to see that the user’s card is valid. This happens in the background and will most likely never be noticed. However, if the user is offline when the check runs they will see this screen:

At your point of sale you can trust that the card is actually valid and give the customer the perk or discount! When you see this message, including “ Good through December 31, (of the current year). Show this digital card anywhere the Go Local card is honored to receive your discount or perk.” You can rest assured that it is only the background validation that needs internet or cell access.

Proximity Awareness

The proximity aware features of the app make it especially useful to customers on the go. The toggle for these features is in the top right corner of the map and list views. When the user toggles these features on, the app will ask permission to access their location, and then the following will happen:

• The list view will show businesses sorted in order of what’s closest to them (instead of the default alphabetical list.)
• The map will zoom into the user’s location when they initially turn it on, and then will continue to show their location with a blue dot.
• Each business listing will show the distance from the user to the business.
• The filter screen will allow the user to search and filter within a radius of where they are.

Toggling off the proximity features icon will stop the app from tracking the user’s location and will disable the features. If the user has device location services turned on but the app’s proximity features turned off, their location will still be shown on the map in the app.

The Go Local Asheville app was built and is maintained by FullSteam Labs.