Every business and organization should know the importance of providing an efficient wayfinding system so that patrons can smoothly and intuitively get where they need to go at the physical facility. The more complex the facility, the greater the need to put in place a wayfinding system that works and keeps on working. An excellent way to enhance people’s experiences with your facility and improve wayfinding is by offering supplementary information online.

Wayfinding Helps With Planning

When you provide people with online wayfinding information which they can utilize before they visit your facility, you’re offering help with planning. A great start would be to include from your website a link to either a set of comprehensive driving directions or to a map that tells people where your facility is located. Make sure your driving directions are clear and navigable, and if you link to an outside site for mapping, make sure the directions given by the map are correct. Newcomers to your facility will feel much more comfortable if they can access, before they arrive, information about where they should park and the general layout of your facility, especially if it’s made up of multiple buildings. In the case of a complex facility, you could give detailed directions on how to get from various parking areas to the different buildings that make up your facility. In this way, people will have a good feel for where they need to go and how to get there before they even arrive.

Updates and Information About Services

People would also appreciate regular updates on your website about construction that might be going on near your facility that could slow them down or even block them on their normal routes. If you do this, you’ll need to place these updates prominently on your website where they can be accessed with ease, and keep them as current as possible. Only up-to-date information is useful. If you don’t update regularly, you could wind up making things worse, not better, for your patrons.

You could also give, on your website, information about various services at your facility or in the general area that people might need. In the case of a health care facility, people might need to know, for example, where outpatient surgery is located or where they might find the nearest hotel. If your facility includes an eating establishment or ATM services, people would appreciate knowing these facts, too, and how they can locate those amenities.

By offering supplementary information online, you can improve wayfinding by helping people more easily reach your facility and by giving them information about how to get where they want to go once they’re there. If people know, in advance, how to get where they want to go in your facility, then that’s a major time-saver which they’ll appreciate.