91–100 of 144 posts
Nice idea and design. Liked the website design too - pretty neat. Did you guys use a template for ToS and Privacy. If you have, could you pls share the link? thanks
http://agentpronto.com/privacy
It's not vetted by a lawyer, but as far as I know privacy policies are for visitors and not for the courts.
Bummer, your demo requires Flash which means I can't view it on my iPad. Shouldn't your site be mobile friendly?
Touché. :) We'll put up a HTML5 video version too.
http://www.chompstack.com We all know how mobile unfriendly restaurant websites tend to be. Many of them are done in Flash, and don't work at all on most phones. Others force you to download PDF menus which take forever to load and have an annoying tendency to lock up my phone. The irony, of course, is that I'm most likely to be looking at restaurant websites on my phone, when I'm around town looking for an interesti…
I built ChompStack to make it easier for restaurants to create mobile friendly versions of their websites. This is the most important piece of information that is missing from your site. As a restraint owner looking at your site I'm thinking "What is this, an app, or a service or what?" and "how will my customers find my restaurant on their phone with this service?". Given that most restaurants that you are targeting…
It is not clear that we're allowing restaurants to create a mobile version of their website?
In terms of how customers are going to discover the restaurant, it really depends on the customer. A lot of folks search via the Google Maps app and then click through to the website.
I could start the demo video on a Google Maps search and take the user to the restaurant website from there...
In order to prove or disprove the concept without actually building out any kind of CMS or infrastructure, I set up a marketing site and some demo restaurant mobile sites (really good looking stuff built on jQTouch). Next step was to build prospect lists with every OpenTable restaurant in a handful of Ohio cities (I live in SF now, but was in Cincinnati at the time) and do a ton of cold calling.
After hundreds of pitches at different price points, I only managed to sell a few at $49/year and decided not to pursue any further. Having little prior sales experience (sold CUTCO as a high schooler) was a problem for me. Timing is crucial and being too early was another likely inhibitor. Figuring out the best sales channel is may be your biggest challenge. Along with how best to pitch the restaurants, who are not traditional early adopters.
I'll be keeping an eye on you guys. Best of luck!!
A problem with this service's model just occurred to me: The way that you get users onto your "new mobile" version of the restaurant is by re-directing them when they go to the restaurant's home page from a phone browser. What if the users are like me, though, and just avoid going to the restaurant Web site from the phone because we are aware how bad the "usual" experience is. I'm not expressing this clearly, but con…
Interesting idea. I made an attempt to vet a similar idea in the spring of 2009, so maybe my experience can help you out: In order to prove or disprove the concept without actually building out any kind of CMS or infrastructure, I set up a marketing site and some demo restaurant mobile sites (really good looking stuff built on jQTouch). Next step was to build prospect lists with every OpenTable restaurant in a handfu…
I love the design of your landing page. In particular, the graphic of the two iPhones on the right side made it _immediately_ and _compellingly_ clear what you're selling. Nice work.
I agree. I'd remove the drop shadow from the phones, though. It clutters up the design. The simple shadow immediately beneath the phones is plenty.
A problem with this service's model just occurred to me: The way that you get users onto your "new mobile" version of the restaurant is by re-directing them when they go to the restaurant's home page from a phone browser. What if the users are like me, though, and just avoid going to the restaurant Web site from the phone because we are aware how bad the "usual" experience is. I'm not expressing this clearly, but con…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 for this idea. Maybe you want to consider giving free service to some early adopters in return for the ability to analyze the impact on your business. Ideally, you would spread this out across a few different target demographics, like pizza joints, Chinese/ethnic, late-night, etc., so that your potential customers would identify with the results. Even the most conservative restaurant owner is going to be swayed by…
That whole vertical idea is brilliant: if we could convince a handful of pizza joints it would give other like restaurants a high level of motivation to join them. What type of restaurants do you think we should target? Who would most benefit from a mobile site?
-- restaurants that do a lot of take-out or delivery business (pizza places, Chinese/ethnic restaurants, lunch places in financial districts of major cities). When people want delivery food, they need a menu on-hand.
-- restaurants near colleges/universities. High usage of smartphones, lots of eating out.
-- restaurants in areas with particularly high smartphone market penetration (Bay Area, New York City, Boston, Seattle)
A good menu/take-out order system for restaurants is something I've been thinking about on and off since I was in grad school (and that's been cough over a decade now).