Rate my startup: ChompStack, a mobile website builder for restaurants • Hacker News Board

Re: Rate my startup: ChompStack, a mobile website builder for restaurants

#141

Post by cmeranda » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 6:36 PM UTC

city41 wrote: post #125

Zak wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things are annoying on a PC too. When I go to a restaurant website, I'm looking for some combination of location, hours, menu and specials. Cool visual design is a nice touch, but animations and sounds are just annoying. Suggestion: expand your service to provide good desktop sites in addition to your mobile sites.

Although I completely agree with you, and I'm sure most HN-type people would. I doubt the restaurant owners would. The idea that a website has to be flashy and fancy is well ingrained by now.

See I think that statement is a fallacy. Restaurant owners began to believe in the power of websites when other restaurants began having them and HN-type people began using them, and they saw what a great tool the internet is to draw more business and promote themselves. HN-type people (love this hyphen) create the groundswell by which businesses recognize what direction to go in, and restaurant owners are no different, just a little later to the party because they've been cooking the meals.

Re: Rate my startup: ChompStack, a mobile website builder for restaurants

#142

Post by cmeranda » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 6:39 PM UTC

URSpider94 wrote: post #99

cmeranda wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Off the top of my head, I would suggest: -- 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 penetra…

Great suggestions, thank you. Would love to target the Chinese takeout market, that's spectacular, although the restaurants we've spoken to so far in that corner are somewhat frugal/take more convincing :)

Re: Rate my startup: ChompStack, a mobile website builder for restaurants

#143

Post by cmeranda » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 10:15 PM UTC

watmough wrote: post #101

cmeranda wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your feedback! This sounds precisely like what we're encountering right now: restaurants are uncertain why people would want to see their site on a phone and how it increases their bottom line. We'd like to educate them and show them that customer discovery = ROI, but we're not sure how to evaluate that in our context. Some people here have suggested success stories, which we think is fantastic.

It should be possible to log when a customer calls through the (app-provided) phone number to the restaurant. You could also offer to store a contact for the restaurant. Google voice is free, each restaurant could use a call to GV as a way to track leads generated by your app.

Ah that's brilliant! Love it. We could definitely track calls and maybe directions as well.

Re: Rate my startup: ChompStack, a mobile website builder for restaurants

#144

Post by cmeranda » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 10:20 PM UTC

thomasfl wrote: post #122

You have a lovely site and absolutely great graphic design, but the mobile sites you offers seems to use the dull uiuikit css. You could make the css for phones a bit fresher. Maybe it should look a bit more like your own site?

We'd like to eventually create a few templates to choose from that have more of our look and feel. Thanks for the advice, glad to know others feel the same way!