It is no surprise that there will be some critical areas to tweak as we set out on the road to local business marketing. And we have found some issues that we plan to fix or add in the next forty eight hours.
We have discovered that our sign-up process for local businesses is not clear enough. Because of this businesses are not getting the greatest impact possible when they invite their followers to visit their new profile page. What we are finding many local businesses missing is that once they tweet a link to their profile page they are then not realizing they still have to return to our site and finalize the registration process before the page is visible to the public. We are in the process of fixing this right at this very moment. The sign-up process should be easier by the end of the night.
One feature we will be adding this week (hopefully) is the ability for a large chain company like Starbucks or Meijer to upload individual pages for each of their stores across the country. This will bring increased value to the service as a whole because local customers in each of the locations of that company will be able to see local deals for that company no matter where they exist. We are very excited about adding this feature!
A feature we will be adding soon is the ability for consumers in any zip code to visit a zip code specific page to see all the deals without having to register with us. This should invite more consumers to the site who don’t feel like messing with officially registering with us. (Even though registering requires minimal information and almost no hassle, we understand there are those out there who still are unwilling. We want to serve them too.)
Another feature we need to fix is the clarity of the importance of #localdeal. We have designed the business profile page idea off of the concept that consumers can recognize specific deals worthy of their notice because those deals contain #localdeal hashtag. But we currently have little in place to clearly explain to the businesses who sign up of the importance of using this hashtag.
Since we have launched we have found many local businesses eager to register with us. We believe the local business marketing world has a strong thirst for a service such as this. And that includes consumers. Consumers are itchin for a place they can go to find all the best deals for whatever they are looking to buy. That is what we offer.
Our site still needs tweaking and adding, but we are on the road and changing local marketing.