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Comment by jabrams | Hacker News Reader

I co-own a nightclub in San Francisco called Slide (www.slidesf.com). I wouldn't recommend you get into this business without experienced partners (which is what I did). That's kind of like one of those people looking for a "technical co-founder" because they have an idea for a consumer web site even though they have no experience working at Internet companies. Between construction and permitting, it took two years to get Slide open. Of course you can open a neighborhood bar on a smaller budget, but there's still a lot of things do deal with like liquor licenses, security, liability issues, safety, staff management, etc. Like any business, success is hard, and is more likely with domain experience. Good luck!

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Fun place, thanks for putting it together.

You take the time to post an URL to the site for your club, and I take the time to look at it... --I find a useless and unreadable site at the given URL that requires both javascript and Flash. We can probably just agree that I'm simply not your customer, but did you even think about how many potential customers you've turned away by failing to keep things simple and accessible?

LOL do you honestly think this is going to make one bit of difference? Flash sites are pretty much standard for all nightclubs, dance/rave parties and related things, I'm quite sure that the audience prefers a shining moving website over 'accessibility'. I'm also pretty sure 95% of the target audience that even bothers to visit the site won't even know that it's a flash site, and they surely aren't going to make the decision on whether or not to visit the club based on whether or not the website is flash or 'plain' html.

You're not thinking it through completely. It is perfectly fine if I'm not his target customer. Same is true for others like me; we're just not the intended target customer.

On the other hand, a javascript/flash-only site can be problematic for search engines, even those engines with the supposed capacity to parse javascript/flash. Outside of the search engine issue is, of course, linking by by human beings. How would you send a friend a link to a show, event, or location page? --You can't.

It really doesn't matter if the target audience is expected to be ignorant or indifferent to security concerns. You can still give them the "shining moving website" with flash in addition to more accessible content. The important part is accessibility improves usefulness and effectiveness.

The site exist to promote the club, but the current design states, "If you use an iPhone, you're not welcome here." Can you honestly say the entire target audience doesn't use iPhones? In essence, the design defeats the purpose. And no, I do not own an iPhone, but that's beside the point.

I still disagree. I think the dynamic amongst the target audience is different (I may be wrong, I used to be the target audience 15 years ago but things have probably changed radically since then, plus I'm on a different continent)

That said... I'm quite sure there isn't a lot of traffic to these pages anyway. The question to ask is - am I going to lose customer by not being available on an iPhone? People will already have decided if they're going to come or not, they don't need the site to convince them. If their friends go or if it has good buzz they will, otherwise they won't. The website is, I think, just an item on a checklist - you have to have it but it doesn't really matter if it's good (or googleable) or not.

For the rest, it's a cost/benefit thing I think. The people who design the flyers (which are an important promotion tool) can easily, quickly and cheaply make a flash website from the flyer design. These things are one-off, they rotate every week, requiring someone who does all the tech frills is expensive and makes the turnaround time longer.

(PS no average iPhone user is going to think 'I'm not welcome here', they'll just think 'hmm it doesn't work, let me try at home tonight').

I'll agree my "I'm not welcome here" statement was a bit too strongly worded. None the less, you're "let me try at home tonight," statement is actually quite important. --What if the person and their friends were already out on the town looking for a(nother) place to go?

"Let me check what's going on at Slide... hmmm... it doesn't work. I'll check $OTHERCLUB."

Expecting a potential customer to go find another device to access your content/promotion defeats the purpose of building said promotion. Similar is true for making the content/promotion difficult to find via a search engine.

The costs involved in the production of more accessible content are negligible. In fact, it's faster and easier than creating flash content, and you could automate most of it into a form based UI (image of flyer, title, date, time, descriptive text).

I do see your point how club promotional sites might not get a lot a traffic but keeping a promotional site accessible to mobile devices and easily found through search really does makes sense. Advertisements that cannot be seen are far less effective than advertisements that can be seen.

I think we can argue this point until we're both blue in the face, but without data or input from someone who actually knows this market we won't really get anywhere; for example I find the example of people googling for places to go out while they're in another place highly hypothetical. As I see it (this is not a personal attack, although I see how it can easily be construed as one - I mean this as a 'meta-cognitive inference of the origins of your position in light of your previous statements and general demographic of this site', so feel free to correct me if you feel I'm mis-characterizing you), you are looking at this from a technology-warped lens, placing too much emphasis on an aspect close to you (i.e., websites). Again I don't have data, but I'm quite convinced that the amount of people who are out on a friday night and google'ing for a place to go is very, very small; so small as to put the accessibility and SEO-iness of the event's website pretty much at the bottom of priorities for a promotor / club owner.

Then again I've just been reading the 'intellectual hipsters' article also on the front page (http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metaco...) so maybe I'm just an idiot trying to argue a contrarian position from made-up assumptions on smartphone use amongst the club-going demographic :)

  > you are looking at this from a technology-warped lens, placing too much emphasis on an aspect close to you (i.e., websites).

Actually, I'd tend to agree with you but the specific aspect would be "accessibility" rather than websites in general. Since I was disappointed in not being able to see the content on the slidesf.com site, I'm certainly guilty of at least some degree of emotional response.

  > Again I don't have data, but I'm quite convinced that the amount of people who are out on a friday night and google'ing for a place to go is very, very small; so small as to put the accessibility and SEO-iness of the event's website pretty much at the bottom of priorities for a promotor / club owner.

I doubt it's intentional, but you mixed the wrong bits, and then argued against them (straw man). The SEO of a site is relevant at all times and on all devices. The (mobile) accessibility is a more specific use case, where the looking-while-out-on-the-town would be an example.

Without data, we're probably wasting time discussing it, but I don't think you're an idiot/hipster for arguing the other side. In fact, I appreciate your comments. If you look at the down-votes I've gotten, they pretty much prove if one of us is an idiot for arguing an "unpopular" point of view, it would be me. Until I saw the down-votes myself, I never dreamed keeping things accessible, particularly advertising promotions, would be such an unpopular view.

I was indeed sloppy and did mix various aspects, and argued ad hoc against the examples given; alas that's the fate of quick discussions such as this one where the wording of arguments is not double-checked :) I think overall though that we both understand each others underlying positions well. Generalized, my point is that the business case for these less-tangible aspects of website development is hard to make. I'm sure you agree with the overall sentiment that these aspects are only worth doing for a business when there's an expected positive ROI, so now all we can do is argue over at which point that break even point lies. So at least we can agree that it's not very productive to further try convincing one another :)

Yes, convincing each other is pointless. ;)

At the same time, I'm still curious what could be learned from the data? What are the real usage/access patters of mobile devices on such sites? --Mostly due to always wanting to know more about how most people use mobiles. I think it would be fun to analyze the data just to see what I could learn from it.

Since I'll probably never get access to the log data, I'll be left wondering. Oh well. I guess I'll have to find some other curiosity to occupy my time, but luckily I have a lot of them.

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