Today i'm launching my startup after more then a year of development. I quit my job last year to make web and mobile apps and Nearby Buzz is my first big project. Love to get some feedback and see what you guys think!
One piece of feedback is that your pricing is way too low. Start at $99/month. Get rid of the free plan, as it accomplishes nothing for you. Most businesses are either mom and pop stores that will get by with the free plan, or businesses with more than 1 location. And the mom and pop businesses probably aren't the type of ppl that will write influential reviews that will recommend you to other users.
Give a 30 day free trial of the $99 plan and then make them pay after that. As others have said, people on the free plan will cause you 90% of your support problems and you're making no money from them.
This app looks like it will generate a lot of value and save a lot of time for businesses. So look at it from that perspective, not based on what your costs are. If you're saving just 5 hours a month in a mom and pop business, i'd argue that $35 a month is easily worth it to them.
Thanks for all the tips, very useful.
Yelp TOS: https://www.yelp.com/developers/api_terms
"You agree that you will not, and will not assist or enable others to: cache, record, pre-fetch, or otherwise store any portion of the Yelp Content, or attempt or provide a means to execute any "bulk download" operations, other than storing Yelp business IDs which you may use solely for back-end matching purposes;"
It looks like you're storing Yelp Content. Or maybe reviews aren't "Yelp Content" specifically? Or did you get a written waiver for this service?
Or does no one ever give a toss about these TOS, and just complain on twitter when they get API access revoked?
"The API is made available by Yelp Inc. ("Yelp") to enable you to access valuable local information and present Yelp Deals or Yelp Certificates on your website or mobile properties, including mobile apps ("Your Site") that encourages the visitors to Your Site (the "Users") to purchase certain Yelp Deals or Yelp Certificates (collectively "Yelp Voucher(s)") by directing them to Yelp's website or mobile properties, including mobile apps ("Yelp site")."
The entire purpose of the Yelp API is explicitly to get you to direct people to their site and/or to sell Yelp Deals.
Do people really not read these TOS before launching services, or do they think they can skate around the edges until they're big enough to get noticed/acquired before the API police cut off access?
https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/califo...
Would you bet your own startup on it? I wouldn't.
The alternative is waiting years, potentially NEVER to find a perfect, 100% risk-less (which doesn't exist, btw) startup idea that will help him become very rich.
Yelp expressly forbids this, and without Yelp, you don't have a product. That said, I think it's stupid that Yelp disallows this and hope that OP succeeds.
Judging by you picking Founding Farmers in your example I'm thinking you might be based in DC- if that's so and you ever want to talk shop with a techie Business Analyst who's worked with big data and social media I'd love to buy you a cup of coffee and pick your brain sometime.
One thing that is probably worth clarifying that this is geared towards physical businesses. It wasn't at all obvious until I tried to sign-up (to see if I can use it for software products).
A lot of companies need exactly this. For example you see Reddit threads where someone badmouths a company which results in a lot of negative "buzz" around it, and it seems to take the company a really long time to figure out the origin so they can take some [hopefully] constructive action (e.g. apologise, tell their side, etc).
I cannot help but wonder if your prices are far too low. $20 for your top end plan seems insanely cheap and unsustainable. I'm not sure exactly what price the market will bare in this case, but I also cannot see you being able to make this a full time job on just $20/month. You'd have to have 166 clients and $0 in running costs just to bring in a $40K/year salary (all pre-tax).
I think if it did kick off a natural area of improvement would just be adding additional social networks, in particular link-sharing sites (Reddit, Digg, 4Chan, HN, etc).
The price as it stands likely isn't sustainable no matter how good the product is. Unless he plans running in part time, but this doesn't seem like the type of project that can be run part time (a lot of moving parts that could potentially break).
Really you're paying for integration into a dozen different platforms.
Positive: Like the idea, it looks simple to use, like the Freemium offering and the landing page is clean and clear.
I noticed that there are screenshots/views of the application, but perhaps you might want to have a short video showing it's use in real time?
Also just a minor note: the "Back" button in my browser (Chrome on Mac) doesn't work after I visit the Login/Sign Up views.
A video would definitely help explain the product a bit, i'll get on this for sure.
I was able to reproduce the back button issue, i'll fix this right now.
Then our site, www.eftplus.co.nz has customers that would be willing to pay for it as an add-on.
Good luck!
Not sure if "with each week’s statistics and analyses" should be analysis.
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