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benlarcey

55 karma · joined August 10, 2013

first_name @ benlarcey.com
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benlarcey··on Show HN: A free online ordering system for restaurants
We have around 200 restaurants using the system right now. This would be great, but the problem is you need huge scale for this to be generally useful. I think once/if we hit around 2000, this will be something to think about building.
benlarcey··on Show HN: A free online ordering system for restaurants
It's not on the roadmap right now, the percentage of restaurants with the capability and desire to self-host software is very low.
benlarcey··on Show HN: A free online ordering system for restaurants
I'm not very worried although it's somewhat of a concern. Restaurant-style online ordering matches drug delivery nicely. However, the KYC required for accepting card payments is a pretty good safety net to catch this.
benlarcey··on Show HN: A free online ordering system for restaurants
Thanks! We've had ~200 odd signups so far, hopefully some will find it useful. If you have specific improvements, would love to hear them.
benlarcey··on Show HN: A free online ordering system for restaurants
No, definitely not! I couldn't see anything in the logs. So I assume not all required fields were filled out when creating the store. Highlighting those needs some work. Thanks for pointing it out.
benlarcey··on Show HN: A free online ordering system for restaurants
Hi HN. I put this together over the last 2-3 weeks to help the many restaurants and retailers currently unable to trade. Whilst many operators in large cities have systems in place to handle a rapid change in operations, there's the very long tail of stores across the country who are very new to online ordering as a concept. So the focus is on simplicity and getting set up as quickly as possible.

Tech stack: Vue.js & tailwind on the frontend, Hapi server.

benlarcey··on Candy Japan 2015 Year in Review
I'm not sure how strict you should go, we have gone to the absolute maximum - and have to deal with customer service issues / abandoned checkouts daily. But even requiring the ZIP code to be correct made a big difference.

We're also using shopify which has helped quite a bit with their built in fraud analysis (Not 100% but I think it's either signifyd or kount providing the data).

Alternatively, you could use Paypal Pro to negate the account requirement?

benlarcey··on Candy Japan 2015 Year in Review
I'm actually in the same space selling "hoverboards" and have been massively hit with fraudulent transactions. Luckily we realised fairly quickly and enforced draconian fraud checks, we're missing out on potential sales but the Buzzfeed is article is the alternative.

I'm not sure which processor Candy Japan uses, but you can usually request to implement advanced fraud rules and strict settings that require Zip/postal code to match exactly.

benlarcey··on SimCity That I Used to Know
Yeah, nativ.ly is the network. See here: http://nativ.ly/medium-partners-with-bmw-to-produce-a-digita...
benlarcey··on Google AdSense leak?
Whilst I've never used adSense much, this does corroborate with chatter in SEO/webmaster forums, especially around 2012.

The paragraph on G analytics is also very interesting, it never seems to line up with other tracking tools like Piwik.

benlarcey··on Show HN: OptKit – Enterprise Level Conversion Rate Optimization Kit
Could only get it to work after a few tries unfortunately. Great to see some more options in the exit-intent space, but definitely needs some refinement; the form fields on the pop up won't accept any inputs.
benlarcey··on What Would HN Do?
Interesting note I saw in your Flippa listing; you're outsourcing your blog posts. I'm currently working on a marketplace that aims to ease this process. Would you mind sharing how you when about it? Odesk, freelancer.com?
benlarcey··on How Retargeting Gets Our SaaS $650 for $6
How much weight do you put on assisted conversions (VTC within perfect audience)? I've found that aCPA for my site is great at also around $5 but the vast majority of these conversions are assisted conversions, i.e. not direct click throughs.
benlarcey··on Atom
As mentioned time machine is a great feature, but doesn't OS X auto save files you're working on with its versions? You might want to double check that it hasn't got past versions saved.
benlarcey··on Facebook Fraud [video]
Yep, this is possible and a much better use of ad spend that's allocated for FB. The only downside is the admin required to single out individual posts for paid (fake) promotion.

It's also a much cheaper method than paying FB to promote to your click farm fans.

benlarcey··on This startup tells you when companies try your competitors’ software
Seems to be much the same, but with a slightly more b2b marketing element and higher pricing with less data! Have used builtwith before and was very happy with their monthly ($299) plan. If anything I'd expect a competitor to offer lower prices.
benlarcey··on How to Sell a Blog for $36,200
Looks like you're selling banners on the right hand side and not nofollowing them, be careful as that's a Google crime and you may find yourself on the receiving end of a Google penalty.
benlarcey··on Maptcha: An Experiment in Map-Based CAPTCHA
Great idea but I don't think it's the solution to the captcha problem. There's a lot of visual noise for a person to analyse and I found it considerably harder than reCaptcha types. However that may be a bonus for deterring human solved captcha à la deathbycaptcha.com
benlarcey··on Lessons Learned Going from Zero to $30k/Month in a Year
Interesting you're spending at least 10% of monthly revenue on BounceExchange. Does it provide ROI? The product looks great but the pricing is another matter!
benlarcey··on Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?
Followgen? Experimented with it and although provided some value it ultimately got our account permanently suspended.