In many countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia,
and elsewhere, "Yellow Pages" (and/or any applicable local
translations), as well as the "Walking Fingers" logo first introduced
in the 1970s by the Bell System-era AT&T, are registered trademarks,
though the owner varies from country to country, usually being held by
the main national telephone company (or a subsidiary or spinoff
thereof).[1][2] However, in the United States, neither the name nor
the logo were registered as trademarks by AT&T, and are freely used by
several publishers.
Sure, you can legally use "Yellow Pages" in the US, but you should
consider if it will really be worth the potential international hassle?
Since the trademarks exist in some other countries, you can still face
foreign legal challenges (or threats) from other countries. Sadly, this
kind of nonsense really does happen:
The second issue with your name is, no one will remember it. The phrase
"Yellow Pages" is known and descriptive, but in the US it is over-used
since a lot of companies use it due to the lack of a trademark. It fails
to be distinct. From a branding and marketing perspective, being plain
and generic is a death knell.
For your sake, I hope my concerns on the name are unwarranted since
changing it would be a ton of work.
Your video was excellent! The animation is fantastic, and the voice-over
is clear and preformed well. With that said, it's too long to be the
first thing people see/experience on your site. It's 2 minutes and 48
seconds but nowhere are we told its length, so watching your video might
be a two hour investment, or worse. --Your pitch is "Save Time" so
expecting someone to sit and watch a video is counter productive.
I'd put your form first, top and center, then put the video below or as
a link to another page. It might just be my own old habits, but I'd
label the form input fields clearly. The "title=" attributes on the form
inputs are good (and helpful for accessibility), but unlike labels, they
require javascript or mouse hovering to be displayed. Labeling the input
fields with plain text solves this accessibility issue.
"broadcast your search request to ALL matching local businesses."
I'd use "needs" or "wants and needs" rather than "search request". I'd
also capitalize the "b" in "Broadcast".
You need to realize what you're competing with, namely someone saying
two words like "local plumber" into their mobile phone.
To make the site more useful to users searching for services, on submit
also provide a list of the local businesses you are contacting on their
behalf, along with the sites and/or contact info of the businesses. This
helps to establish and increase trust, as well as makes the site usable
anonymously.
It was great to see you have "Privacy" and "Terms" clearly listed.
The text (copy) on the "About" page reads well regarding what your
company and site does. Having a bit more general information about
your company like history might be a worthy addition. The "What We Do"
of your company should be concisely expressed on your main home page
along with the search form.
Grey text on a white(ish) background is very common (like here on hn)
but it's a terrible choice and is a well known accessibility issue. It
makes your about, privacy, terms, and other pages are hard to read for
people with even minor vision deficiencies.
Your "Team" page lists one person, Lou Pereira. He might be a one-man
army, but until you have a team of people, I'd skip having a team page.
On your team page, your html source has a commented "angela.jpg" image,
which you may or may not want to remove.
Though not on your main home page, html source (and php) on the team
page has a very common issue; you used a text editor or IDE that's
configured improperly so you are unable to see the trailing whitespace
on lines, and you're unable to see when you're mixing tab and spaces
characters on indenting. --How would I know? Well, I spent too many
years botching indents and line endings with characters I couldn't see,
until finally one day I configured vim to highlight my mistakes. ;-)
Lastly, you've got a form checkbox to allow a phone number input so
searchers can receive text messages, so I wondered if another checkbox
to allow users to have their email and phone sent directly to the
businesses would be worthwhile?
As always, writing up feedback for "Show HN" posts is a tough balancing
act since the criticisms always tend to stand out a lot more than the
compliments. I think you're doing good, so I hope the above is written
well enough to avoid seeming overly-critical.
I tried something like this, but instead people would just take take and submit video of a problem they had with one tap (the noise their car is making, the leaky faucet, showing and telling what interior design work they need done in a house etc). The idea was to let businesses see the videos for free but make them pay if they wanted to contact the customer.
I got no takers on either side - no one submitted videos and, if they had, I had no businesses interested in viewing them. These marketplace ideas seem like better businesses than they are. I'm convinced that the only successful ones will be those that are hyper-focused on a single niche. "Oh that's the app/site I open if I need X" instead of "I can get anything I need from this app/site". It seems that consumers just don't like having too many options from a single source (with a few notable exceptions, but it is effectively impossible to become one).
Good luck with yours though - I am just sharing my experience.
Thanks for the feedback. I am trying to create an effortless approach for both consumers and businesses, but I agree local search is a tough nut to crack.
What kind of marketing did you do? It seems like a pretty reasonable idea but I can imagine it would require a heavy investment to get a sustaining userbase.
I did some Adwords ads - spent about $5k. The plan was to get some sense of ROI (positive or negative) and then try raising money with proof of concept and estimated budget in-hand. I tried targeting consumers, thinking that at first if I got even a few leads we could have a call center call the relevant businesses. When no one submitted their videos (despite a dead-simple, two tap submission process) I tried to pivot. I started pitching businesses on a cloud-based service to receive, review, and reply to video from their customers (including automated appointment scheduling etc) through their existing websites/apps. Out of hundreds of businesses I contacted, not a single one expressed even the slightest interest.
It seemed like it would be a great business, but the market told me otherwise. That's why I said these marketplaces sound like better businesses than they are.
Interesting idea - it looks like you're a lead generator for businesses - do they have to sign up with you, or do you manually call places? How many businesses do you have signed up? If I was looking for a plumber, etc, I'd give your service a shot.
This may just be me, but for some reason, the landing page turned me off - I think the call to action may look too similar to a website that costs money, or signs me up for a 'trial'? I'm not really sure, but I figured I'd mention it. Some other people might want to chime in here in case this is a personal thing.
As others have said I'm fairly certain that you're breaking a trademark with your naming. I'd also suggest redesigning the websites interface, it's confusing and not usable on a mobile device.
How are calls placed to service providers? Does a robot voice read out the requests? If so, how do you convey to the service provider that this isn't a spam message?
We play a pre-recorded message to service providers whenever they have a matching lead and direct them to the site to retrieve the lead info. The requests are not currently read out. Each request is verified by a human to prevent spam messages.
The first issue with your name is, the phrase "Yellow Pages" is actually trademarked in many countries, although not in the U.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_pages
Sure, you can legally use "Yellow Pages" in the US, but you should consider if it will really be worth the potential international hassle?Since the trademarks exist in some other countries, you can still face foreign legal challenges (or threats) from other countries. Sadly, this kind of nonsense really does happen:
http://www.anecdote.com/2007/08/yellow-pages-registered-trad...
The second issue with your name is, no one will remember it. The phrase "Yellow Pages" is known and descriptive, but in the US it is over-used since a lot of companies use it due to the lack of a trademark. It fails to be distinct. From a branding and marketing perspective, being plain and generic is a death knell.
For your sake, I hope my concerns on the name are unwarranted since changing it would be a ton of work.
Your video was excellent! The animation is fantastic, and the voice-over is clear and preformed well. With that said, it's too long to be the first thing people see/experience on your site. It's 2 minutes and 48 seconds but nowhere are we told its length, so watching your video might be a two hour investment, or worse. --Your pitch is "Save Time" so expecting someone to sit and watch a video is counter productive.
I'd put your form first, top and center, then put the video below or as a link to another page. It might just be my own old habits, but I'd label the form input fields clearly. The "title=" attributes on the form inputs are good (and helpful for accessibility), but unlike labels, they require javascript or mouse hovering to be displayed. Labeling the input fields with plain text solves this accessibility issue.
I'd use "needs" or "wants and needs" rather than "search request". I'd also capitalize the "b" in "Broadcast".You need to realize what you're competing with, namely someone saying two words like "local plumber" into their mobile phone.
To make the site more useful to users searching for services, on submit also provide a list of the local businesses you are contacting on their behalf, along with the sites and/or contact info of the businesses. This helps to establish and increase trust, as well as makes the site usable anonymously.
It was great to see you have "Privacy" and "Terms" clearly listed.
The text (copy) on the "About" page reads well regarding what your company and site does. Having a bit more general information about your company like history might be a worthy addition. The "What We Do" of your company should be concisely expressed on your main home page along with the search form.
Grey text on a white(ish) background is very common (like here on hn) but it's a terrible choice and is a well known accessibility issue. It makes your about, privacy, terms, and other pages are hard to read for people with even minor vision deficiencies.
Your "Team" page lists one person, Lou Pereira. He might be a one-man army, but until you have a team of people, I'd skip having a team page. On your team page, your html source has a commented "angela.jpg" image, which you may or may not want to remove.
Though not on your main home page, html source (and php) on the team page has a very common issue; you used a text editor or IDE that's configured improperly so you are unable to see the trailing whitespace on lines, and you're unable to see when you're mixing tab and spaces characters on indenting. --How would I know? Well, I spent too many years botching indents and line endings with characters I couldn't see, until finally one day I configured vim to highlight my mistakes. ;-)
Lastly, you've got a form checkbox to allow a phone number input so searchers can receive text messages, so I wondered if another checkbox to allow users to have their email and phone sent directly to the businesses would be worthwhile?
As always, writing up feedback for "Show HN" posts is a tough balancing act since the criticisms always tend to stand out a lot more than the compliments. I think you're doing good, so I hope the above is written well enough to avoid seeming overly-critical.