The value of web 2.0 for my shoemaker

Recently I had an interesting discussion with the shoe maker around the corner who also is in the ‘lock and key service’ business. While he was fixing a show for me I was looking for his Qype reviews on my phone. I asked him about what he thinks about services like Qype.

He had no idea at all! The only thing he was mentioning was that he was worried about bad reviews. I agree that in a business like the ‘lock & key service’ people almost expect bad reviews (opening a look and towing a car on a weekend must be the most profitable business on earth without a need to care about customer retention), but they still hope to find a good one when they need help.

So how should a person like him actually use this service to attract new customers to his tiny shop? He is great in fixing shoes and in unlocking doors, but a dyslexic in marketing his business.

I tried to explain him the value of user generated reviews. On the one hand there is the influence of these reviews on Qype and Google as well as on the user who read the reviews. On the other hand he needed to understand the incredible value of the mobile use case for his ‘lock & key service’. The first one is easy – the tags are important for the search on Qype and the reviews are more important for Google. The user are looking for ‘fixing shows + Hamburg Schanze (the area where his store is located)’ or ‘lost key + help + Hamburg’.

The mobile one goes in line with the keywords. Imagine: You are locked out and can’t get in your apartment. What are you doing? You call a key service and persons with a smart phone are looking for one on Google or Qype. After they found services in their area they briefly judge them by the reviews. You don’t want to call the €300 rip off service. You are looking for a service like the one from Uwe M. who charges less and is also very friendly to the customers. So a good listing (keywords, pictures etc.) plus good reviews can drive a lot of additional traffic/customers to him.

The next time he prints new business cards for his store he might add his Qype URL as well as asking satisfied customers for a review.

Groupon Mania in Germany

It is quite interesting that the first Groupon clones not have been launched earlier (it was presented in Germany at the live shopping days already in February 2009). But now, after Groupon got a solid funding ($30m) at an interesting valuation ($250m), almost every day a new clone is starting. So by the end of the month we might see at least 10 approaches out there. I wish everyone company all the best with their product.

But the most important thing will be not only getting the customers to the site and buy a coupon. The deals itself are the most important factor. Who cares about a saving of €5 (even though it might be a 50% discount) and how much can a Groupon clone earn with such a deal? A successful service needs to control the deal acquisition costs as well as getting exciting deals (why should I buy a coupon for a dinner at a restaurant I don’t know? BTW: this could easily be covered by Qype that already offers a coupons solution which could be used for a Groupon service). For exciting deals I need a long term customer acquisition agreement with my supplier. This means that I might need only to agree once on a deal that than can be used four times a year in several cities. Furthermore there are many different ways to differentiate the offerings on a site.

It will be very interesting to see how the situation might look like by the end of the year. Personally it shows to me that there are currently not enough really new and interesting ideas out there about the web scene could talk about.

Groupon Clones so far:

• DailDeal

They already received a decent Angel funding (Stefan Glänzer among others) and start to advertise their service on StudiVZ (still bigger in Germany than facebook). Currently they operate in Hamburg and Berlin.

• MyCityDeal

A Rocket Internet investment (know as the start up incubator from the Samwer Bros.). This means that they will push their service within the next month heavily.

• Heimatpreis
• CouponMania
• Dailypon
• UnserDeal