Thinking About Starting a Website...

[whodunit]

where local customers can rate local businesses. It's not a new idea, but I don't think we have anything like it in our area.

I'm trying to think of ways to keep it simple, but fair and, of course, do it in a way that generates some income.

Some of my thoughts:

Have different categories such as restaurants, auto shops, department stores, etc.

A simple rating system in a few areas such as cleanliness, quality, service, etc.

A way for customers and businesses to connect if there is an issue that needs resolving

Have a system that makes sure people are not just demeaning a business, such as a competitor using the site to cause problems- so some sort of identity verification

Anyone have experience doing something like this and have some positive and/or negative thoughts on the matter?

[TheMartianChick]

Do you have any experience with attracting locals to a website? You'd probably have to do some traditional marketing...tv/radio commercials, website ads, etc... that might get a bit costly to "brand" your site. In my area, we have Angie's List. I thought that the site was national... I know that I've seen Angie's List commercials on tv. They run regularly around here, even though the site has been well-known in our area for a few years.

The only way that you'll likely be able to make money is through attracting advertisers. If you have some sort of fee structure where people pay to rate a business or a business pays to be included on your site, there is a bit of a conflict of interest and it becomes sort of like the Better Business Bureau. The BBB is a club to protect the reputation of businesses and is not really a consumer watchdog group. Businesses pay to be a member of the club.

[whodunit]

Thanks for the response.

One idea I was thinking of was having businesses pay to be able to contact disgruntled customers.

So, once the business is made aware that a customer is not satisfied, then they would need to pay a small fee to get into contact with that customer. The customer, when they leave their rating, can indicate whether they want to be contacted about the matter. It would then be up to the two parties to come to a mutually beneficial agreement. The business could determine their own criteria about how they verify whether a person is/was an actual customer.

The downside would be that businesses might tire of paying fees to respond to yahoos who just leave spurious comments, so I guess there would need to be a mechanism to prevent that.

Other ideas would be to have businesses pay a fee to have themselves spotlighted on the website that week and to have links to their websites published. I think that would likely require that I show how many hits I am getting before a business could determine whether it would be worthwhile.

[forfreedom]

Have you heard of Angie's list?

Not to discourage you, but it takes a lot of promoting to get people to first, find your site, and second, most importantly, to participate.

[MoonRiver]

If I owned a pizza place, I would have all my staff, my friends and family, and good customers go to your site and write outstanding reviews. I could also make up 100 email addresses and submit 100 reviews.

Here's an idea I had a few years ago that I think might work. I have seen a few sites that do it, so it works in some markets.

Is there anything special about your area? Would it make a great day trip or weekend trip? My idea was to make a site that was Virginia Day Trips that focused on towns and small cities around the state. There is already plenty of information about the bigger cities, but let's say you want to know where in VA you could go mountain biking or kayaking or camping or visit a civil war museum or visit a re-enactment or visit a vineyard or etc.

So what I would do is pick a place, let's say Danville, VA. Did you know Danville was the last capital of the Confederacy. Did you know this was a major manufacturing center and home of the famed Dan River Mills, once the largest textile manufacturer in the South? Maybe you are a history buff and would be interested in visiting the AAF Tank Museum. Or go tubing or kayaking on the Dan River. Or maybe go mountain biking on the 25+ miles of trails.

OK. I think you get the idea. Come up with several good reasons for someone to want to make a day or week-end trip. Tale lots of pictures, maybe some video. Pictures of festivals and races are always good.

Now pick restaurants, motels, bed and breakfasts, camp grounds, etc that you think visitors would enjoy. List them with map and phone number.

Here's where you make money. Sell ads. Any restaurant, etc can get the name, address and phone number for free, but if they want an add, it costs them. I had a realtor tell me they would love to advertise if I ever put the web site together.

Put together a story line to help people understand. Let's say a couple in Richmond wants to visit some civil war sights, a winery, and have a luxurious night out. They could go to your site and select their criteria. Your site would offer them location(s) that most closely meet their needs. Then they can explore the different areas on your site.

Update - I just read through this and the previous paragraph is probably too ambitious for starting out. You could just list the different areas followed by the type of attractions. The user would click on the link to get detailed information. It would be great if you could give them a simple way to calculate mileage and driving time. Search would be a great feature to add at a later time.

Also encourage people to comment after their trips about what they enjoyed, disliked, great service, never go there again, etc. Keep control so businesses don't try to savage their competitors.

And as a bonus, you get to take a lot of day trips and week-end trips to check out different areas, have a nice dinner, check out the museums, sports facilities. etc and write a big chunk of the trip off as business expense.

[DAVID In Wisconsin]

As a business owner I certainly would not pay to contact my customers. Disgruntled or otherwise.