Week 11: I Actually Did Something?

Did you hear about the golden rule of social media marketing? “Tweet others how you want to be tweeted.”

That joke makes a little less sense than usual, I think. I like the pun, though.

Anyway, it looks like I have a basically functional prototype site, minus a few issues. 

Your app is perfect! What issues could there possibly be?

One of those issues was the lack of a scroll bar, since that can make the UI confusing for some devices, so I decided to see if I could add one. I can, but it’s a long, involved process that I’d have to repeat for every page of the app (since each is a different length). I’ll probably only be able to implement that in the final version of the product.

Another issue that I’m trying to deal with is the ability to delete posts and accounts on the administrator side of things. Adalo is really inconvenient for that, since the app’s backend isn’t really directly available to developers. It’s mostly focused on frontend UI modeling. I’ve been looking into different ways I can moderate the platform if I decide to leave it on the Adalo site.

There’s also the matter of sorting by industry and location. Once again, difficult to build on a prototyping platform, but I’m doing what I can.

Do you think it’s viable?

Well, I’ve talked to a few people associated with small businesses and asked them whether they’d use the platform. Mostly, the answer is yes, since the barrier to entry (or usage, in this case) is so low. Of course, I don’t know if that’ll hold when they actually have the opportunity to make a post, but for now I’ll take it.

But if using the app is free, how will it make money? Most likely paid advertising. If a particular business wants to elevate their result to the top of searches for a specific tag for, say, one week, they can pay a set fee to do that. That’s the simplest form of the structure; I can also try different things such as a ‘higher tier’ of business discounts unlocked by paying app users. That comes later, though.

Is there a way I can learn all about your project in under 15 minutes without having to read through all your blog posts?

Thank you for asking! Why, yes, there is. Next Saturday, I’ll be presenting about my senior project at the BISV Senior Project Showcase. I’ve been working on my presentation for it for a while now.

I don’t know exactly what time I’ll be talking, but the event runs from 8:30am to 2pm, so you should stop by the BISV Upper School branch whenever you can and watch seniors like me discuss some really cool stuff.

Hope to see you there!

~Maya