Mobile Yellow Pages Panel – #DMS09

Mike Boland of BIA Kelsey is overseeing the mobile local search panel.

Danny Francis of Cellcity walks through an implementation of GoOrlando which appears to be a simple IYP put on an iPhone.  Per Danny’s comment below this was just a demo app to show what a basic local mobile search app could be.  I am curious to see what there non-demo apps might look like.

Erron Silverstein of Yellowbot is now walking us through Yellowbot’s iPhone app and it’s clear that they have put much more thought into the user experience.  At it’s core it’s still an IYP, but they have cleverly used some of the innate features of the iPhone to make the user experience interesting and smooth.  Definitely worth checking out. “The categories needed for a yellow pages iPhone app are much fewer than those needed for a web-based IYP,” sez Erron.

Matt Myers of Shooger, a mobile local coupon app.  Also looks like a nice UI for finding deals near you.  You can “follow” merchants so that their offers show up on your home screen.  Merchant pays based on redemption.  Merchants can send out offers in “real time” so if you need to push soup right now you can send out a soup offer.

Erron Silverstein thinks coupons are probably the best way to monetize these mobile apps even though that is fraught with issues about how to get the merchant involved.  Primarily he thinks the mobile apps for now are primarily for “brand lift” and getting more people who are likely to review businesses involved with the service.

Shooger works with “key resellers” to get the product into the hands of merchants.

Erron Silverstein: one reason we developed for the iPhone is because of the “cool factor”

Danny Francis: we focused on Nokia first because we are focused in Europe and Asia-Pacific