ShareSquare

Dear America’s Restaurants: We’re Just Gonna Make These 1,000,000 Mobile Sites For You, Cool? Cool.

As you might’ve spotted on SocalTech, we made this new thing and called it TacoGrid.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ShareSquare Launches TacoGrid: 1 Million Free Mobile Sites for Restaurants in America

(May 24, Silicon Beach, Los Angeles) – Recognizing that over 95% of restaurants in the U.S. lack mobile-optimized websites (despite nearly half of all visitors now arriving via mobile) ShareSquare http://getsharesquare.com/, a self-serve mobile site builder, has launched an initiative called “March to Mobilize 1,000,000 Restaurants in May” at TacoGrid.com.

Since 2010 ShareSquare has powered thousands of campaigns creating mobile engagement in music, entertainment and brand advertising, ranging from individual artists to global marketing agencies and studios.  Today’s announcement expands ShareSquare’s efforts into the SMB market.

Founder Matthias Galica elaborates:

I saw how much was at stake when I played around with a new mobile site for my mother’s restaurant in Chicago; click-to-call/map instantly made a 2.5x difference in overall CTR.  I also learned how few restaurant owners understand the scope of the corresponding opportunity to harvest new customers with immediate local search intent.  TacoGrid was created to illustrate both as plainly as possible.

Beginning today with initial coverage for the LA, NYC and Chicago metro areas TacoGrid.com will continue to automatically generate mobile sites for restaurants in the Top 50 U.S. cities, up to 1,000,000 by May 31.  Each SMB can find and claim their mobile site using just their business phone number. Mobile sites come synchronized with SinglePlatform menus and Foursquare for tips & specials and TacoGrid will also calculate & highlight that location’s mobile advertising potential within a 5m radius.

Each mobile site can be claimed, completely free, simply by implementing a mobile redirect code into an existing website, no signup or registration required.  Those wishing to further customize or enhance their mobile site with additional features (like dynamic Facebook, Twitter, Youtube feeds or custom contest, sweepstakes, email harvesting tools) will be able to do so via ShareSquare’s non-technical CMS after claim verification, or by engaging the assistance of a ShareSquare Authorized Partner.  An RTB (Real-Time-Bidding) local mobile ad network integration is slated to become available in June, potentially utilizing Foursquare’s upcoming SMB ad offering for the option of “check-in” based CPA campaigns. 

About ShareSquare

Headquartered in Los Angeles, ShareSquare offers a self-serve mobile marketing platform for creating advanced mobile sites. These mobile sites can then optimize existing websites for use on all smart mobile devices like iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, iPad and more.  Thanks to ShareSquare’s pedigree in powering offline-to-online entertainment and brand advertising since 2010, the platform is also uniquely suited to the creation and lifecycle management of effective QR code campaigns.  For more information, visit http://getsharesquare.com.

Vimeo, Click to Call, Tap to Map, and I Love Mama

Since our jubilant relaunch just last week we’ve had the pleasure of unsucking mobile websites from all walks of life.  Musicians, bloggers, comedians, dentists, doctors, butchers, bakers… even we couldn’t predict who’d be next.  But sometimes you can get so caught up in the latest HTML5 widget that you miss a big opportunity right under your nose.

On the southwest side of Chicago my lovely mother has spent the last 21 years building an ethnic culinary institution: Mabenka Restaurant.  Feb of ’09 was the launch of her website at www.mabenka.com, and someone had enough good sense to inject a Google Analytics snippet.  Three full years of organic search & directory referral traffic tells a jarring story: the first 2 years, mobile stayed below 6% of total visits.  Over just the last 14 months, it rose to where it stands now: 31% of total.

That means one-third of the people searching for a kielbasa-fueled polka party have been getting this:

Sorry ma’ that’s bad for biz.  Not your fault though, it sorta snuck up on everybody.  Good news: not only can we fix it (we have the technology), but there’s two awesome mobile-only features that’ll make it even better than before, and ShareSquare just released ‘em:  Click-to-Call and Tap-to-Map.

Because we wouldn’t want anybody to miss out on any wild polka action, ShareSquare now also supports HTML5 mobile playback from Vimeo Plus, in addition to Youtube and SoundCloud.

I’m stoked to track mama’s mobile metrics in real-time, and I’ll look forward to reporting back just how big of an improvement the new ShareSquare mobile site with Click-to-Call and Tap-to-Map makes.  If I’m feeling cheeky I may even try running some local mobile ads, like those via our friends at CityGrid.

Btw, if you’re the kind of saintly person that aspires to take care of lots of moms, you should check out ShareSquare’s new Authorized Partner program, where you could easily do it for, like, 100 of them.

P.S.  For those of you that just gave www.mabenka.com a whirl on mobile, yes, that’s @John_C_Reilly you spotted making a visit, and no, I’m still not sure she knows who he is.  Love you mom.

Proudly Introducing the New ShareSquare

Two years ago we hung our hat on an approaching QR code craze. It came quickly, and we surfed the hype, becoming thought leaders with tools for creating offline-online promotions that avoided all the miserable screw ups. ShareSquare powered sweet campaigns for garage bands, blockbuster films and global brands alike. But soon, a few clients found a hidden painkiller in the mix; some even got hooked on it.

What’s the crippling pain? Watching one-third or more of your existing website traffic come via mobile devices, only to bounce off an awful, broken small screen experience.

NBC Universal were among the first to recognize this, and stunned us with a stupid smart solution. Taking the same mobile experience they made in ShareSquare for a nationwide Bridesmaids QR code campaign, they then set it to appear automatically whenever a mobile browser arrived at http://www.bridesmaidsmovie.com/. Today, ShareSquare is powering the mobile versions of nearly 40 NBCU websites, and counting.

After a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Future, we spent 3 months refactoring the platform to bequeath upon the world a better, faster, yea even freer, way to mobilize an existing website. Because, candidly, most of y’all websites suck on mobile.

Unsucking your website on mobile (tablets too)

While all that QR code campaign functionality you know and love is still available, you’ll discover a veritable cornucopia of features tailored to building the slickest HTML5 mobile website on the block, in minutes, without even knowing how to code. We’ve stayed mum about a whole slew of new features and customization options ’til now; like SoundCloud streaming audio (even alongside embedded video in your RSS feeds), Google Analytics support, WYSIWYG editing, and swipe screen gestures. And that’s just last week.

Websites that need unsucking the most

Here’s a few folks that already reconsidered their existing content & navigation to build a distinctly different (and much more effective) touch mobile experience. If you’re reading this on a mobile device or iPad click any links below (just manually type in URL if you’re not) to be redirected to each ShareSquare mobile site example.

• Artist & entertainment websites, example: Brandy (4everbrandy.com)
• Small business & brand websites, example: Our Family Doctor (ourfamilydoctorasheville.com)
• Blog & personal websites, example: The Music Rover (roverit.blogspot.com)

New premium site plans and Partner/Reseller accounts

Get up and running with a fully-functional new mobile site for free. Upgrade any single mobile site, or don’t, to enable premium features for $9/mo. That’s pretty much it. Agencies and people that manage lots sites for their clients can apply for a Partner/Reseller account.

If you’ve been with us for a while, there’s no need to worry about any work you did before platform changes went into effect; you’ll find everything migrated and available in your new dashboard. And for those coming from a legacy Pro account, you’ll find Pro features within existing sites have been grandfathered in, for free, as our way of saying thank you (you wonderful earlybirds you).

Now go do it to it at http://getsharesquare.com/ and hit us back with all that glorious feedback we love.