Who’s building mobile Websites? Pizzerias and plumbers

By Kevin Fitchard

Mom and pop pizzerias love – and I mean love — the mobile Web. Why? There’s a feature embedded in many of their sites called click-to-call that allows a hungry, and quite possibly stoned, mobile surfer to initiate a phone order directly from the Webpage. According to Duda Mobile, which has helped hundreds of local pizzerias go online, the take up rate on click-to-call is nearly 35 percent.

Duda is bringing hundreds of thousands of small-and medium-sized businesses to the mobile Web, giving food trucks and haute cuisine joints, attorneys and dentists, their first taste of the mobile Internet and a means for their customers to find them on their phones.

We last reported on Duda when Google tapped the Silicon Valley/Israeli startup to power its Go Mo program, which will optimize any Website for mobile and host it for a year at no charge. But the company has also licensed its service to AT&T, HP, Yahoo and Webs.com, leading to enormous growth in its business. Last August it was hosting less 100,000 sites. Now it’s up 1.65 million, CMO Dennis Mink said.

A good portion of those sites are in the personal rather than the small business category. Duda will allow any user to throw a free but ad-supported mobile-optimized version of their Website online, so anyone wanting to optimize their 100 greatest Baywatch moments tribute page or Twilight fan fiction portal can easily do so. Duda’s primary customers, though, are the ones that either pay $9 a month — or come through Go Mo — to access its premium features.

Full story at GigaOM.com

More about Duda here.

Kevin – you hit the nail on the head! – the vast majority of SMBs and Professionals simply need an easy, quick and cheap way to present their services in a mobile-friendly way. New British based start-up http://www.telnames.com has laser like focus on this huge market opportunity, utilising .tel’s unique domain technology. For one small annual fee of just £14.95 ($24), in around 15 minutes businesses can choose their own top level domain, populate their single page with contact info. and rich profile content including map, photos, video link and coupon – and that’s it, they’ve created a very smart mobile optimised single page web presence. Everything is included – .tel name, smart page template, hosting – no hidden extras, no ads, and excellent usability for both mobile user and merchant self-set up. Everything is click to call, click to email etc, and all social media links can be added e.g. like this London fashion jeweller, http://youniquejewellery.tel/
Businesses own and control their named place online which gets indexed in search and which they can promote everywhere – they are not a subordinate of somebody’s else’s site e.g. a sub-domain. Content updates take just a minute to complete. Telnames’ rapidly growing customer base does include Pizzerias and Plumbers http://baffitos.tel/, as well as Life Coaches and Hypnotherapists http://hypnotherapy4life.tel/ – a wide spectrum of colourful Service Providers and Professionals as can be seen on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/telnames/our-customers-tel-names/
Telnames’ aims to quickly build on its positive reaction from the UK SMB market with global expansion either directly or via strategic partners especilally those focused on accelerating SMB mobilisation.
Best, Ian http://ianbm.tel/

Mom and pop pizzerias love the mobile web? ok maybe but if they want to make actual money and they are in the united kingdom and a number of other world wide locations they use the man in the middle technique for getting local business.

The same technique yellow pages was and is aka someone between them and a customer, the yellow pages of pizza and takeaway is called http://www.just-eat.co.uk and it's breaking world records for referrals or what ever you call them, much more than a .tel could bring because all the billing and processing is handled on that site that is heavily promoted by all pizzerias and on TV and radio and web adverts, thus a customer sees it in one location they'll now remember the man in the middle brand more than their local business name.

One name much like .tel was supposed to be, much like telsearch was supposed to be, much like yellowpages was.

.tel has a wide gap, you can't put in a menu and order from it based on your location, theres no cart system all there is, is a link to just-eat and a phone number and 9 times out of 10 they'll use just eat and next time not bother with the website as .tel can't process their order.

So why has .tel no payment system that's not just paypal? because telnic and telnames want nothing to do with it probably due to it being a mine field of legal issues, thus all we get is weblinks and an icon that does nothing other than take traffic away from your brand into another man in the middle brand.

It's becoming more about 'middle brands' than your own, like facebook is a brand that companies use same as apple and twitter, your lucky they let you have some aesthetics but the most you get on just eat is your icon and menu and that's all a customer needs.

It's pretty sad when a middle brand grants you more local promotion, and sales than you can do yourself in your own community, if .tel wanted to be worth it to people running business they need to make it so it's a reach out to their local community and not a defunct push forwarder to someone else's brand.

We are hoping to build out LiveMusic.tel if the new templates ever get built. The idea is pick a city, pick an area and get a list of joints in the area playing live music.

gobigcity wrote:We are hoping to build out LiveMusic.tel if the new templates ever get built. The idea is pick a city, pick an area and get a list of joints in the area playing live music.

Great .tel domain name - and great business idea! One of the new templates will offer you even to integrate a picture for every musician (what is very important for such use)!

I'm also waiting for the new template urgently (probably like the most .tel domain owners), because the old design is not able to present a good looking website on desktops.

Thanks for the feedback. In my mind the new templates are a 50/50 chance of reality. Telnic would not be going this dark and avoiding all contact if they had any good news at all. I have been here since day 1 and it really bums me out.

gobigcity wrote:Thanks for the feedback. In my mind the new templates are a 50/50 chance of reality. Telnic would not be going this dark and avoiding all contact if they had any good news at all. I have been here since day 1 and it really bums me out.

I believe these screenshots and the previous comments made from Telnic indeed proof the templates are currently in development.

The strong reduction of communication instead is another story and can be explained probably by avoidance of confrontation with disappointed expectations from the majority of .tel owners who are domain investors and looking for fast money.

That does not excuse the missing lack of apology for delays and the confusion caused by surprising secrecy.

But we have to understand what is going on here:

Telnic was very self-confident in 2009 and expected a fast market penetration. Now the staff is searching for new ways to promote .tel domains, but they are cautious about the future outcome.

Also certainly they don't want to make the same mistake twice and raise expectations which won't be fulfilled soon.

TelTalk wrote:But we have to understand what is going on here:

Telnic was very self-confident in 2009 and expected a fast market penetration. Now the staff is searching for new ways to promote .tel domains, but they are cautious about the future outcome.

Also certainly they don't want to make the same mistake twice and raise expectations which won't be fulfilled soon.

Perhaps Telnic is just continuing its business regularly and meanwhile is annoyed by the criticism of the domain investors who try to force them working faster.

That could be also a reason why they shut down their forum - since very little positive feedback could be found there.