LogoNav.com, The Touch Screen Internet Yellow Pages Blog

I did a search for Hair Salons in Portland, ME last night and what I got back for search results made me smile.  Not because the search results provided me with any value at all, but because it further justifies what I we have built with LogoNav.com.  It is also a good idea to do a competitive analysis from time to time to make sure the world is as you says it is.  The results I got back from Local.com actually had CVS as a result, along with an ad about how a Mom can make $77/hr at home.  This has nothing to do with what I was looking for.  Screen shot below.  CVS showed when I scrolled down the page.

LogoNav.com search results for Hair Salon in Portland, ME

This is exactly the reason small businesses are fed up with Yellow Page type companies/tools.  Ther is No Value creation for the small business in order for them to want to pay for a service.  There is a much larger opportunity to make more money from Pleased customers willing to pay, rather than displeased customers feeling obligated.

One of the key problems is that with the other forms of advertising available that provide additional revenue, the bottom line ($) becomes the only goal of the company, not necessarily providing the real value for the small business.  I have seen over my years in consultative sales that if you provide value, you will make a lot more $ in the long run.

At LogoNav our priority is the small business looking to advertise in a place where they will be found.  We give them the tools at their finger tips to manage their own information quickly and easily. 

We provide results that surpass any other IYP around. 

Below is an example of YP.com results.

YP.com search results for Hair Salon in Portland, ME

The initial screen for YP shows 3 salons, 3!!!  I need to scroll down for more, and then I click page 2, 3. 4, etc.  Local.com showed 0 actual local businesses in Portland, ME on the initial screen return.  The top business was located in Woodbury, NY.  WHAT?

On the flip side, LogoNav displayed 12 local Salons, ALL in Portland, and to access the rest of the list you just needed to scroll down the page.  We even displayed a Local Business’s LOGO at the top.

There is not much of a comparison when you compare what you find on the front page of a search result between Logonav.com, Local, com, and YP.com.  Logonav shows the most amont of businesses.

What do the small businesses want?  They want to feel like they were provided Value with listing wiht any of these.  They want brand recognition, they want to be found on PAGE 1, not burried in page xx. 

LogoNav.com, the Premier Touch Screen IYP (Internet Yellow Pages), has added Video upload for all members.  Now when LogoNav.com members login, they can provide a link to a YouTube video that will then be displayed in their one page Microsite.  See an example here.

From day one, we wanted to put the tools in the hands of all small business owners anywhere across the US which help them promote their business.  As a member of LogoNav, you can create  a profile in very few steps, enter your business information, and be live in our directory in a matter of minutes.  We provide easy tools to manage and share your information with consumers looking to find local businesses.  You can upload images of your products, your showroom, your storefront, your employees.  Now you can upload a Video of your products, a Video of your showroom, a Video of your employees, etc.  You can also link to your social profiles right from your Business, from LinkedIn to Facebook to MySpace.  Add your Skype username.

We also saw a vision of doing this through a simpler user interface, one that makes sense and provides results that are as straight forward as possible - nothing  but businesses.  That is how we see the web should be - simple, not complicated.  Let people find what they are looking for, and make it as easy as touching a button.

That’s what you get at LogoNav.com - the easiest way to find local business, period.

So in my last post, I described how we developed this tool - LogoNav.com - to help consumers find local businesses easier using our slick Touch Screen interface, and how that will help local businesses be recognized by their Brand identity - their logo.  Here is another video of how we do that.

This version of the interface shows how we browse to company logos and how we view the information about that company.  There is plenty that isn’t shown, but the important aspects should be shown - touch a category to find a business in a certain area - that simple.

3 1/2 years ago the idea for LogoNav.com came to me.  Why not an easy to use, highly graphical, touch screen application that would help consumers locate local businesses, and in doing so, help those local businesses with Brand advertising via their Logo.  Well, as we all know the story of the iPad as told by every media outlet on the planet, the touch screen device of the future is finally here, and it is just what the doctor ordered to show off what we’ve developed.  Below is the video I took tonight at the local Apple store.

The key difference here between all the iPad apps being developed and LogoNav.com is that we didn’t just develop for the iPad, we developed for the web with the expectation of wifi everywhere, and thus a platform (SDK) agnostic system that can be used on any Tablet anywhere, regardless of the browser, or the OS - Microsoft, Google, Apple.

Now you can Join for FREE the LogoNav.com community of businesses who are taking advantage of advertising in our Internet Yellow Pages with their Logo.  There is no time limit on this offer, our tool was built to be easy and efficient to use and manage, and we want to pass that benefit on to consumers and businesses who want to advertise.

What is LogoNav.com?  LogoNav.com is an Internet Yellow Pages built for the iPad and similar Tablet PCs.  We designed the interface to be touch based, focusing on making it easy for consumers to look for businesses and businesses to sign up.  We do this through an intuitive user interface that makes the user experience extremely efficient.  We have been told by many that this was the easiest website they have ever used, and one in particular was a man in his 60s.

Things that cost rediculous amounts of money with the likes of the YellowPages.com and other directories, such as uploading your logo or having a microsite for your business, we offer for free.  We think these things are important to develop Brand recognition for business which is why we made it a default part of our system from the beginning.

Come and join the LogoNav.com community.  Just to give you a flavor of things in the pipeline, we are working on a favorites page that, for Tablet users, will be very exciting.  You’ll be able to tag your favorite local businesses through our directory and have a dedicated page to view those favorites and access their information at the touch of a finger.  Think of the iPad hanging in your kitchen on the wall.  You decide it is pizza night and instead of fingering through the old yellow pages paper book, you touch your iPad once to turn it on, a second time to pull up the LogoNav interface, and a third time to get to your favorites page.  Once there, click on the logo of the local Pizza joint, and you have immediate access to the information you need.  Heck, I fully expect the iPad to have calling features in it soon enough, so then you just touch the number and you would be calling from the iPad, using VOIP of course.  Isn’t this stuff fun!

Come and Join LogoNav.com for free and get your Business Logo on the top of your category page.

Don’t we all wish we were Apple sometimes.  They do a tremendous job of hyping their products, to the point of utter saturation.  That being stated, the numbers on the first day of Pre-order for the iPad were staggering.  For me, I’m planning on waiting until the second generation to get one, as I bought the first generation iPhone, and well, we know the story there.  I just hope I can hold off until then to get one…

Click here to read more on the number of iPads ordered on day 1 of Pre-ordering.

http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/13/day-1-estimate-120000-ipads-sold/#more-21386

Our vision has always been to have our tool available to the greater public through the use of touch screen devices.  As you can imagine, I just love it when I see articles such as this one talking about bringing touch everywhere…

It has been a while since we’ve posted anything, and there are reasons behind that.  We are trying to find our way in this place called the internet, with social media all around us, mobile tools getting better and better every day, at a time when people are still losing their jobs faster than they’re finding them.  We’ve been challenged with one way or another, go big or start small.  We already know the answer actually, since we tried one already and didn’t execute very well on that. 

This has been a learning process and we have come a long way.  We have talked with businesses and seen where the market has gone, witnessed a resurgence of a competitor to yellowpages.com in superpages.com which is good for us, and in general regrouped to now come away with something that we believe to have much more value than we originally had planned, and can offer something with such a low cost and easy access, that it will be hard to turn down.

Still, we have a ways to go to get the modified idea in place, thus we are planning on shutting down the functional site for an interim period to make those adjustments and relaunch in a reasonable amount of time.  We will keep everyone informed of our progress and look forward to providing that value on the front end in the shortest period of time possible.

All the best, Your LogoNav.com Team, soon to be Your ALocalTouch.com Team!

I read lost of articles, lots and lots of articles, from FSB, to Inc. to Entrepreneur.  I love them, they keep me inspired.  Occassionally I come across one that makes me think there is meaning to all of this.  I came across one just last Friday, albeit through another source online, TechCrunch.  Meant to post it then, but after all, it was Friday night!

Here’s a quote that I think resonates with all entrepreneurs:  “A few years ago, Max Levchin—of PayPal and Slide fame— told me there were two kinds of entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley: Those who work tirelessly and are great at execution, and those who are visionary and truly create new ideas—and sometimes new markets. ” Click here to read the full article. 

I’ve lived in the world of product development, and ideas are one thing, but to execute on those ideas is something entirely in itself.  There isjust something about coming up with a vision of how something could be, and then making that a reality.  Anyone can come up with an idea.  What separates success and failure is how you execute that idea!