I got the message that you were offering to create mobile sites for restaurants, but maybe it's because I'm already used to the idea. I think you may be overestimating how many people have and understand smartphones, though. According to slide 62 of the Morgan Stanley “The Mobile Internet Report Setup” you link on the front page, there's only a 25% percent penetration (est 40% by the end of the year). After a quick skim through the presentation, I don't see your 42% anywhere, but perhaps I don't know what I'm looking for.

Anyways, the point is that you're not marketing to the smartphone users. You're marketing to people that probably don't have a smartphone, and may not know how people would use one to discover their site. Showing the different paths in a video or chart would be a good idea. Better might be to set something up with an existing customer with a horrible, flash-filled, pdf-menu'd main site. Get them to agree to let you post a video of what it was like before they got you, and how unusable the site is, even if you somehow get a direct link to the pdf menu.

Disclaimer: I'm not a businessperson or a restaurant owner.

> Disclaimer: I'm not a businessperson or a restaurant owner.

This is key. stevenwei, you need to get your butt into some restaurants and test this idea out. I work with restaurant owners and workers all the time. They're loud, brash, and won't hesitate to tell you exactly what they think of you (and your product) to your face.

Spend a day in as many of the restaurants in your area as possible and request a meeting with the owner. Most of the time you'll get turned down, but take what you can get.

Ask them about their current website and if they have any issues. Talk to them about smartphones and try to understand how they perceive their problems. Take lots of notes. Then, use the words the restaurant people did on your site. It may seem unclear to us on HN, but if it speaks to restaurant people that's all that matters.

> I work with restaurant owners and workers all the time. They're loud, brash, and won't hesitate to tell you exactly what they think of you (and your product) to your face.

Great advice, and that has been our experience as well.

Hmm, I must have gotten my surveys mixed up. The 42% figure comes from here: http://www.changewaveresearch.com/articles/2010/01/smart_pho...

I'll add another citation. Although I would love to find more recent numbers, as I bet the percentage has jumped since then.

Great idea for the before and after videos...although on a Flash site the 'before' video won't be particularly exciting. :)

Agree with Spuz - it's hard to recognize the screenshots as a 'website' (as the lines between app and website are a bit blurry on mobile devices). Let's say a restaurant has a normal website, and a potential customers google's them on his phone and browses to the normal website on his phone. How is he going to get on to the mobile version? Should the restaurant set up detection and a redirect?

From a user experience perspective, an automatic redirect is the best approach, IMO.

As far as getting restaurants set up, that can be a service we provide...

> It is not clear that we're allowing restaurants to create a mobile version of their website?

It isn't. The biggest text you have up there is 'Mobile websites for Restaurants'. That might mean you do contract work for restaurants looking to create mobile websites. Which you aren't. May be interpreted both ways - I think your explanation in the post above was clearer.

Good point. I'll try to clarify the wording to make it more explicit.

Great idea, but like others said make it clear, with one sentence, what your service does (think like you're a restaurant owner who vaguely even knows what an iPhone is - just that a lot of your patrons use them in your restaurant).

Also, using the location-network effect you could also help promote their establishments. Build another app that allows you to search and view your client's mobile-friendly sites and open their location in Google Maps

So its like Urbanspoon, except you can actually see what the hell is on the menu. This helps your product sell more because not only are you making it easier for the restaurant to gain visibility through your promotion and marketing through the app (which is what you could technically charge them for - giving away the site for free), but you are also giving them an established mobile presence as well.

One two punch.

Interesting idea. But that would put us in direct competition with Yelp, Urbanspoon, CitySearch, etc, which already have massive market/mind share. Why would someone care about being listed in our directory?

Additionally, all of those directories already link to the restaurant's website. Our goal is simply to make sure that when the user clicks through to the website, they can actually find what they're looking for.

Edit: That said, explaining that all these existing directories point to your website, and when your customers click through, they want to be able to find your menu (or whatever else wasn't listed in the directory) is certainly valuable.