OK, GroceryBagSavings.com has been going for a year now, covering the Big Island and the Pacific NW. The original idea was to enter, organize and sort grocery store prices in our whiz-bang database and then display it on the web in a way that would make it easy for you to compare prices on the same item between grocery stores. We’ve learned a lot and received many compliments on the site and on the info.
The problem is, we’re not making any money. Not even enough to support the host fees to keep the site up.
Faced with that, Glen and Henry have to ask: is there a way to make the site more popular and generate more traffic and revenue? Because if there isn’t, then GroceryBagSavings.com is going away.
We’ve identified two possible problems:
- There’s a lot of data on the site, maybe too much for people to use easily.
- We don’t list the prices from every single store in our coverage areas, so perhaps we aren’t covering the stores people would like us to.
And here’s the two-part solution we came up with:
- Reduce the amount of data by focusing only on high cost items and items that vary a great deal in price, which would essentially be meat, seafood, dairy and produce.
- Expand the number of stores we cover in the areas where we are lacking, specifically in the Pacific NW, adding stores like Metropolitan Market, Top Foods, Haggen, and QFC.
Before we act on these ideas, we need to get YOUR opinion. Do we really have too many items to make sense of? Are we not covering the stores you care about? Will these changes help you use the site, and make you more likely to recommend it to your friends? Or are we missing the point entirely and need to take a completely different approach?
So, tell us what you think of our plan, or how YOU would change it so that YOU would be able to use it more easily. You can leave a comment right here on the blog, or send an e-mail to Henryd@grocerybagsavings.com
Thanks for visiting the site, and for taking the time to read this post. We hope to hear back from you.