Research Plan

Goals:

1. All relevant information about Columbus bars and restaurants in one place so users don't have to search numerous sites.
2. The site will also present a way for lesser-known bars and restaurants to gain notoriety and exposure within the Columbus community (with the potential for advertising space).
3. The site will be easy to use and navigate and will provide tons of relevant info. in a way that is easy to sift through (using key terms).

Research:

- Each group member will conduct 2 personal interviews a piece to get a feel for how people within our target demographic perceive our ideas.
- We will send out a survey to a larger number of people within our target demographic to gain a broader range of data to reference when creating our site.

- We will also attempt to contact other similar sites to learn from the work they've already completed which is similar to what we are trying to do. This will allow us to avoid simple mistakes and improve upon the sites that already exist.



Target Audience:

People of age 16 - 35'ish. The Ohio State campus community and other university students in Columbus will also represent a high level of the users because many of them are moving to the city for the first time and are curious about what is around for them to do. Especially those who are under 21 - they are going to be wondering what bars/restaurants are fun that they are actually able to get in to.



Preliminary Outline of Business Problem:

We are addressing the need of a person who wants to quickly and easily find a restaurant or bar that meets his/her desires. This website will provide an easy way to sort through the large amount of information that is important when making such a decision and will allow the user to filter through the many options that exist.

What Our Site Will Do:


Our site will feature profiles for each of the bars/restaurants in the Columbus area. Each profile will be associated with searchable key words (such as "outdoor seating", "live music", "Monday drink specials"), which will allow users to quickly find places that meet their needs based on these pre-defined search terms. For example, a user who wants to find a restaurant in the downtown area with outdoor seating, live music and drink specials on a Thursday night, can select the key terms downtown, outdoor seating, live music, drink specials, and Thursday - and the site will return a list of all the bars/restaurants that match those key terms.


Each establishment's profile will also contain important information such as the business' hours, cover charges, 18+ or 21+ rules, weekly specials, a link to their website, an overall rating and any reviews they've received from the site.



On the website's homepage there will be a scrolling set of "slides" that advertises one time specials, events, newly opened places, etc. We may also include a section where users can see which restaurants are currently trending.



How We Arrived at This Idea:

We each shared the individual ideas that we came up with and then brainstormed these ideas as a group to get an idea of where each could lead. From there, we narrowed it down and ultimately selected the one that sounded the most fun, interesting, and plausible. We thought this idea would be really useful for our target demographic and we thought we could have fun pursuing the idea.



Potential Competitors:

There are quite a few sites that do something similar, but none of the sites we've found are all-inclusive like ours will be. We hope to build off of these sites, providing one site which can wrap up just about everything these sites do combined.

Some competitors include:

- Yelp

- Experience Columbus

- Trip Advisor

- Eat Street

- Open Table

- Columbus Crave

- Drink Up Columbus
- UrbanSpoon