 Poster: A snowHead
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| greengriff wrote: |
| Hi Fixx. The email is needed: The app cannot function without some way to tie your settings to you. The information in the app is dynamic (i.e. subject to change) and therefore is accessed as needed. Everytime you open the app you have access to the latest data. I could run the app with static info but it would always be out of date unless the user decided to go to the app store and update it. What I'm doing is not unusual or suspicious. Some apps will use your phone number, some will ask you to create some kind of unique ID. This seemed to be the most transparent method. |
Incorrect - email address is NOT needed to tie settings to the app user on a device (and even if it were, you would need serious info and disclaimers included re. purpose of the data collection and confirmation of understanding). You can have the app create an anonymous ID to use instead, which would be specific to the app and device. Fireball ID, App generated ID, or possibly GUID, with lifespan set as install-reset, would meet the immediate needs of usingthe app. You would then only request an email address (with appropriate discalimers and info re. data processing) when it was actually needed i.e. contacting people re. offers.
Plenty of info available online, but as a starter: https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1596/privacy-in-mobile-apps-dp-guidance.pdf and https://developer.android.com/training/articles/user-data-ids
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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You are grasping the wrong end of the stick - the email is necessary for these purposes because that's the way I wrote the app based on what I wanted the functionality to be. I don't know why you've got a bee in your bonnet about it. It's perfectly legitimate to collect an email address and is common practise, even amongst ski apps. Download the Val D'Isere app for example and see. The app passed scrutiny by Google and Apple (who are particularly bloody nitpicky, believe me) in order to get into their respective stores.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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I think you need to allow error reporting in the app as there's a lot of errors (places that are closed and places that are actually 50 miles away from the resort) and I'm not inclined to sit and list them all here.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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@greengriff, I am trying to be helpful, no bee in any bonnet.
From a privacy and GDPR point of view 'that's the way I wrote it' does not count as 'necessary' collection of data. I was trying to advise on how to avoid major headaches down the road re. compliance (and apple/google wouldn't advise on that now, just look for bugs/harmful stuff - privacy and compliance os your concern, not theirs), and also help encourage users. You are cutting out potential users by asking for data some people will be reticent about giving for no clear reason, and opening yourself up to potentially difficult and expensive conversations down the road re. your handling of data.
But as you don't want the help, no problem, I'm out.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| andybomb1 wrote: |
| I think you need to allow error reporting in the app as there's a lot of errors (places that are closed and places that are actually 50 miles away from the resort) and I'm not inclined to sit and list them all here. |
There is a report button on each listing. I should perhaps make it more prominent.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| kitenski wrote: |
@greengriff, have you done some maths at all on the scope of this?
Let's say there are 1,000 ski resorts just in Europe, and they have on average 3 ski shops, 3 cafes, 3 restaurants. Thats over 9000 entries and for each one you'll have to be constantly refreshing the data of opening hours, deals, contact info, pop up places that open for one season etc etc. If you get it wrong and I rock up in Meribel and your app has skis reserved for me in Les Allues then your app is going to get bad reviews. |
This is how I see things. Unless you have a huge crowdsourcing team even covering a single resort is a titanesque task. I can understand having a project to learn about app, cloud, client-server type things, that's very good.
Bear in mind it is easier to build than maintain (like cable cars)
I know you've signed up some deals already but I've always found the Europeans, especially people in ski resorts, very reluctant to change their ways of working. Hire shops rely on punters coming through the door and may work with accommodation and Tour Operators where they'll give punters a notional discount. If that works for them they rarely seem keen on exploring other avenues, especially if that puts them into competition with their rivals. I guess if it is just like a kind of yellow pages then why not but if you look at Google maps there are plenty of businesses that can't even be arsed to update their contact details, opening times etc or add a link to a website.
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| greengriff wrote: |
| andybomb1 wrote: |
| I think you need to allow error reporting in the app as there's a lot of errors (places that are closed and places that are actually 50 miles away from the resort) and I'm not inclined to sit and list them all here. |
There is a report button on each listing. I should perhaps make it more prominent. |
As I think I said on your other thread I couldn’t see this button at all.
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| fixx wrote: |
@greengriff, I am trying to be helpful, no bee in any bonnet.
From a privacy and GDPR point of view 'that's the way I wrote it' does not count as 'necessary' collection of data. I was trying to advise on how to avoid major headaches down the road re. compliance (and apple/google wouldn't advise on that now, just look for bugs/harmful stuff - privacy and compliance os your concern, not theirs), and also help encourage users. You are cutting out potential users by asking for data some people will be reticent about giving for no clear reason, and opening yourself up to potentially difficult and expensive conversations down the road re. your handling of data.
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The email is necessary to facilitate communication between the app user and the retailer. That is a legitimate reason for collection of it and is good enough for GDPR compliance. As for the bit about it cutting out potential users, that I do agree with completely and unfortuneately had not foreseen. I will live and learn. It would take a major rewrite to fix now though.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| fixx wrote: |
From a privacy and GDPR point of view 'that's the way I wrote it' does not count as 'necessary' collection of data. |
That's an interesting point.
A lot of apps you install want you to register - for example if they store data on the back end. An example is the Polar HRM app. I think Polar are Finnish. Like others I don't like doing this much and reading the GDPR stuff it seems you have a point about email addresses. The backend could simply work with a userid so I assume they gather the email addresses to sell your personal data. You could use a userid for the backend stuff and simply store the email locally, in the app, with no need for it to leave the user's phone.
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| ster wrote: |
| greengriff wrote: |
| andybomb1 wrote: |
| I think you need to allow error reporting in the app as there's a lot of errors (places that are closed and places that are actually 50 miles away from the resort) and I'm not inclined to sit and list them all here. |
There is a report button on each listing. I should perhaps make it more prominent. |
As I think I said on your other thread I couldn’t see this button at all. |
[img] [/img]
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| greengriff wrote: |
| The email is necessary to facilitate communication between the app user and the retailer. |
You could ask the user to input their contact details when they decide to contact the retailer, you don't need to store it.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Hopefully it's more visible on this listing that doesn't have a photo. It could definitely do with an improvement though.
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I’ve found the report button which is visible but just not in a place I’d expect to find it. There is also no facility to give information on the nature of the problem which I imagine would save you a lot of time.
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You know it makes sense.
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| rjs wrote: |
| greengriff wrote: |
| The email is necessary to facilitate communication between the app user and the retailer. |
You could ask the user to input their contact details when they decide to contact the retailer, you don't need to store it. |
I could have done that, but my goal was to make the 'get offers' process as simple as possible, and asking a user to type an email address in each and every time doesn't meet that goal, as well as being tedious for the user..
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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| andybomb1 wrote: |
| I’ve found the report button which is visible but just not in a place I’d expect to find it. There is also no facility to give information on the nature of the problem which I imagine would save you a lot of time. |
Yes thank you. I got your repoort for the Jam Jar. Has it gone out of business? I pondered adding in a text field for the report button. I can't recall now why I decided not to go with it. I think I will put one in in a future revision.
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Poster: A snowHead
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| greengriff wrote: |
| ster wrote: |
| greengriff wrote: |
| andybomb1 wrote: |
| I think you need to allow error reporting in the app as there's a lot of errors (places that are closed and places that are actually 50 miles away from the resort) and I'm not inclined to sit and list them all here. |
There is a report button on each listing. I should perhaps make it more prominent. |
As I think I said on your other thread I couldn’t see this button at all. |
[img][/img] |
It doesnt display like that in my phone. The name box is higher and covers more of the snowflake, and so you can’t see the report button as I said on the prev thread .
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Thank you. That's interesting. May I ask what model phone you have? Ooops edited because I didn't read your reply properly.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| Quote: |
I got your repoort for the Jam Jar. Has it gone out of business?
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Sadly closed down. I'm not really sure of the details but it never re-opened after Covid and has been confirmed that there is no intention to.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| andybomb1 wrote: |
| Quote: |
I got your repoort for the Jam Jar. Has it gone out of business?
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Sadly closed down. I'm not really sure of the details but it never re-opened after Covid and has been confirmed that there is no intention to. |
Thank you. I wonder how many times that scenario has played out in resorts around the world  .
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| greengriff wrote: |
| Thank you. That's interesting. May I ask what model phone you have? Ooops edited because I didn't read your reply properly. |
iphone 8, duck-duck-go browser
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Thank you, much appreciated.
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I'm totally doubtful, given my resort, that there's a single thing in there for me. There's no way to check without handing over an email, so forget it.
I NEVER use apps that ask for an email before I can even check out what the app does.
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Asks for name and email. Name goes in ok, but email is not enterable (iPad pro).
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Try and get some funding, from friends, family, the bank, kickstarter if you really think that it’s both not impossible and could ever be economically viable.
The first 50,000 could be spent on a consultant who will repeat what has already been suggested above
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@greengriff, you’ve split the Verbier establishments across 2 “resorts”: Verbier and Val de Bagnes (which is the valley rather than a resort). So the Verbier entry misses lots of places (and actually includes some places from Bruson and La Tzoumaz). You would really need to split these into the correct resorts to avoid confusing people. And it would also be useful to separate mountain restaurants from those that are in town. There is a list here: https://www.verbier.ch/app/uploads/ot-verbier/2022/10/Liste_restaurant_13.10.22_ANG-1.pdf
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| sibhusky wrote: |
I'm totally doubtful, given my resort, that there's a single thing in there for me. There's no way to check without handing over an email, so forget it.
I NEVER use apps that ask for an email before I can even check out what the app does. |
As I'm discovering, this is a problem for a number of people that I had not anticipated. May I ask why the aversion in your case? Fear of spam? Phishing? Something else? Cheers.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| telford_mike wrote: |
| Asks for name and email. Name goes in ok, but email is not enterable (iPad pro). |
Thanks. The app is designed for mobile phone use, the presumption being that people carry their phones with them everywhere, including when they ski. It should still work though. When you say 'not enterable', can you give me further details please? The field doesn't appear? You get an error? Something else? Cheers.
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| BobinCH wrote: |
| @greengriff, you’ve split the Verbier establishments across 2 “resorts”: Verbier and Val de Bagnes (which is the valley rather than a resort). So the Verbier entry misses lots of places (and actually includes some places from Bruson and La Tzoumaz). You would really need to split these into the correct resorts to avoid confusing people. And it would also be useful to separate mountain restaurants from those that are in town. There is a list here: https://www.verbier.ch/app/uploads/ot-verbier/2022/10/Liste_restaurant_13.10.22_ANG-1.pdf |
Thank you very much. A great help.
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You know it makes sense.
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| DTB wrote: |
Try and get some funding, from friends, family, the bank, kickstarter if you really think that it’s both not impossible and could ever be economically viable.
The first 50,000 could be spent on a consultant who will repeat what has already been suggested above |
In that case I'd rather donate the first 50k to Disability Snowsports!!! Not sure that falls within crowdfundig rules though 
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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| greengriff wrote: |
| sibhusky wrote: |
I'm totally doubtful, given my resort, that there's a single thing in there for me. There's no way to check without handing over an email, so forget it.
I NEVER use apps that ask for an email before I can even check out what the app does. |
As I'm discovering, this is a problem for a number of people that I had not anticipated. May I ask why the aversion in your case? Fear of spam? Phishing? Something else? Cheers. |
Spam yes, and there have been a lot of phishing attempts recently. There are other privacy issues as well, like how easy does it make things for anyone wanting to find out someone's IRL identity, which could be used for malicious ends by someone you've pissed off on an internet forum, for example. That latter happened to me some years ago with some nasty false accusations sent to my employer, which nevertheless lead to some internal disciplinary procedures. Not nice.
These days I use multiple addresses, some exclusively for signing up to things pseudo-anonymously; of course there's no such thing in reality unless you go to all sorts of extremes, but at least they're two or more steps removed from the real me, enough to foil most superficial attempts.
Does your app need to verify the email address though? That's a step too far for me unless it's actually for something I want or need. If it's just for a sign-up you shouldn't need for it to be a real address, or indeed an email address at all. Just allow a username to be chosen and there's no problem.
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Poster: A snowHead
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| greengriff wrote: |
| telford_mike wrote: |
| Asks for name and email. Name goes in ok, but email is not enterable (iPad pro). |
Thanks. The app is designed for mobile phone use, the presumption being that people carry their phones with them everywhere, including when they ski. It should still work though. When you say 'not enterable', can you give me further details please? The field doesn't appear? You get an error? Something else? Cheers. |
Managed to make it work by reorienting the screen - need to sort that out.
OK, let’s start with Wengen ski shops. For background, Wengen is really small - population 1000. Not many ski shops then. The app shows loads, as far away as Nendaz (hundreds of km away), and even one that’s in Germany. There are only 4 ski hire places in Wengen:
Central Sport
Molitor
Skiset
Alpia Sport.
So all the others can be removed.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Hmm. In the early internet days there were companies with this type of business model, although in practice most of them were actually in the business of being bought by stupid people. It's tough to make that work.
Can you think of any other niches where that type of model has been made to work? What's different about snow sports, why would it work here but not elsewhere? Why does this model not already work on the resort apps which already exist? Would a partnership deal with a resort app not work better? Why do you need an app at all - a web page with a service worker would do the same thing. Would commercial "offer providers" not be better using FB to target punters with those offers - it already knows who they are, what their email addresses and phone numbers are...? It sounds like a sort of "resort wiki" - Wikipedia works, but it's hard to think of other things where people freely contribute expertise, other than maybe forums like these, which serve a different purpose.
I've never seen "dragons den", but it's not the real world. I once advised a VC not to invest in obvious vapour ware which could never be built. They ignored me, invested... then the useless business was sold to a more stupid useless business at a profit for the VC. Of course the software was never built. So sometimes being wrong is right.
I think it's a mistake to "go big" on this if you don't have VC backing (and no, I'm not offering) and it's not required. I mean, I can't see any real advantage of having world wide coverage for the first time user. So would trying to make it work in one place not be a lower risk starting place?
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| Chaletbeauroc wrote: |
Does your app need to verify the email address though? That's a step too far for me unless it's actually for something I want or need. If it's just for a sign-up you shouldn't need for it to be a real address, or indeed an email address at all. Just allow a username to be chosen and there's no problem. |
Yes, because retailers need to be able to email the app user to respond to their offer requests. If users gave an incorrect email (accidentally or otherwise) then the process doesn't work.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| telford_mike wrote: |
| greengriff wrote: |
| telford_mike wrote: |
| Asks for name and email. Name goes in ok, but email is not enterable (iPad pro). |
Thanks. The app is designed for mobile phone use, the presumption being that people carry their phones with them everywhere, including when they ski. It should still work though. When you say 'not enterable', can you give me further details please? The field doesn't appear? You get an error? Something else? Cheers. |
Managed to make it work by reorienting the screen - need to sort that out.
OK, let’s start with Wengen ski shops. For background, Wengen is really small - population 1000. Not many ski shops then. The app shows loads, as far away as Nendaz (hundreds of km away), and even one that’s in Germany. There are only 4 ski hire places in Wengen:
Central Sport
Molitor
Skiset
Alpia Sport.
So all the others can be removed. |
Thank you very much.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| phil_w wrote: |
Hmm. In the early internet days there were companies with this type of business model, although in practice most of them were actually in the business of being bought by stupid people. It's tough to make that work.
Can you think of any other niches where that type of model has been made to work? What's different about snow sports, why would it work here but not elsewhere? Why does this model not already work on the resort apps which already exist? Would a partnership deal with a resort app not work better? Why do you need an app at all - a web page with a service worker would do the same thing. Would commercial "offer providers" not be better using FB to target punters with those offers - it already knows who they are, what their email addresses and phone numbers are...? It sounds like a sort of "resort wiki" - Wikipedia works, but it's hard to think of other things where people freely contribute expertise, other than maybe forums like these, which serve a different purpose.
I've never seen "dragons den", but it's not the real world. I once advised a VC not to invest in obvious vapour ware which could never be built. They ignored me, invested... then the useless business was sold to a more stupid useless business at a profit for the VC. Of course the software was never built. So sometimes being wrong is right.
I think it's a mistake to "go big" on this if you don't have VC backing (and no, I'm not offering) and it's not required. I mean, I can't see any real advantage of having world wide coverage for the first time user. So would trying to make it work in one place not be a lower risk starting place? |
I'm off out now, and out at the snow show tomorrow, but I'll give you a response as soon as possible.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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 no need, I was thinking that I was being a bit unhelpful there, which wasn't my intent. Just stuff that came to mind from reading the thread, ignore it.
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| greengriff wrote: |
| sibhusky wrote: |
I'm totally doubtful, given my resort, that there's a single thing in there for me. There's no way to check without handing over an email, so forget it.
I NEVER use apps that ask for an email before I can even check out what the app does. |
As I'm discovering, this is a problem for a number of people that I had not anticipated. May I ask why the aversion in your case? Fear of spam? Phishing? Something else? Cheers. |
Mostly spam.
That, balanced against the usefulness of the app.
Truth being, those who could contribute to resort information probably won’t need the app to connect to retailers. Punters who could benefit from the app have little to no information to contribute to the building of the resort data base.
So if you want customer crowd source, you need to remove the email requirement. Or you’re cutting off a lot of users who decided their email address is more valuable than what they get out of the app (which is zero). If your business modal is to connect retailers to customers, then you need to populate the resort information by retailers instead.
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| greengriff wrote: |
| sibhusky wrote: |
I'm totally doubtful, given my resort, that there's a single thing in there for me. There's no way to check without handing over an email, so forget it.
I NEVER use apps that ask for an email before I can even check out what the app does. |
As I'm discovering, this is a problem for a number of people that I had not anticipated. May I ask why the aversion in your case? Fear of spam? Phishing? Something else? Cheers. |
Yes. Fear of spam. Got enough of it already. And it's work to create a temporary mailbox to try something out. If I thought there were a payoff, I might. But this is doing work to help you, not me.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| abc wrote: |
Truth being, those who could contribute to resort information probably won’t need the app to connect to retailers. Punters who could benefit from the app have little to no information to contribute to the building of the resort data base.
So if you want customer crowd source, you need to remove the email requirement. Or you’re cutting off a lot of users who decided their email address is more valuable than what they get out of the app (which is zero). If your business modal is to connect retailers to customers, then you need to populate the resort information by retailers instead. |
100%
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I have a specific email address for use for logging in to airport wifi, demands for email addresses from dodgy apps etc. My email client then filters them out and deletes them without me having to do anything or look at them. Doesn't everyone do this? Or do they simply use boris.johnson.mp@parliament.uk
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FAQ
