Saturday, March 27, 2010

Popular Places in the Nelso Prague iPhone App

  1. Old Town Square
  2. Prague Astronomical Clock
  3. Charles Bridge
  4. Prague Castle
  5. Franz Kafka's Birthplace
  6. Jan Hus Monument
  7. The Powder Gate
  8. Church of Our Lady before Týn
  9. Maisel Synagogue
  10. Church of St. Gallus
  11. U Fleků
  12. Wax Museum Prague
  13. Zoo Praha
  14. Wallenstein Palace
  15. Starbucks Coffee
  16. Estates Theater
  17. Prague Lookout Tower
  18. St. Vitus Cathedral
  19. Laterna Magika
  20. Hard Rock Cafe Prague
  21. Municipal House
  22. Sex Machines Museum
  23. Old Town Bridge Tower
  24. Ariadne Night Club
  25. Church of Our Lady of the Snows
  26. Captain Nemo
  27. Jazz and Blues Lounge Bily Konicek
  28. Troja Castle
  29. Zizkov Television Tower
  30. Monastery of the Infant Jesus of Prague
  31. Erotic City
  32. Palace Gardens below Prague Castle
  33. Prague Public Transport Museum
  34. Tuscany Palace
  35. Lobkowicz Palace
  36. Tesco
  37. Pevnost Vyšehrad
  38. Goldfingers
  39. Toy Museum
  40. Loreta
  41. Darling Cabaret
  42. Sitka Water Tower
  43. Vitkov National Monument
  44. Botanical Gardens
  45. Il Toro Negro
  46. K5 Relax Club
  47. Kolkovna
  48. Allegro
  49. DUPLEX
You can download the Nelso Prague iPhone app for free in the App Store.

Top 30 Czech Hotels on Nelso in 2010

Based on page views, these are the most popular Czech businesses in the accommodation category since January 1, 2010.
  1. Buddha - Bar - Hotel Prague
  2. Hotel AXA
  3. Olšanka Hotel
  4. Hotel Intercontinental Praha
  5. Hotel Barceló Old Town Praha
  6. Orea Hotel Pyramida
  7. Grand Hotel Pupp
  8. Golf Centrum Čechie
  9. Guercino
  10. Grand Hotel Brno
  11. Radisson SAS Alcron Hotel
  12. Hotel Restaurant Libuse
  13. Dinitz Kosher Hotel Prague
  14. Caravan Camping
  15. Ski Penzion Kvilda
  16. Golfový areál KASKÁDA (Golf Club Brno)
  17. Hilton Prague
  18. Park Inn Hotel
  19. Restaurace & Hotel U medvídků
  20. Chata Jizerka
  21. The Augustine Hotel
  22. ACE - hostel Prague 1
  23. Hotel Central
  24. Pension Kakrda
  25. Chata Pod Bukovcem
  26. Plus Prague Hostel
  27. Penzion U Slunce
  28. Apartment Ski Resort Pec
  29. Hotel Kings Court
  30. Pinocchio - hotel, discoclub

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Progress in Budapest

Photography and data collection in Budapest is going well, and we now have listings in over 150 categories. Within a few weeks, our coverage of Budapest will be better than our coverage of Prague.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Nelso Bratislava iPhone App already #7 in Slovakia

Despite being in the App Store for less than 24 hours, our new iPhone app for Bratislava is already #7 in the Travel category. This isn't much of a surprise - there's not a lot of competition for Bratislava apps currently, and we're the only ones offering a free app.

This is a "beta" release; we still have thousands of business photos to process for Bratislava, and we don't have the app localized into Slovak yet. But we wanted to release it as soon as possible, to judge the demand for an app for a small (Bratislava has a population of about a half million people), less touristy city than Prague.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

What might a "sponsored listing" on Nelso be worth?

The only advertising on the Nelso sites currently is Google AdSense. We use AdSense because it is very easy to implement, and doesn't require us to sell advertising directly.

However, in certain markets (e.g. the Czech Republic, Hungary) we feel that it would be far more profitable to sell advertising directly, and the most obvious way to start is with "sponsored listings". A sponsored listing is essentially selling preferred placement to businesses. For example, a business would always appear as the first result for "burgers", even if they were not the closest result based on the search area of the user.

Every major local search site sells sponsored listings, including Yelp, Yahoo! Local, Qype, and the Yellow Pages.

We've decided that we should do the same (sell sponsored listings), which leaves us with two questions to answer:
  1. What effect does it have to place a business first in search results?
  2. How much should we charge?

As for #1, the easiest was to test this is to choose some business and place them first for searches relevant to their business category. In early January, we did exactly that with the business listing for the Jama Pub in downtown Prague.



As can be seen in the graph, page views for Jama increased 3x from the time we put Jama at the top of search results (early January), while page views for another popular pub in Prague, U Zlatého Tygra remained relatively stable1.

As for #2 (how much we should charge), I still have no idea what this increase in traffic is worth to a business. What we'll do is set the price very low to start - 20 EUR per month. If you're interested in buying a sponsored listing on Nelso (3 months minimum), send us email at info@nelso.com.


1 Don't read too much into the graph above. U Zlatého Tygra still gets far more traffic than Jama. The graph only shows the relative change in traffic over the last few months.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010