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Introducing Main&Me v.3: The App for your Town
(coming Summer 2015)
Foreword: Getting Ahead of The Mobile Future These days, every city needs a mobile app, but how does a city decide what kind of app to build or buy?
This detail-packed PDF is designed to be studied by every Downtown Shopping District manager—whether a member of National Mainstreets, BALLE, Local First, NESBN or AMIBA—trying to decide what kind of local shopping and tourism app to recommend to their Board. In our minds, the questions comes down to whether you:
A. build a proprietary downtown app and website that requires enormous development and maintenance costs; long lead and construction times; extraordinary cooperation amongst board members, business owners and software developers; that risks rapid obsolescence, and requires visitors to download a one-town, single purpose app, or,
B. employ the free Main&Me platform to start building an app for your town right away—today, this afternoon—without cost or delay, joining a nationwide network of independent-minded downtown shopping districts, instantly acquiring a national user base of tourists already using the same app every day to discover the best products, sales and events in their hometowns
Main&Me is the future. In contrast to text-oriented directory-style websites and apps, Main&Me is photo-based, modeled on Pinterest and Instagram, because people prefer these fun and engaging sites over one-dimensional text-based directories. In our judgment, tapping into the habits these modern apps have inculcated is the best way to engage the next generation responsible for the future of the local movement. Like these apps, the Main&Me platform takes a crowd-sourced approach, allowing either a single director, or a happy mob of citizen volunteers to continually add content to their town, encouraging all to become stakeholders. The new camera feature makes it friction-free for these users to add photos of their own favorite local "finds" to their cities, so more passive users may discover their curated suggestions, too.
In short, Main&Me is designed to work as much by itself as possible, encouraging democratic participation and spontaneous growth, while steering clear of the challenges posed by earlier generations of directory-style websites and apps.
Thank you for your interest. Main&Me. Your town in your pocket.
“Give a man a fish add a photo to Yelp…promote one restaurant for one day. Teach a man to fish add a photo to Main&Me…prepare their city for the mobile future”
— Mainard of Main Street (mascot of Main&Me)
Features: What You Can Do With Main&Me
Sign in with email, Facebook or Twitter. No more forgetting passwords. And don't worry, we don't sell your information. Our privacy policy could have been written by Greta Garbo herself.
Sign in Page
The app uses geo-location to automatically customize the Home Page with your city's name, then fills the pages of the app with the products, sales and events offered in your city. This allows tourists and local shoppers alike to keep your town in their pocket.
The new Sponsor button at the bottom helps you fund your Main Street program, or even just thank a loyal supporter
Home Page
Want to explore another city from the comfort of your living room sofa? Just tap “Change”—or tap the logo at the top any time—to access a list of other Main&Me cities across America.
Location Query
The new Sponsored by page, accessed by tapping the “Your local sponsor” button on the home page, gives your organization a dynamic and modern way to support your efforts, and puts your sponsor’s message on the iPhone and iPad of every Main&Me user in your city.
In some cases, sponsoring the app on a monthly or yearly basis may even help your sponsor address their need to allocate community development funds and support the independent businesses they depend on as clients.
Sponsored by page
Specials & Events Tab Gallery Keeping abreast of the newest downtown happenings is as easy as taking out your phone and swiping side to side in the Specials and Events tab.
The feature gives merchants and event organizers an interactive way to advertise products, sales and events in the app. In contrast to other means of advertising, analytics are available for your organization to see how many users tapped on ads, or came on foot to specific businesses to redeem offers. In-app ads can be another potential source of revenue —or distribution of goodwill—for your organization
The Storefronts gallery brings local window shopping to shoppers’ iPhones and iPads (Android coming soon) and into the Mobile Era. We call it "scrolling" along Main Street.
The Storefronts gallery contains merchant-customizable storefront photos which, when tapped, link to their Store Pages in the app, creating endless possibilities for showcasing Holiday Strolls, Best Seasonal Window contests, or just showing off your Main Street shop windows for tourists and residents alike.
Storefronts Tab Gallery
Tap any photo in the Storefronts gallery (previous page) to browse by individual Store Page.
Each individual Store Page consists of a larger version of the merchant’s chosen storefront photo, a photo gallery of items and services for sale in that business, a location pin for finding the business on a map, and a series of buttons enabling calling, following and sharing the business
Individual Store Pages
Just tap the location pin icon on any Store Page or Item Detail page, and up pops the map
Map Directions
The Items Tab gallery of the home page combines the fun of window shopping in the real world with the fascination of idly browsing Instagram or Pinterest on your phone.
Main&Me users can browse goods and services offered in their current city in "gallery" mode (shown here) or tap an item to swipe from one full-size image to the next.
Items Tab Gallery
Item Detail pages allow you to serendipitously window shop your current city by simply swiping side to side (you can also use Search to find something specific).
Want to learn more about an item? Tap the phone icon to call the store, tap the wish list icon to add the item to one or more custom wish lists, or tap the share icon to share the item with friends via Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, text or email
IndividualItem Detail Pages
Tap the phone icon or the "Call for price" button on any page to call the store directly, no need to look up the number. Tell them Main&Me sent you, OK?
Tap to call store
Tap the wishlist icon on any Item Detail page to add the item to one or more custom wish lists…
Local-only Wishlists
…then tap the share icon at the bottom to share items from the chosen wish list with friends (translation: share what everyone wants for birthdays and important occasions, and the local sources where they found them!)
Local-only Wishlists
Sharing brings new people to the party, and helps grow a user base predisposed to support your independent business community
Tap the share icon on any page to share via text, email, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram. Tell them Main&Me sent you, OK?
Sharing
Want to use Main&Me in another city? You're in luck. Main&Me customizes itself to whatever city you’re in. Why? Because building a nationally-connected network of local independent businesses allows us to showcase your Main Street across the world, and create a national, local-passionate user base at a scale impossible to achieve if every city relies on its own unconnected app.
For the tech-inclined among you, that means Main&Me combines scale with "search engine optimization” theory to improve the Google search rank of every downtown shopping district and individual business that joins the network. It truly is a modern day example of “one for all and all for one.” (Amazon need not apply.)
It Works Everywhere
Looking for a specific product, service or business in your current city? Tap a pre-defined search category button, or type a search term or name into the search bar.
Feeling hungry? Tap the restaurant, bakery or deli button on the Search page to display a gallery of photos from local restaurants, bakeries and delis, then swipe side to side until you see something you like.
Search Page
Is there a better way to assess breakfast, lunch or dinner options than looking through an album of mouth-watering photos? We didn’t think so, either.
Yelp is great, but its not very visual, and when you're hungry, you want to see your local options, not just read about them.
Search Results
Tap the menu icon on any page to access your most important information, including a list naming "All Places" in your current city, and a list of “My places” (i.e. your favorite places) collected over time
Menu Page
Main&Me’s new camera feature allows a merchant, a Main Street manager, or a volunteer who loves your town to start building your Main&Me app right away, one photo at a time. No cost, no permission required (although help is just an email or phone call to Main&Me away), just a willingness to start adding photos, categories and descriptions of local goods, services and events to what will become your town’s app.
No more working with a committee to decide on the “right” software developer. No more searching for the “right” custom app that works in your town but nowhere else. Just go to ww.mainandme.com to start building a downtown app for your town right away.
Start building your downtown app… right away
Linking store names to the photos you add is the secret sauce. To make the process friction free, we’ve got it down to about 2 taps. Just take a photo, tap the “add a store” option, then choose the store from a list of nearby businesses. Once a photo is approved as appropriate, it’s automatically added to that business’s Store Page.
Think of it as Instagram-for-a-good-cause—the cause of bringing foot traffic back to your downtown shopping district, and preparing your town to prosper in a mobile future.
Add store names as you add photos
When your photo has been uploaded, we tell you. Then we ask you what you'd like to do next, because: share
Adding photos:Success
Think of the fun folks will have adding photos to Main&Me in the name of such a noble cause. You can even invent contests to engage citizens, students, photography clubs, what have you, in the project of raising awareness of local economic issues and showcasing your town on iPhones and iPads all over the world (Android coming)
Games, Scavenger Hunts, Prizes, Oh My
As a friend of ours once said:
“Teach a person to add a photo to Yelp…promote one restaurant for one day. Teach a person to add a photo to Main&Me…prepare your city for the mobile future”
Welcome to the Mobile Era
The End
