{"id":17075,"date":"2019-02-06T09:00:13","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T17:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=17075"},"modified":"2019-02-04T12:24:25","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T20:24:25","slug":"camosun-students-create-web-app-for-meal-deal-tracking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2019\/02\/06\/camosun-students-create-web-app-for-meal-deal-tracking\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun students create web app for meal-deal tracking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Camosun College second-year Business student Forrest Browning and Marvin Janssen, a former exchange student from the Netherlands, saw a need for an easy-to-use deal tracker. They compiled a calendar of different happy hours and lunch specials around town, and dealsohard.ca was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe thought, you know, wouldn\u2019t that be amazing if there was just this single location where all of that was in place and you can make an informed decision?\u201d says Janssen. \u201cIt\u2019s also kind of fun\u2014it allows you to discover something new, so that\u2019s the underlying thought there.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The site includes listings of deals and discounts offered up by local restaurants and pubs as well as a Google map. Clicking on map markers will immediately take you to the corresponding deal in the calendar. Janssen built the app over the course of four months; the simplicity of the service was a priority. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou just focus on something that\u2019s clean and very fast to use\u2014you just wanna pull it out and within five seconds you wanna figure out where to go,\u201d he says. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to bog it down with advertisements and other crazy stuff.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun student Forrest Browning (left) and Marvin Janssen (photo by Adam Marsh\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The duo says that Dealsohard\u2014which launched on December 21 of last year\u2014has approximately 1,000 regular users, but it has yet to turn a profit.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was at a Camosun mixer the other day with a lot of big business people and that\u2019s the question that we get asked a lot\u2014how is it monetized?\u201d says Browning. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit of a trade secret, but essentially what we\u2019re looking at doing is altering the order in which the venues are listed, and venues that are listed at the top of the app will receive more exposure, and we\u2019re looking at creating a really flexible rate system where venues can pay to be at the top.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dealsohard, with a target audience of students and tourists, has the potential to increase exposure for smaller, independent venues that are often overshadowed by large establishments.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome of the little venues that don\u2019t get a chance to advertise very much [and are] kind of tucked away, they have lunch specials and happy hours, surprisingly enough,\u201d says Browning. \u201cYou just have to go in and ask them, and they\u2019ve got some hand-drawn menu. You\u2019d never know, really, unless you went there and looked for it, so I think our app is nice because it gives that little guy a fighting chance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building on user numbers is paramount to attracting venues willing to pay for listings; it\u2019s also a method of undermining any poachers who might be looking to steal their idea.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe feel a little fire under us because we think that we have a good idea and we\u2019re a little bit afraid\u2014maybe not afraid, but leery\u2014if\u2026\u201d says Browning, before Janssen finishes his thought, saying, \u201c\u2026someone might copy it or take it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Browning says that the two really feel a drive to expand as fast as possible to keep their dream alive. For now, they\u2019ve built an app that reflects their own desire to have fun out with friends while also keeping in mind the typical restraints of a student\u2019s budget. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI knew a few different happy hours,\u201d says Janssen, \u201cand you show up, and they\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, we don\u2019t do that anymore.\u2019 We just don\u2019t want to walk around downtown to find something; we just want to go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun College second-year Business student Forrest Browning and Marvin Janssen, a former exchange student from the Netherlands, saw a need for an easy-to-use deal tracker. They compiled a calendar of different happy hours and lunch specials around town, and dealsohard.ca was born. \u201cWe thought, you know, wouldn\u2019t that be amazing if there was just this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-february-6-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17077,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17075\/revisions\/17077"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}