Need feedback on webpage (RainMan this means you!)

[AustinChief]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I'm not a big design guy, but when I think about functionality and how people would use the site, I would see them using the site for:

1. Sleuthing a particular bar, in which case they'd want a search function and the map function. The map function seems good.

2. Looking at overall market trends, in which case it would be nice to do a "select all" and see their sales summed. And maybe be able to select different time periods.

3. Looking at particular groups of bars, such as all bars in an area or all bars that include restaurants or all bars that have dancing or whatever. It seems like a search function by bar attribute would be nice.

How do you anticipate this site being used?

Also, I'm intrigued with where you would get the data for this. Is it something that the state publishes related to liquor licenses?

AH! This is EXACTLY the feedback I needed!

The market trends idea is a good one... I have the bars broken down by category (sports, dive, restaurant, etc) and also by subregions and other factors.. I did this so that you could filter results but didn't consider aggregating dating by those same factors. So you could get a report of dive bars sales in austin vs sports bars or warehouse district sales per bar vs eastside sales per bar... great idea but a lot of work.. unfortunately it's too good an idea so I'll have to do it... asshole! Would it be sufficient to run reports like this or would you think it would need to also be integrated into mapping somehow? (basically color coding entire ares of the map and overlaying the data)

The two main uses for the site as I see are

#1 for current bar owners to look at other bars not only in their region or district but by category or square footage or max occupancy then compare their sales with other factors such as Facebook activity and hopefully give them an idea of their place in the market and what they can do to improve

#2 for people looking to open a bar (or a 2nd or 3rd) to give them an idea of what sales to expect based on the various factors and help them pick a location

and that is just off the top of my head, I can't imagine that more uses for the data won't present themselves. All I know is that the bar owners I know have all said they'd want this.

The data is a mix of state(alcohol sales) and city data(sq ft / max occupancy) mixed in with Facebook and Yelp data. The database is actually a bitch to build but pretty easy to maintain. The hardest part is getting city data... most of the city officials I have dealt with are borderline reeruned.