galway deal a days

chuky_r_law

have bought a good few bargains from the deal a day sites (living social, groupon, smartsearch, grabone, etc). in the last few months i haven't spotted anything in the galway sections of these sites to get too excited about. seems to be the same stuff popping up again and again. good if you like going to the hairdressers, bad if you haven't got a hair on your head like me! the hotel deals aren't as good as they used to be. very few restaurants are trying them, unless they are the ones that are running them constantly.

i ran one myself a few months ago. was good from a marketing point of view, as i wanted to channel people to the business website, but most of the people who bought the offer were either real deal hunters, ie they would buy the deal and probably unlikely to see them again or people who would have come anyway. may run a deal again in future but would structure it differently

so what has been the reaction of other people out there in galway? did the market in galway become too saturated for these bargain sites too fast? do people still think they are worthwhile? what is the reaction of anyone else who has run an offer on these sites?

JohnCleary

Sometimes I feel guilty for using these things.

Example: Olive's Restaurant in Salthill, We paid €10 for €30 worth of food, and it was lovely.

Now, I know that the organising site get's about 50% of the price paid, so Olive's only netted about €5 for €30 worth of food (We got 3 mains for this)

I ended up giving the lady a €10 tip, and I felt stingy after, i'd have preferred to just pay the €30 :pac:

On the bright side for Olive's though; I will be back, so it worked.


I notice that The Galleon seem to do their own offers which almost match the offers they have through their sites. ie. If you pay for one standard meal, you get another one for 3euro. So you can get 2 decent meals for 18euro which aint bad (I know there is cheaper elsewhere, but that's a different matter)

ben.schlomo

Nothing but beauty and hair offers on them nowadays, rubbish.

chuky_r_law

olives is a great example. been there a couple of times with a voucher. good food, good service and have chatted with the owner a few times. tis a grand place. but id probably only go just using a voucher as i always expect to find one (btw they use smartsearch who i know take a lot less of a cut then 50%). seeing as they are a new business it has probably worked out for them in letting everyone know where they are and what they do. once they stop with the deals will poeple keep going back?

snubbleste

I'm not seeing many of the deals I want.
There was a deal in Cork for a fiver gents haircut which was snapped up straight away, yet I never see that in Galway.
There was a deal for the butcher in castlelawn heights which was excellent, yet if he advertised that in the freesheet paper with a higher price, he would've got far more customers and exposure.

The 50% cut for the website is far too high imo.

chuky_r_law

ben.schlomo wrote: »

Nothing but beauty and hair offers on them nowadays, rubbish.

i hear a lot of hairdressers are suffering because of these deals. apparently they have found that instead of bringing in new customers and repeat business they found that anyone who came in with a voucher they would never see again. and some of there regular customers started using deals in other hairdressers.

and all the time you are giving at least a 50% discount for a particular service and then the deal site is taking a percentage of what is left. if you are not getting the repeat business then its really not worth it

chuky_r_law

snubbleste wrote: »

I'm not seeing many of the deals I want.


The 50% cut for the website is far too high imo.

having dealt with all these sites this is what i can tell you is the cut taken by the deal sites:

groupon is 40-50% cut(think they have dropped to 40% recently but were 50% for a long time)

living social is 40%

smartsearh and grabone are both in around 25-30%

groupon will only pay out as you redeem the vouchers. so if you sold 100 deals and only 90 were used, you just get paid for the 90.
the rest will pay the full amount out over a few months.

snubbleste

This is from the NewYorkTimes but it is relevant to this part of the world too
Merchants and Shoppers Sour on Daily Deal Sites

chuky_r_law

they cant keep that same level of buzz going forever. and there isnt the same quality of deals available either. a lot of traders who once would have considered it wouldn't go back to them at all now. most of these sites take too much of a cut. take the example in the above article: $24 of food for $12 of which groupon gave the trader $6. unless you are getting the repeat business then it just isnt worth it. and most people just follow the deals around.

snubbleste

According to a vested interest (mydealpage.ie), the amount spent on daily deals websites grew by 15% last year, with Irish shoppers forking out €53m on them.
People grab almost 4,500 deals a day, with Tuesday the most popular day to buy. Deals sites, of which there are more than 40 in Ireland, allow customers to buy products and services at a cut-price rate for a limited time.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/daily-discount-deals-get-53m-boost-from-internet-shoppers-3362566.html

It looks like these deal sites will be around for some time yet.

flynnlives

snubbleste wrote: »

According to a vested interest (mydealpage.ie), the amount spent on daily deals websites grew by 15% last year, with Irish shoppers forking out €53m on them.
People grab almost 4,500 deals a day, with Tuesday the most popular day to buy. Deals sites, of which there are more than 40 in Ireland, allow customers to buy products and services at a cut-price rate for a limited time.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/daily-discount-deals-get-53m-boost-from-internet-shoppers-3362566.html

It looks like these deal sites will be around for some time yet.

that the same paper that admits in the article to owning one of the deal sites?
the same paper that told us 3 times in the last year that houses prices have bottomed out and the time to buy had passed?

The golden days of deal sites are over, sure look at this site, boards deals is long gone.
The thing is deals sites were always going to be a race to the bottom.

BhoscaCapall

JohnCleary wrote: »

Olive's only netted about €5 for €30 worth of food (We got 3 mains for this)

It's not €30 worth of food though. It's a lot less than that, sold for €30.

2rkehij30qtza5

I use the deals a good bit. Hairdressers, photographers, restaurants...I sound like a bit of a scab. But I do always spend more than the deal...so say I get a meal voucher for €20, then we will spend maybe another €50 etc. Same with photographer deals-I always buy extra pictures. Hairdressers not so much but i do buy shampoos and conditioners at the hairdressers.

I think that some of the 'items' that deal sites offer (eg jewellery etc) is a bit of a rip off as you can often buy them anyway at that rate and they aren't really discounted at all!