At last week’s Consumer Electronics Show’s Mobile App Showdown event, iHeartLocal, an app that’s about building relationships with the small businesses that “we frequent and refer to our friends and family”, won big!!
It won at all three levels of the competition:
*Selected by the judging panel as one of ten finalists from the many submissions.
*Won the online vote, beating the second place entry by a margin of 3 votes to 1. Thank you so much for all of the CIO Association of Canada members who assisted with this.
*On Friday, the app won the live audience judged event in front of over 500 media, industry, government, and financial leaders!!
This is a terrific achievement for the Canadian team!!
According to Stephen Ibaraki, their success has been achieved through the evolution of the app, starting with building the minimum viable product, making it available to users, asking for feedback and ideas to improve it. They watch the users as they go through the product, install it on their phone and ask them if they find it useful, would they pay for it, etc. Through this continuous feedback loop, the app is always getting better.
Dave O’Leary adds that the largest source of new customers for small businesses is through the referral channel. iHeartLocal makes referrals a lot easier. To see the iHeartLocal app, go to www.iheartlocal.com.
Congratulations Dave and Stephen!!
