We updated out landing page to be more user-friendly, adding a scroll arrow at the bottom to show more info about our services, our mission and our contact form. We also added a functionality for users to subscribe to our newsletter for updates and a potential launch of our app. All of these features can be accessed through the menu at the top of the page. We also added Google Analytics and Hotjar to track important metrics.

Since the growth of our idea is strongly related to the accessibility and visibility to our potential users, the focus was to promote it on the most basic platforms used by people, which are Facebook (especially specific groups such Startup Romania, Antreprenori – Start Up Romania) and LinkedIn. Therefore, it could be accessed by a diverse range of people, which is what we seek in target customers.

After posting it, people started to reach out and offer their services in order to facilitate the marketing process and to watch our evolution (by subscribing to our newsletter).

In order to have a more professional approach and reach, LinkledIn is the right platform in order to get real and proactive feedback.

The post was reached by 813 people.

To analyze our traffic, we used Google Analytics and Hotjar. We observed that a lot of Ad Blockers block these services, but, nevertheless, we gathered useful information of our potential customers. You can observe the following graph, extracted from Google Analytics dashboard :

In course of 2 weeks, our page was viewed 174 times by 130 different users. We also observed a bounce rate of 88.11%.

Most of our users used mobile to access our site, but 38.5% of them used desktop browsers. An overview of the nationality of our users can be observed in the following chart

We can deduce that social media exposure proved to be useful, as we can observed users from countries other than Romania.

We also used Hotjar to generate recordings and heatmaps, which proved to be very useful. As expected, many users accessed different parts of our landing page using navbar selections.

Another interesting fact is that our users tried to observe what other projects we have completed, a feature which will be updated in the future.

We used Facebook, LinkedIn and WhatsApp to share our landing page and get feedback in order to generate visits and collect data. We found out that most of them accessed the page through Facebook, being a higher chance of reaching a larger audience on a social media channel that is more frequented by users from our target. We also generated a few clicks by sharing it on different groups on Facebook, the posts being noticed by a larger number of people.

The initial target market will be the students, professors, and young professionals, aged between 18-30, currently developing certain technical skills. At the start of business, we target up to 130K+ potential customers (Romania, mainly focused on Bucharest, since a significant percent are working or studying here).

However, the number of potential clients cand increase as we develop different approaches on the variety of products, target locations and cities covered.

We discovered that we have 5 competitors. Here are some information about each of them.

Vendekin pioneers the digitisation and democratisation of vending with its patented disruptive technology for unmanned automated vending machines, micro markets and self-service kiosks. Vendekin offers a wide range of intelligent vending machines disrupting the unattended retail sector and also offers touchless vending solutions to transform existing equipment into unmanned digital retail micro stores. Vendekin offers cashless payments and touch-free dispensation, along with a mobile-first approach for supply chain optimisation, increased business visibility, and advanced consumer insights.

Pay4Vendb is an app designed to buy any product from a vending machine via smartphone, including to integrate existing cashless payment systems. Operation is extremely simple: all the customer has to do is opening the Pay4Vend app on his smartphone, selecting the vending machine and proceeding with the purchase from the machine.

MoMa - the Mobile Management app for vending machines which provides the ability to manage your vending machines operation on the go, The app is an extension of an already powerful back end system that allows you to view machines with a comprehensive dashboard, last sales and alerts. As well as manage inventory and Alert thresholds from the palm of your hand.

VendSoft is a cloud based vending machine management software with complete inventory control module. Supports dynamic dispatching and scheduling. Easily track inventory and purchases, optimize routes and automate deliveries with a simple-to-use, affordable solution.

Vendron Go is a mobile application that act as an alternate screen for vending machines. One of the core features of Vendron Go is to detect nearby vending machines that is running Vendron OS then display in IOS map to allows the user to able to navigate to the machine with ease. The funtionality of Geo-location and IOS Mapkit is being used by Vendron Go to display the nearby vending machines of the user. Another core feature of Vendron Go is able to act as a screen when the user is inserting notes (the mobile application screen will update accordingly) in the Vending Machine which requires a vending machine with proper equipment to be configured for testing.

How can we differentiate from competitors?

Even if there are a few vending management software solutions out there, they are intended to be used by the vending business owners only. Therefore, VendETA aims to also help the potential clients have a better overview of the products and payment methods, directly from their smartphone. We want to offer a management system for business owners that comes with a user interface that is easy to handle, in order to find the best product that a vending machine can offer in the vicinity. Also, this will help enlarge the variety of the products inside the machine, not limited by snacks or beverage items, by using a system that offers relevant info about the products.

Looking at the number of Google Play and Apple Store downloads for the respective apps of our competitors, here we have an approximate guess on the market share between them, at the moment.

Here are the estimated statistics for every competitor:

We cannot have an exact estimation judging only by the numbers of downloads, since many may be unused or deleted afterwards. However, this can give us a rough estimate and going forward, we will consider that the current market consists of: 129k customers ( students, professors and proffesionals).

After the first year we can manage to get attention and traffic through extensive ad campaigns and by promoting the platform inside technical hubs such as Universities or Companies. Moreover, we assumed a steady increase in the number of downloads of our competitors.

We aim to get 1% from the market in the first year, with our objective to at least double each year, given the fact that the number of students and technical professionals increase each year, as well. This will be validated through the number of downloads for our app.

1st Year

2nd Year

3rd Year

4th Year

5th Year