Startup: Pricing for Cellular
I want to tell you about one startup - www.smarttarif.ru - and I hope for good criticism, because we really need her now!
I was always tormented by the question, what is the most profitable tariff for me. Cellular operators offer calculators to calculate the most suitable tariff, but they are based on the opinion of the subscriber, i.e. on how i think i use mobile. And I was always introduced to the dreary stupor questions like "how many percent of calls I have are shorter than a minute" or "how many, on average, I call landline numbers."
Thus, the idea is ripe to select the tariff not on guesswork, but on real statistics of calls (detailing). It can be obtained from the mobile operator. Someone even for free.
Without thinking twice, I decided with a friend to do a service on the Internet, because The topic seemed interesting and useful not only to us, and it is easy to develop further. We found no services similar in functionality on the Internet. What they found did not take into account many “saving” options. And we wanted to select the most profitable options for tariff options.
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During the month, the main functionality and the core were done to analyze the detailing and calculation of tariffs. Of course, a lot has changed in the development process, but, as it seems to us, we finally arrived at a “usable” version.
Some technical details:
The project itself is written in perl'e based on CGI :: Application using the template toolkit template engine. Connected through the module CGI :: Application :: Plugin :: TT. This helped separate the fronts of design and programming work. TT generally turned out to be a handy thing, but this is a topic for a separate article. Any interface prettiness was implemented on jQuery.
Considering that almost every tariff has its own peculiarities and tricks, it was decided to abandon the economy of bytes, to divide the code for calculating tariffs, bringing out the logic of each tariff into separate modules.
As a result, we have formed a structure from the directories "city, region" / "operator", and in each such directory there are separate files that are responsible for calculating their tariff.
When starting the calculation of tariffs, all the directories are bypassed and each file is connected through require with a simple code:
One of the "chips" of the service is the selection of the most profitable options for tariffs. It has always been difficult for me to choose which particular phone is more advantageous to designate as a “favorite”, and it is often not immediately clear whether there will be any savings from the “affection” of any phone at all.
To assess the profitability of the option, we compare how much the cost of detailing will be in cases where the option is enabled. If the options are mutually exclusive, the one where the benefit is maximal is used.
The greatest difficulty was the calculation of the savings at the intersection of various saving options. For example, if the loyalty bonus gives you savings of, say, 150 rubles per month, and one favorite number saves 200 rubles, then at the same time connecting these discounts, the total savings will be slightly less than just 200 + 150 due to the fact that Calls to your favorite number will also cost less money, and accordingly less savings will be made. In general, not easy.
In the process of developing the service, the first page was more and more hung with various useful information. At first, the design was extremely simple and there was practically nothing in it except for a couple of pictures and a file download line:
.
Then news, instructions were added how to get details from various operators.
Well, at the end of the graphs added to the costs of recent users and the utility rating of tariffs.
At one time, they even added any SEO-shnuy slime - such as jokes and a list of search queries for which we were visited, but then decided not to overdo it.
A few words about the tariff rating calculation: for each new processed specification, each tariff is given points from 0 to -X, depending on the place in the rating of the tariff profitability. (X is the number of calculated tariffs). These points for each tariff are summed up, and the final rating level is calculated as ÎŁ points / number of details where this tariff participated. Quite a banal simplified system, but effective and easy to program. It turns out that if a new profitable rate appears, it can get to the top of the rating from the first processed detail. At the moment, only Moscow tariffs are participating in the rating, but in the near future plans will be the creation of a rating for other regions as well.
One of the important topics is safety . We do not request passwords from users from the personal account of their mobile numbers, because We believe that this is extremely unsafe. Some people are afraid to share their details, because all personal calls appear in it. Now for our part, we do not store loaded and successfully processed details on the server. The granularity is analyzed, the results are stored in a pearl barley hash, and this data structure is already saved to disk (using the standard Perl module Storable). It no longer has any calls or personal information, only the information that is needed to display the report. Probably, you can still come up with a system for hiding numbers before loading the details, but we do not yet know how to make it convenient for users, and besides, such that it would be possible to correctly calculate the "favorite" numbers, etc.
Monetization is our headache and the absolute lack of experience g-) And how can we make money from this excellent service? It seems that service is useful to many, we use it ourselves, and friends say: “Wow!” But the main point of creating most projects (if in garlic) is, ultimately, to make money. At the initial stage, we decided to make payment by SMS at the cost of $ 1, since heard somewhere here from a smart uncle with a beard http://www.skillopedia.ru/material.php?id=4833&slide=5 that the only working way to pay for Internet services is SMS. At this stage, we have already slightly revised the strategy, and we are planning to register on the site (possibly by OpenID) with one free detail and a one-time payment for all the time (i.e. with an infinite number of services), maybe it will also cost $ 1) )))
Future plans:
P.S. As a result, when the service was already in working condition, I downloaded my detailing and it turned out that, as I thought, my tariff was completely unprofitable for me)))))) I overpaid 200 rubles a month, moreover, it turned out every month that my MTS charges 50 RUB for the GOOD'OK service, although it was initially listed as free in the services.
I was always tormented by the question, what is the most profitable tariff for me. Cellular operators offer calculators to calculate the most suitable tariff, but they are based on the opinion of the subscriber, i.e. on how i think i use mobile. And I was always introduced to the dreary stupor questions like "how many percent of calls I have are shorter than a minute" or "how many, on average, I call landline numbers."Thus, the idea is ripe to select the tariff not on guesswork, but on real statistics of calls (detailing). It can be obtained from the mobile operator. Someone even for free.
Without thinking twice, I decided with a friend to do a service on the Internet, because The topic seemed interesting and useful not only to us, and it is easy to develop further. We found no services similar in functionality on the Internet. What they found did not take into account many “saving” options. And we wanted to select the most profitable options for tariff options.
')
During the month, the main functionality and the core were done to analyze the detailing and calculation of tariffs. Of course, a lot has changed in the development process, but, as it seems to us, we finally arrived at a “usable” version.
Some technical details:
The project itself is written in perl'e based on CGI :: Application using the template toolkit template engine. Connected through the module CGI :: Application :: Plugin :: TT. This helped separate the fronts of design and programming work. TT generally turned out to be a handy thing, but this is a topic for a separate article. Any interface prettiness was implemented on jQuery.
Considering that almost every tariff has its own peculiarities and tricks, it was decided to abandon the economy of bytes, to divide the code for calculating tariffs, bringing out the logic of each tariff into separate modules.
As a result, we have formed a structure from the directories "city, region" / "operator", and in each such directory there are separate files that are responsible for calculating their tariff.
When starting the calculation of tariffs, all the directories are bypassed and each file is connected through require with a simple code:
@z= glob("tarifs/*/*/*.pm"); for (@z) { eval { require $_;}; } @z= glob("tarifs/*/*/*.pm"); for (@z) { eval { require $_;}; } @z= glob("tarifs/*/*/*.pm"); for (@z) { eval { require $_;}; } (eval is needed so that everything does not screw up, if a syntax error suddenly sneaks into any file. Now the corresponding tariff is simply not calculated.) One of the "chips" of the service is the selection of the most profitable options for tariffs. It has always been difficult for me to choose which particular phone is more advantageous to designate as a “favorite”, and it is often not immediately clear whether there will be any savings from the “affection” of any phone at all.To assess the profitability of the option, we compare how much the cost of detailing will be in cases where the option is enabled. If the options are mutually exclusive, the one where the benefit is maximal is used.
The greatest difficulty was the calculation of the savings at the intersection of various saving options. For example, if the loyalty bonus gives you savings of, say, 150 rubles per month, and one favorite number saves 200 rubles, then at the same time connecting these discounts, the total savings will be slightly less than just 200 + 150 due to the fact that Calls to your favorite number will also cost less money, and accordingly less savings will be made. In general, not easy.
In the process of developing the service, the first page was more and more hung with various useful information. At first, the design was extremely simple and there was practically nothing in it except for a couple of pictures and a file download line:
.Then news, instructions were added how to get details from various operators.
Well, at the end of the graphs added to the costs of recent users and the utility rating of tariffs.
At one time, they even added any SEO-shnuy slime - such as jokes and a list of search queries for which we were visited, but then decided not to overdo it.
A few words about the tariff rating calculation: for each new processed specification, each tariff is given points from 0 to -X, depending on the place in the rating of the tariff profitability. (X is the number of calculated tariffs). These points for each tariff are summed up, and the final rating level is calculated as ÎŁ points / number of details where this tariff participated. Quite a banal simplified system, but effective and easy to program. It turns out that if a new profitable rate appears, it can get to the top of the rating from the first processed detail. At the moment, only Moscow tariffs are participating in the rating, but in the near future plans will be the creation of a rating for other regions as well.One of the important topics is safety . We do not request passwords from users from the personal account of their mobile numbers, because We believe that this is extremely unsafe. Some people are afraid to share their details, because all personal calls appear in it. Now for our part, we do not store loaded and successfully processed details on the server. The granularity is analyzed, the results are stored in a pearl barley hash, and this data structure is already saved to disk (using the standard Perl module Storable). It no longer has any calls or personal information, only the information that is needed to display the report. Probably, you can still come up with a system for hiding numbers before loading the details, but we do not yet know how to make it convenient for users, and besides, such that it would be possible to correctly calculate the "favorite" numbers, etc.
Monetization is our headache and the absolute lack of experience g-) And how can we make money from this excellent service? It seems that service is useful to many, we use it ourselves, and friends say: “Wow!” But the main point of creating most projects (if in garlic) is, ultimately, to make money. At the initial stage, we decided to make payment by SMS at the cost of $ 1, since heard somewhere here from a smart uncle with a beard http://www.skillopedia.ru/material.php?id=4833&slide=5 that the only working way to pay for Internet services is SMS. At this stage, we have already slightly revised the strategy, and we are planning to register on the site (possibly by OpenID) with one free detail and a one-time payment for all the time (i.e. with an infinite number of services), maybe it will also cost $ 1) )))
Future plans:
- To make on the main page a flash movie with screenshots of the service, describing the use of the service
- Continue geographic expansion
- Add tariffs of "virtual" operators
- Add a tariff rating system (five stars) and the ability to leave / read comments of users to the tariffs.
- Organize a sale with the delivery of SIM cards, if someone decided to switch to the tariff of another operator.
P.S. As a result, when the service was already in working condition, I downloaded my detailing and it turned out that, as I thought, my tariff was completely unprofitable for me)))))) I overpaid 200 rubles a month, moreover, it turned out every month that my MTS charges 50 RUB for the GOOD'OK service, although it was initially listed as free in the services.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/69201/
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