Frequently Asked Questions about the
Local Shopping Games
2. Your organization registers with Shop Local Games and sets up an account and "white labels" the name of the game for your community.
3. Each business purchases and sets up a .TEL mobile-friendly website (through our website) with at least the following:
* attractive logo or image representing the merchant
* contact information, links, video and other information
* map to their location
* sufficient content from which the game can draw questions
* a coupon with an offer that appeals to customers
* an image gallery of products, services, people, storefront
* high-quality background image for desktop visitors
4. Each business registers with Shop Local Games under your organization's account using our website to register each .Tel domain. To use our games, the .Tel sites must be registered through us. We rely on the small commission to maintain our games.
5. Each business registers at minimum a single prize worth at least $25 for the year. The prize can be a product or service or a gift certificate. The prize should be tangible, that is, it should never be a discount.
6. Your organization provide a website or link for the game for consumers.
7. Your organization promotes the weekly games to the local populace as part of your marketing and awareness efforts.
8. You print posters and in-store "visit us" cards for distribution to your merchants.
9. You set the rules for the way prizes are picked up.
10. Since coupons have expiration dates, you must see to it that merchants keep their offers current.
We provide the game website and infrastructure and provide you with a management interface which includes traffic statistics.
Collector Game Card: The main game uses a game card to record merchants visited virtually. A full card or 25 logos maximizes chances to win a prize. Logos are accumulated for every correct answer to a question. Answers are found only on merchant websites.
Uncover (Bonus Game): A three-layer mystery to uncover a mystery word for points.
Uplift (Bonus Game): A unique word game where words are derived from merchant website content.
First Family (Bonus Game): An arcade game where players move their virtual "family" across your community while visiting merchant sites.
ACross (Bonus Game): A community-branded crossword puzzle where words are derived from merchant website content.
Bonus games keep the highest score of each day for the week and can be played daily.
Commxnity: A community crossword puzzle where words are contributed by the community. Community puzzles are never ending. Words and phrases may be sponsored by merchants for a small fee and the answers found on merchant .Tel websites. Your organization can start its own community crossword puzzle for free. Add products with images as clues to visually showcase what your merchants sell. Add prizes and you have a very unique and fun way of interacting with your community. Visit Commxnity for more information and to start your puzzle at any time. You do not need a Shop Local Games account for this opportunity.
Newspaper Hunt: Played with a smartphone app called Tap2C, this bonus game has players scanning their local newspaper (eg Snap) for mystery images. Tap2C brings your ads to life through rich media such as videos and images played on smartphones. Visit Newspaper Treasure Hunts for more information. This type of bonus game is not included for free.
Our games are all about getting residents to learn more about local community merchants and businesses in a fun way.
PLAY AND SHOP LOCAL - everyone wins!
We have all sorts of challenges, from word games, to math games to visual games and local trivia. Our Uncover Your Community bonus game has three layers of mystery to solve, while First Family is our arcade-style game. Uplift and ACross are word games based on the content of your websites.
These daily games are part of the local experience of bringing any community closer together. Gain extra bonus points via Twitter, so if you don't have a Twitter account, get one now and follow @DiscoverAurora to stay in touch.
Games run seven days a week. Accumulate points to win weekly prizes which are awarded every Sunday for the prior week.
In so doing, they are exposed to your brand, products and services while having fun.
Your business benefits from more traffic to your website and that leads to more sales for almost no cost. You also get your own coupon network (similar to WagJag, Groupon, Teambuy) for free.
A whole new way of doing business.
Different from standard advertising and marketing techniques,
this novel initiative will create additional consumer awareness of your business offerings.
In the process of visiting your site to look for clues, residents will learn about your local products and services along with any coupon offer you have. Even if your website doesn't have the answer, they have now learned something about your offerings.
By being interactive, consumers learn by playing, not realizing they've just gone through a bit of an ad. This is repeated daily as many consumers participate with every business getting an equal share of visitors and increased sales.
This extra traffic only costs you a single prize over the course of the series and offers much better value and exposure over traditional "push" advertising - which consumers tend to ignore.
Cost: The only cost to participate is $25 to purchase a mobile-friendly website which comes with an interactive coupon for your deals and promotions. This site can point to your existing website if you have one. Providing a prize with a value of $25 for your location or a gift certificate is your only other cost, since we are currently in a proof of concept mode.
Click 416-726-4338 to call Mark Kolb (Knowledge Probe, Aurora) or by email at mobile@solutions.tel to get more details.
Here at Shop Local Games "HQ", we are big fans of .TEL Mobile Technology. Not only do you get a mobile-friendly website, .TEL's patented internet structure enables us to create these games on your behalf. The simple-to-use, inexpensive TelNames technology makes it easy for business owners to provide a concise, mobile-friendly view of your key business or merchant information, including social connections, images, video and coupon. All in one spot and without any programming or hosting fees.
TelNames' consistent nature facilitates game play in a whole new manner, making Aurora the first town on the planet to exploit this novel consumer-to-business awareness approach.
Your site and deal will automatically appear on a Local Deals Map too.
Take a look at some local .TEL sites:
Toscana Bakery
Artsy Baker
Doggy XO Day Care
Backyard Pools
905 BJJ Martial Arts
Canada Scrap
Sundance Signs
Solutions
Fireplace Mantels
Annalisa
Simply Yummy Bakery
Gabriel's Cafe
Custom Comfort
Tikal Building Maintenance
Aurora Orthodontics
Your TelNames site is like an Ad
From a marketing standpoint, consider your TelNames website as interactive ad for your business. Whether you have a website or not,
even if it is mobile-friendly, your TelNames site is a single point of contact for your customers,
giving them all they need at a glance, especially an enticing coupon offer.
Interactive Coupons
Coupons are a key requirement for mobile-savvy consumers.
As such, all your deals and offers are always visible within the games, giving your business that extra exposure.
Coupons keep consumers coming back to your site. Keep your offers fresh.
As the owner of your TelNames site, you manage your offer in real-time as needed. Consumers with iPhones can also connect to your coupon. With Apple's new PassBook technology, any time you change your offer, it will be automatically pushed out to connected consumers' smartphones.
Learn why 80% of most small businesses need to be mobile now! View our short Powerpoint presentation.
Prerequisites for participation:
(1) A TelNames mobile-friendly website
(2) A prize to offer (for the prize pool)
(3) An offer or daily deal (optional but key).
What about a Map of Local Merchants?
View the map for Aurora.
Using Apple's Passbook technology, anyone who attaches a merchant's coupon to their smartphone will automatically get updates whenever a merchant changes the deal. Furthermore, as people stay in the vicinity of a store, that store's coupon will appear on their smartphone. This technology is available for free with TelNames websites.
For a business, it gets important information to search engines and visitors.
For personal use, it lets you keep a single point of social contact.
Either way, .tel is different from a regular website in many ways.
- First, it's really cheap to own and operate. For about $25 per year, you get a web presence without the need of a programmer and without hosting costs.
- Secondly, it's always up-to-date, so if you or your business moves, or changes phone numbers, if you have given people your .tel name instead of an address or phone number, then you don't need to inform anyone of the change. It's automatic because the contents of the .tel changed.
- It is search-engine friendly, directing traffic to you.
- You get an interactive coupon that is pushed out to smartphones whenever you change your offer.
- You can seamlessly include PayPal items for sale and post up to 10 images.
For the merchant, a .Tel domain costs only $22 per year. Each merchant can easily create their own D-I-Y mobile-friendly site in about ten minutes, and even link it to their main site if they have one. Smartphone users can see the mobile version of their main site if so configured. We also provide a low cost maintenance service for those merchants who would like us to manage their site and game for them.
Why are only .Tel Domains in the Game?
So when the game is played and it needs the logo for the merchant, we know exactly where to look. When we need a phone number or image or coupon or location, we know exactly where to look and what record to read. And that access is extremely fast because it is not hosted on some other site. This is almost impossible and certainly impractical with a .com or .ca (etc) website.
The added benefit to the owner is that they own their website and content, as opposed to being part of another network like Facebook or a page within an online directory.
This standardization is the technical foundation that makes Shop Local Games work. .Tel also gives us our only source of income, in return for giving you free games.
Click to explore the Aurora merchant .Tel websites ...
