Website: Closed
What is it: Mobile App
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chekplate
Disclaimer: This post was sponsored by Chekplate. All opinions expressed below are wholly mine and not indicative of the opinions or positions held by Chekplate.
The Basics:
Chekplate is a mobile app, currently available only for iPhones, launched in September 2013 that aims to provide users with restaurant reviews from their social network. Users can add friends, write quick reviews and search for restaurants nearby and read existing reviews.
My Experience:
Signing up was pretty standard. A phone number is required to deter fake users. Once I was in the app, the navigation icons were easy to follow to “Add New” review, or “Search” for restaurants. If you’re at the restaurant it takes less than 30 seconds to add a review.
What I liked:
- The app is responsive and quick to load with a clean user interface and easy to read icons, it’s not crowded
- Searching for “Nearby” restaurants provides a list of results within seconds
- There’s a section on each restaurant page for “Deals”, this has great potential
- Simple rating system out of 5 for Food, Service and Price
- As wordy as I can be, I’m a big fan of concise information. I like that the rating is broken out into three factors with a straight forward approach.
- Being able to flip back and forth between list and map view in the restaurant search results
What could use work:
- There are still bugs, right now there’s no way to delete a review so if you accidently click submit twice (which I did), both reviews show up. The developers are working on a way to prevent duplicate reviews.
- This feature is to prevent restaurants from enticing users to remove poor reviews, a great move to maintain the integrity of the app
- Better integration with Facebook and Twitter
- The framework to integrate is built into the “Settings” section of the app, but toggling the “On/Off” didn’t do anything
- More data, like any new app that relies on user input, Chekplate’s restaurant database is just starting to be built up. Right now, there’s a great baseline of restaurants but there’s a lot missing. As a user, It is easy to add a new restaurant if you’re at the location. If you’re not though, you need the exact address, which can be a bit more effort than users are willing to put in for a mobile only app.
TL;DR: With an increase in usership, Chekplate has the potential to provide users with restaurant recommendations on the fly by being a well-thought out and responsive app.
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