The Fubra Blog
Petrol Prices and Volunteers
We were really pleased with the launch of petrol prices last week which went better than we all expected.
We got picked up by Hitwise on the launch day as the 7th largest site in the UK Automotive category and 24th largest over the first week. Pretty amazing to think that we could build a site that got 2% of all automotive traffic in the UK from a standing start. Also very humbling to realise how far we have to go before we are the biggest. It looks like some of the big players have approaching 500,000 visits a day!
It’s a great feeling when you launch something like this that helps so many people though and I am more confident than ever that we are on the right track.
Support inevitably pours in prompting us to fix minor bugs that we missed as part of what is now a pretty thorough pre-launch testing period. I’m pleased to say though that the majority of comments were praise so we must have got something right. In total we got something like 1200 positive comments in week one which is amazing and highly motivating.
As a result of some of the comments we have been talking to various volunteer ambulance services about how we can help their drivers who take elderly and ill patients to hospital. They help where the cost of an ambulance would make proper care for them impossible to deliver on tight NHS budgets. These people do a great job and survive on just fuel expenses. One of them contacted us and said using our site he is already saving £50 a month. He is doing 6000 miles a month though!
I thought I knew how he feels because the month before we launched I have been driving all over the place trying to get new deals signed off for a number of great sites that we are working on. But I was shattered and he just seems to approach it with ease.
All I can say is well done to anyone who volunteers and gives up their time like this to help others I just hope we can do our bit by help them save some money so that they can carry on.