14 ms·

During COVID I was in Mexico. At some point I wanted to go horseback riding. I was researching places to go horseback riding and I was not at all surprised to s

by joshmn 4y ago

During COVID I was in Mexico. At some point I wanted to go horseback riding. I was researching places to go horseback riding and I was not at all surprised to see I would have to make some calls to book. Fast-forward a few weeks, I become pretty good friends with the owner at the ranch I went to. We grab tacos one night and he shares his concerns: They're not doing so well financially and are worried about whether or not they'll be able to afford feed in a month. I got involved and we solved that problem and a few more: revamped the website (it looked and felt like it was from 2006), I whipped up a booking/reservation system to get more customers through the door, and exit surveys to make sure everything was perfect (and figure out what went wrong if it wasn't). Bookings this month are up 490% from 2018 (according to the paper waivers they had) and that's without a single dollar spent in paid marketing. I answer a few emails every day from prospective riders and make sure everyone's happy. I get a percentage of each reservation which is cool, but the coolest part is that I get to say I am a co-owner in a Mexican horse ranch.

kilroy123 4y ago
Awesome work! Would you mind sharing? I live in Mexico City and would love to try horse back riding.
- joshmn 4y ago
  Sure. We're in Vallarta if you ever make it out this way. :) https://ranchoelcharro.com https://ranchoelcharro.com Obligatory disclosure: some semblance of ownership.
  - dimaor 4y ago
    The team page made me laugh out loud :D
    - joshmn 4y ago
      Thanks! We get a lot of compliments on the copy. I wanted to reflect that we are indeed a Mexican horse ranch without the site being incredibly boring. There's only so many cool things you can show/say before you realize that horses aren't really all that interesting on the internet.
  - xiande04 4y ago
    I live in Veracruz. Will be paying you a visit in the future!
  - sureglymop 4y ago
    This is awesome. Only one minor thing about the website. On mobile when i click on "Meet Pam", the logo in the header is white and the background beige, making it unreadable. Wish I could go to Mexico and do this! :)
  - j1elo 4y ago
    Ok I HAVE to ask: why the poor woman's face on the FAQ's background photo is being attacked by an octopus?
    - joshmn 4y ago
      No reason other than to get people talking.
      - matt_heimer 4y ago
        Funny that the FAQ itself causes a frequently asked question which is answered in the FAQ.
      - j1elo 4y ago
        I swear I read the FAQ and the last question was "Are you real? Sometimes. I mean, yes.". I chuckled at that one and it was the end of the page!? Or ir wasn't? OP if you just added it please tell me :) (nah, just partly joking, I'm sincerely confused though)
  - bla3 4y ago
    FYI, https://www.ranchoelcharro.com/mountain-waterfall-horseback-ride-puerto-vallarta https://www.ranchoelcharro.com/mountain-waterfall-horseback-... says "$129" at the top but "$139" at the bottom.
  - carlosbaraza 4y ago
    Not sure if the website is broken, but attempting to book 2 people and clicking a time does nothing on iOS Safari. It might be worth looking at the analytics for device distribution but I presume iOS is the bulk of your traffic, si probably worth optimising it.
    - quinncom 4y ago
      I noticed this too. I think it’s because those time slots are not available (if you choose a date a couple months away, you’ll be able to click there time slot). The solution would be to print “No availability” instead of disabled time slot buttons.
      - joshmn 4y ago
        Ah, nice catch; it's supposed to show an alert. Going to make this change now to be more visual, thank you for letting me know!
jorgesborges 4y ago
Nice! Was the booking system simple CRUD, or did you require credit cards for payment or reservation? Edit: Saw the URL from another comment. Great work, simple and does exactly what’s needed.
- joshmn 4y ago
  It's mostly CRUD, and the stack is very boring: Rails/Hotwire/Bootstrap, about 10k lines (we have apps for the staff on the ground, agents and agencies that we partner with, and some other stuff in there). The tricky part of handling the bookings is that on any given day we have a limited number of horses and multiple types of rides: 3 trails at 10AM, 1 trail at 3PM. A few times a month we'll max out the horses and not have availability for a given time. We can burst horsepower if we need to and accommodate bigger groups if we're hitting capacity and suspect load will maintain its current HPH. (that was a stretch; I tried) We also track what horses have been used and how much so that we're not riding them into the ground — the people on the ground have an app I built in Framework7 to manage everything; they love it and Framework7 is very fun once you get rolling. We ask for a 20% deposit to "hold [your] horses" and to prevent no-shows; the rest is transacted at the ranch (though we make the option to pay in full available if you email us). Our cancellation policy extremely flexible and though we say 24 hours on the site, we've never not refunded someone.
  - lampshades 4y ago
    An absolutely amazing story. I’ve wondered for a while how powerful bringing skilled software engineers (let’s be honest, people don’t give us credit for the amount of actual business skill is required to effectively do this job) into small businesses would work. Most people who don’t work in tech or advertising don’t think so much about tracking everything. It presents a pretty big opportunity for both small business owners and software people.
    - joshmn 4y ago
      One of the things I wanted to do was understand who our customer was. They had really no idea. Waivers are all digitalized and ask for the basics: name, date of birth, where you're from, emergency contact. I use a "gender API" to get the gender of the rider the best we can, and from there we have learned a lot about who our typical customer is. Some fun factoids: * typical rider is 35-44. Less than 10% of riders are under the age of 24, * about half of people book when they're in Mexico * average lead time is 7 days * about 66% of riders have riding exp; about 33% consider themselves "novice" or "expert" riders * 45% of riders are male, 55% are female * 1 rider reported they are from Antartica
unity1001 4y ago
> I get to say I am a co-owner in a Mexican horse ranc You must get business cards made and start distributing them to friends and family whenever you get the chance. Not for marketing - to brag and to be able to be mildly annoying.
- joshmn 4y ago
  It's definitely my favorite fun fact. I'm grow up in the city but I spent a few summer days on a horse growing up. One of my earliest memories was horseback riding with my mom. I must have been no older than 18 months.
  - unity1001 4y ago
    Note that you can also use the ranch business cards as 'get out of jail cards' to avoid social chatter when you need to change the subject: You note that the in-law starts taking the discussion towards some uncomfortable topic during thanksgiving dinner. You immediately use the card: "Say, have I given you my business card?" - and then you move on to talk about the ranch. Even if they interrupt you and try to get back to the topic, the topic will be derailed for good. Usable every 6 months by pretending that you forgot that you already gave them your business card...
    - michaelteter 4y ago
      > get out of jail cards' to avoid social chatter Great tip in general!
  - jefftk 4y ago
    > One of my earliest memories was horseback riding with my mom. I must have been no older than 18 months. That is an incredibly early memory! 3-4 is more typical, and 2 is usually the earliest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia
    - ksenzee 4y ago
pcardoso 4y ago
Very cool to know. I did something very similar for Surfing schools. Not yet making any money off it, but I am trying to. Reaching out to other surfing schools, improving the product adding new features.
phist_mcgee 4y ago
It's a great website, really well done!
pxue 4y ago
Mexicos overall internet presence is literally stuck in the early 2000s. Most business' official website are a Facebook page. In a country of 150M people and growing expat presence, there is a TON of opportunities for software businesses to enter the market. For example: Riviera Maya has no MLS style real estate tracker/listing platform. The entire real estate industry operates on word of mouth, WhatsApp and Facebook messages.
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  I keep running into this in the US in large cities. Really well regarded restaurants or music venues do everything through FB and insta. I don't have either of those apps, and I don't remember my passwords from a decade ago. Isn't there a service somewhere, where you give someone some pictures of your food, and restaurant, and you get a container and credentials for a webpage that handles reservations, takes pickup or delivery orders, and lets you update the menu? Why do people do this?
  - _tom_ 4y ago
    Because Facebook is simple. Any one can update it, and it doesn't go down, and it doesn't cost anything. I've many times seen web presences fail for small organizations, when the only person that understands the web set up leaves. With Facebook, that doesn't happen. I'm sure there are services such as you describe, and probably many restaurants use them, and it's not obvious. But Facebook is the default.
    - lalos 4y ago
      No, because facebook is free and they are cozy with the mexican government and this allows them to operate in a country without net neutrality. Therefore facebook, whatsapp and instagram are included for free in most if not all cellphone plans and pay per month options.
    - lofaszvanitt 4y ago
      Yeah, sadly. Tbh, if you don't have a separate page for your establishment, then you are a joke. Facebook pages are just horrible.
kinkrtyavimoodh 4y ago
Thanks for sharing this! i feel this is a cautionary tale for us HN-minded folks since i see a rather unusual love for the look and feel of the "old internet", and what i like to call the Craigslist style of design. As someone who remembers the internet of the 90s and early 2000s before it was taken over by ads and SEO spam, i understand the nostalgia, but as a web developer, also know that i need to do right by my clients and build things for them that make their businesses successful. An old outdated website turns away many customers.
- robswc 4y ago
  Ironically, a badly designed modern website turns me away. (sometimes because the thing literally doesn't work) I remember trying to book a place and there was some issue with the z-index and I couldn't click to confirm the dates on the pop-up calendar. Made me wonder how much $$$ they could be losing because the % of people willing/know how to delete the offending element must be pretty small. I agree 100% with what you're saying though. Older websites appear more "complex" to a lot of people. There's good middle grounds though. The new netflix for iOS is really nice, imo. Leans more towards form but still functions very well.
- spoils19 4y ago
  This is one the examples where the exception proves the rule. After introducing my friends and family to a CLI-based booking tool I wrote for them, they have swore off website UI's since. Every other week I get an excited e-mail stating how great the tool is, and how they have also convinced their own friends to give up JavaScript and turn towards Rust.
  - nicbou 4y ago
    I'd love to hear more
culiao 4y ago
Did you use a 3rd party for handling booking?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- joshmn 4y ago
  More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34482904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34482904 It’s in-house. I wasn’t happy with anything we tried, and honestly it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.
rrmdp 4y ago
So cool! What did you use as a booking system?
- joshmn 4y ago
  More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34482904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34482904 It’s in-house. I wasn’t happy with anything we tried, and honestly it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.
PaulHoule 4y ago
My wife runs a riding academy and she's been resistant to any kind of online or off-farm marketing, relying instead on word of mouth. She thinks we get a better quality of customer that way and we have little trouble keeping our herd busy. Of course our business is centered around repeat riders, it would be a very different business to organize trail rides for strangers. Our barn is much smaller than most (7 horses at the high water) but it has been consistently profitable. A barn with more horses and a large staff could bring in more revenue but costs will be higher too. There is a barn down the road that has nice facilities but has had several managers and has only been viable with the last one. We know another troubled barn with an alcoholic owner who has a large off-farm income that has struggled economically and has a legendarily bad safety culture. (I took 10 rides there before we were in full swing and had 3 'near miss' accidents)

by joshmn 4y ago

kilroy123 4y ago

Awesome work! Would you mind sharing? I live in Mexico City and would love to try horse back riding.

joshmn 4y ago
Sure. We're in Vallarta if you ever make it out this way. :) https://ranchoelcharro.com https://ranchoelcharro.com Obligatory disclosure: some semblance of ownership.
- dimaor 4y ago
  The team page made me laugh out loud :D
  - joshmn 4y ago
    Thanks! We get a lot of compliments on the copy. I wanted to reflect that we are indeed a Mexican horse ranch without the site being incredibly boring. There's only so many cool things you can show/say before you realize that horses aren't really all that interesting on the internet.
- xiande04 4y ago
  I live in Veracruz. Will be paying you a visit in the future!
- sureglymop 4y ago
  This is awesome. Only one minor thing about the website. On mobile when i click on "Meet Pam", the logo in the header is white and the background beige, making it unreadable. Wish I could go to Mexico and do this! :)
- j1elo 4y ago
  Ok I HAVE to ask: why the poor woman's face on the FAQ's background photo is being attacked by an octopus?
  - joshmn 4y ago
    No reason other than to get people talking.
    - matt_heimer 4y ago
      Funny that the FAQ itself causes a frequently asked question which is answered in the FAQ.
    - j1elo 4y ago
      I swear I read the FAQ and the last question was "Are you real? Sometimes. I mean, yes.". I chuckled at that one and it was the end of the page!? Or ir wasn't? OP if you just added it please tell me :) (nah, just partly joking, I'm sincerely confused though)
- bla3 4y ago
  FYI, https://www.ranchoelcharro.com/mountain-waterfall-horseback-ride-puerto-vallarta https://www.ranchoelcharro.com/mountain-waterfall-horseback-... says "$129" at the top but "$139" at the bottom.
- carlosbaraza 4y ago
  Not sure if the website is broken, but attempting to book 2 people and clicking a time does nothing on iOS Safari. It might be worth looking at the analytics for device distribution but I presume iOS is the bulk of your traffic, si probably worth optimising it.
  - quinncom 4y ago
    I noticed this too. I think it’s because those time slots are not available (if you choose a date a couple months away, you’ll be able to click there time slot). The solution would be to print “No availability” instead of disabled time slot buttons.
    - joshmn 4y ago
      Ah, nice catch; it's supposed to show an alert. Going to make this change now to be more visual, thank you for letting me know!

jorgesborges 4y ago

Nice! Was the booking system simple CRUD, or did you require credit cards for payment or reservation? Edit: Saw the URL from another comment. Great work, simple and does exactly what’s needed.

joshmn 4y ago
It's mostly CRUD, and the stack is very boring: Rails/Hotwire/Bootstrap, about 10k lines (we have apps for the staff on the ground, agents and agencies that we partner with, and some other stuff in there). The tricky part of handling the bookings is that on any given day we have a limited number of horses and multiple types of rides: 3 trails at 10AM, 1 trail at 3PM. A few times a month we'll max out the horses and not have availability for a given time. We can burst horsepower if we need to and accommodate bigger groups if we're hitting capacity and suspect load will maintain its current HPH. (that was a stretch; I tried) We also track what horses have been used and how much so that we're not riding them into the ground — the people on the ground have an app I built in Framework7 to manage everything; they love it and Framework7 is very fun once you get rolling. We ask for a 20% deposit to "hold [your] horses" and to prevent no-shows; the rest is transacted at the ranch (though we make the option to pay in full available if you email us). Our cancellation policy extremely flexible and though we say 24 hours on the site, we've never not refunded someone.
- lampshades 4y ago
  An absolutely amazing story. I’ve wondered for a while how powerful bringing skilled software engineers (let’s be honest, people don’t give us credit for the amount of actual business skill is required to effectively do this job) into small businesses would work. Most people who don’t work in tech or advertising don’t think so much about tracking everything. It presents a pretty big opportunity for both small business owners and software people.
  - joshmn 4y ago
    One of the things I wanted to do was understand who our customer was. They had really no idea. Waivers are all digitalized and ask for the basics: name, date of birth, where you're from, emergency contact. I use a "gender API" to get the gender of the rider the best we can, and from there we have learned a lot about who our typical customer is. Some fun factoids: * typical rider is 35-44. Less than 10% of riders are under the age of 24, * about half of people book when they're in Mexico * average lead time is 7 days * about 66% of riders have riding exp; about 33% consider themselves "novice" or "expert" riders * 45% of riders are male, 55% are female * 1 rider reported they are from Antartica

unity1001 4y ago

> I get to say I am a co-owner in a Mexican horse ranc You must get business cards made and start distributing them to friends and family whenever you get the chance. Not for marketing - to brag and to be able to be mildly annoying.

joshmn 4y ago
It's definitely my favorite fun fact. I'm grow up in the city but I spent a few summer days on a horse growing up. One of my earliest memories was horseback riding with my mom. I must have been no older than 18 months.
- unity1001 4y ago
  Note that you can also use the ranch business cards as 'get out of jail cards' to avoid social chatter when you need to change the subject: You note that the in-law starts taking the discussion towards some uncomfortable topic during thanksgiving dinner. You immediately use the card: "Say, have I given you my business card?" - and then you move on to talk about the ranch. Even if they interrupt you and try to get back to the topic, the topic will be derailed for good. Usable every 6 months by pretending that you forgot that you already gave them your business card...
  - michaelteter 4y ago
    > get out of jail cards' to avoid social chatter Great tip in general!
- jefftk 4y ago
  > One of my earliest memories was horseback riding with my mom. I must have been no older than 18 months. That is an incredibly early memory! 3-4 is more typical, and 2 is usually the earliest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia
  - ksenzee 4y ago

pcardoso 4y ago

Very cool to know. I did something very similar for Surfing schools. Not yet making any money off it, but I am trying to. Reaching out to other surfing schools, improving the product adding new features.

phist_mcgee 4y ago

It's a great website, really well done!

pxue 4y ago

Mexicos overall internet presence is literally stuck in the early 2000s. Most business' official website are a Facebook page. In a country of 150M people and growing expat presence, there is a TON of opportunities for software businesses to enter the market. For example: Riviera Maya has no MLS style real estate tracker/listing platform. The entire real estate industry operates on word of mouth, WhatsApp and Facebook messages.

galangalalgol 4y ago
I keep running into this in the US in large cities. Really well regarded restaurants or music venues do everything through FB and insta. I don't have either of those apps, and I don't remember my passwords from a decade ago. Isn't there a service somewhere, where you give someone some pictures of your food, and restaurant, and you get a container and credentials for a webpage that handles reservations, takes pickup or delivery orders, and lets you update the menu? Why do people do this?
- _tom_ 4y ago
  Because Facebook is simple. Any one can update it, and it doesn't go down, and it doesn't cost anything. I've many times seen web presences fail for small organizations, when the only person that understands the web set up leaves. With Facebook, that doesn't happen. I'm sure there are services such as you describe, and probably many restaurants use them, and it's not obvious. But Facebook is the default.
  - lalos 4y ago
    No, because facebook is free and they are cozy with the mexican government and this allows them to operate in a country without net neutrality. Therefore facebook, whatsapp and instagram are included for free in most if not all cellphone plans and pay per month options.
  - lofaszvanitt 4y ago
    Yeah, sadly. Tbh, if you don't have a separate page for your establishment, then you are a joke. Facebook pages are just horrible.

kinkrtyavimoodh 4y ago

Thanks for sharing this! i feel this is a cautionary tale for us HN-minded folks since i see a rather unusual love for the look and feel of the "old internet", and what i like to call the Craigslist style of design. As someone who remembers the internet of the 90s and early 2000s before it was taken over by ads and SEO spam, i understand the nostalgia, but as a web developer, also know that i need to do right by my clients and build things for them that make their businesses successful. An old outdated website turns away many customers.

robswc 4y ago
Ironically, a badly designed modern website turns me away. (sometimes because the thing literally doesn't work) I remember trying to book a place and there was some issue with the z-index and I couldn't click to confirm the dates on the pop-up calendar. Made me wonder how much $$$ they could be losing because the % of people willing/know how to delete the offending element must be pretty small. I agree 100% with what you're saying though. Older websites appear more "complex" to a lot of people. There's good middle grounds though. The new netflix for iOS is really nice, imo. Leans more towards form but still functions very well.
spoils19 4y ago
This is one the examples where the exception proves the rule. After introducing my friends and family to a CLI-based booking tool I wrote for them, they have swore off website UI's since. Every other week I get an excited e-mail stating how great the tool is, and how they have also convinced their own friends to give up JavaScript and turn towards Rust.
- nicbou 4y ago
  I'd love to hear more

culiao 4y ago

Did you use a 3rd party for handling booking?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
joshmn 4y ago
More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34482904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34482904 It’s in-house. I wasn’t happy with anything we tried, and honestly it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

rrmdp 4y ago

So cool! What did you use as a booking system?

joshmn 4y ago
More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34482904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34482904 It’s in-house. I wasn’t happy with anything we tried, and honestly it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

PaulHoule 4y ago

My wife runs a riding academy and she's been resistant to any kind of online or off-farm marketing, relying instead on word of mouth. She thinks we get a better quality of customer that way and we have little trouble keeping our herd busy. Of course our business is centered around repeat riders, it would be a very different business to organize trail rides for strangers. Our barn is much smaller than most (7 horses at the high water) but it has been consistently profitable. A barn with more horses and a large staff could bring in more revenue but costs will be higher too. There is a barn down the road that has nice facilities but has had several managers and has only been viable with the last one. We know another troubled barn with an alcoholic owner who has a large off-farm income that has struggled economically and has a legendarily bad safety culture. (I took 10 rides there before we were in full swing and had 3 'near miss' accidents)