What we've learned so far

[lippytak]

From @lippytak on February 14, 2015 19:11

Write it up! For now let's just drop notes here as they come up naturally.

My opinionated summary:

• In CA ATM use case is more compelling/important but much lower volume and harder to reach the right people (Adwords are meh). Probably lower value in other States.
• CA ATM data quality is ambiguous and getting access to updates is pretty painful
• In CA more people are looking for EBT restaurants than EBT retail stores, but that's probably because the entire restaurant program is completely confusing. For example, I'm pretty sure most people can't use their EBT card at restaurants, and nobody actually has a list of participating restaurants in CA.
• IMO low/no value in forking/redeploying EBTNearMe...better thought of as a distributed data collection effort
• Lots of open questions about how users are using this (looking for something now? nearby a specific location? new to SNAP?)

Copied from original issue: lippytak/ebt-near-me#118

[lippytak]

TANF programs outside of CA are MUCH smaller, so the ATM surcharge problem is smaller, too: codeforamerica/health#18

[lippytak]

Current EBTNearMe users are trying to:

• Find restaurants (we don't do this)
• Find EBT retail stores (we do this)
• Find free ATMs (we do this)

Other:

• Most users (88%) are often looking for stores or restaurants that accept CalFresh
• And 70% say 'finding stores and restaurants' is the 'most difficult or frustrating part of using their benefits'

See survey details on the Health wiki

[lippytak]

Adwords lessons:

• ~80% of users are on mobile
• Costs about $1 to get people to click on a marker (either store or ATM)
• About 10x more people are looking for EBT retail stores than free ATMs in CA
• ATM ads are lower volume but perform better

Details below (copied from here https://github.com/lippytak/ebt-near-me/issues/112):

ATM keyword view:

Stores keyword view:

[lippytak]

Consistently only 50-60%% of users who hit www.ebtnearme.org ever click on any markers. Don't know why.

[lippytak]

At least in CA, the quality of the ATM is anecdotally pretty bad, and we don't have a good way to either validate the data or update it when reports come in: bit.ly/ebtnearme-feedback

[lippytak]

Still don't know what exactly users are trying to accomplish when they hit the site

• Looking for the nearest store/ATM near by?
• Looking for something near their home or place of work?
• Want to print something out?
• Just getting onboarded to the program?