Since meeting a few guys and girls from Yelp recently I’ve become a (slightly addicted) Yelp user and enjoy writing reviews a few times per week. As a result I’ve begun to notice some areas for improvement and thought I’d start a blog post to list my ideas to see if any other Yelp users agree?

Filtering

- When browsing in map view I want to be able to filter the results by checking/unchecking boxes to show places with/without my specific interests such as cuisine type, price range, outdoor seating, WiFi, etc. They have a system like this at the moment but it doesn’t allow you to uncheck or filter out something you know you’re not interested in. This would make browsing easier.

WiFi

- Yelp should include an option to give a star rating of the WiFi for a cafe/bar/restaurant etc because the quality of WiFi at each place varies so much. WiFi sometimes comes up in the ‘Show more survey questions’ but it should also be one of the check boxes that always comes up.

Rating System

- When you write a review you get the option to answer a set of survey questions about what services the establishment offers (e.g. Takeaway? Delivery? Smoking Area?). This is good but without reading through all the reviews it doesn’t tell us about the quality of services. For example I’d like to see a star rating system for things such as quality of food, quality of drinks, quality of atmosphere,  good/bad music, speed of delivery, sheltered smoking area, quality of WiFi, etc

Writing more than one review per place

Sometimes I’ll check out a club or sandwich shop or wherever and I’ll come away feeling really happy, knowing I’ll go back at some point. But then when I go back it’s awful. I don’t know why this is, perhaps I was served by someone else or I just go unlucky.

Also, I’ve been to a bar before to have lunch and thought it was amazing with great service and good food but then when I’ve been in the evening for drinks it’s been slow service and poor quality.

Yelp should let you write multiple reviews for occasions like this because at the moment you can only update your previous review. This would give readers a better idea as to the consistency of a place, what it’s good (and not good) for and it would show how many times particular Yelpers go to that place (it must be good if they go a lot). For example, Tossed is unpredictable but Gaucho is consistently amazing and readers could see that I go there a lot.

Blog Synchronising

I think it’d be great if your Yelp reviews synchronised with your blog. So when I write a review on Yelp it gives me an option to publish the review to my blog also, just like it does now with Twitter and Facebook.

This would encourage people to put more effort into writing a good quality review, rather than just posting quickly without thought or care. It would also spread the word of Yelp further as each synchronised blog post could come with a link to the Yelp review, thus diverting more traffic to Yelp.

Embedding photographs and links

In the same way that I write a blog post with embedded photographs and links it would we good to be able to do this with Yelp too. Then you can use the photographs to help explain what you’re talking about and they’d help break up the text, making large reviews easier to digest. These embedded images could be pulled automatically from within the reviews and put in the photos section for each business.

If you have any to add, feel free to do so in the comments or mail them to me and I’ll add them in. Once there’s a decent amount I’ll send them to Yelp via their Feedback page.

There, that’s it for now. It’s not a rant at Yelp, because they’ve got great usability already, it’s just some idea of how it could be improved further. Apologies if I’ve said something that they already do, let me know if I have!

On Tuesday I went to Yelp’s first birthday bash at Islington Metal works with my girlfriend and it was A.W.E.S.O.M.E.!

The venue is situated on a back street kinda directly behind Angel tube station (as you come out of the station take a left, then left again) and it’s made up of 3 distinctive and unique areas.

The first space was decorated like a garden party with REAL grass, benches, gnomes, live music and LOTS of booze served in English tea cups. It had a true summery Gin & Tonic or Pimms style feel, despite being indoors.

The next room had the atmosphere of Covent Garden, but without the gawping tourists (just gawping Yelpers instead). It had an open courtyard feel to it with cobbled floor, archways and a real (ish) looking tube housing a cocktail bar. Food served included spit roast pork, frozen yogurt and some sort of very tasty potato spiral things.

The last room was also very cool and had a classic English rock feel about it with framed photographs on the wall, an open bar with organic beers and a table stacked with edible treats. There was also a photo booth dishing out freebie sets of six shots and an array of funky hats to make yourself look uber cool.

All in all, Yelp has done a GREAT job at throwing a fantastic 1st birthday bash without over branding the event or throwing too much garbage down your throat.

Well done Yelp, I look forward to next year!

I recently met some lovely people from Yelp when I was at work. They came to tell us about Yelp and some exciting things coming up in the future. Unfortunately it’s taken me until now to use it for the first time, but now I’ve written my first review on The Marble Hill pub in Twickenham which you can read on my Yelp profile.