It’s 8:45am on a Monday, and I need an espresso. I needed it ten minutes ago. Now, I’m a bit of a coffee snob (this is Washington, after all) so I want only the best. A fairly new transplant to Skagit County and up for a bit of a change, I need to know a few close-by spots. In situations like these, I turn to Yelp, a social resource that allows users to rate and review businesses. It began as the place to find the hottest restaurants in the city. It expanded to include businesses of all sorts, in all areas.
To give you another example of how this works, here’s a scenario. I was at the base of the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle over the weekend and wanted a hip coffee shop to camp out at for a few hours – a place that had style and free wireless connectivity. I pulled up the Yelp application on my phone, did a quick filter for coffee shops that had wireless internet and were located within 0.3 miles of where I was at the time, and selected the one with the highest rating. Then I watched myself navigate the streets of Seattle on Google Maps toward the coffee shop of my dreams (in this case, Victrola on First Hill).
Opportunities for small businesses exist with sites like Yelp, but so do potential problems. In my opinion, the opportunities far outweigh the problems. We’ll discuss a few of each here.
Opportunity 1. Listen In: Monitor
In a large city, it’s not unusual for a popular restaurant to have upwards of 200 ratings. In a small town, 20 can be a good thing. The ratings, out of 5 stars, can tell visitors where to go and where not to go. Big city, small town; wherever your business is located, it’s important to know what people are saying about you. Yelp makes it easy.
Opportunity 2. Take Action: Improve
Per the norm when reviews are involved, not everyone has a good rating. But with a site like Yelp, companies can pinpoint their problem areas and take the necessary actions to correct issues that may exist, thus winning back the loyalty of customers that may have initially given a bad review. Making changes made based on feedback from sites like Yelp can assist you in improving your business and providing the products and/or services your customers demand.
Opportunity 3. Let It Be Known: Promote
Walking around Seattle, I began to notice something: select businesses (restaurants in particular) with high Yelp ratings promoted the fact with a Yelp sticker near their door. It told people to check them out on Yelp and see what others were saying about them. With a data plan for your phone, you can do so instantaneously. Now, imagine placing a Data Matrix/QR Code next to a promotional Yelp sticker that links straight to your Yelp profile, making it even easier for potential customers to see you online. Pretty cool.
Reading a Yelp forum, there appears to be questions surrounding how a business gets a Yelp sticker. However, the Yelp Blog noted back in March that these stickers are sent out quarterly to businesses with “a bunch of reviews and an average rating over 3.5 stars.” Since we have a friend at Yelp, we can answer any questions you have through her.
Opportunity 4. Communicate: Engage
Yelp allows businesses to create a business account from which they can edit their profile, provide users with special offers, and email or respond to reviewers. If someone writes a negative review and your company makes improvements based on the review, contact that individual and let them know you were listening and that because of their review you took action.
Creating a Yelp account for your business will allow you to:
- Communicate with your customers– privately and publicly
- Track how many people view your business page
- Add photos, a detailed business description, up-to-date information, history, and specialties
- Announce special offers and upcoming events
- Recommend other businesses
(referenced from the Business Owner’s Guide on Yelp)
Engaging your customers and reviewers in this fashion can help create loyal fans of your business and boost your word-of-mouth marketing efforts.
Problem 1. Poor Ethics: Malicious Behavior
Sites like Yelp, which are based on reviews, struggle with the user generated content (UGC) effect. How do you distinguish negative reviews from those that are malicious and those that are valid? How do you tell the difference between a manipulative positive review and an honest one? While Yelp has a system in place to remove what they view as manipulative reviews, it’s unclear what the specifics are behind the algorithm. Either way, inaccuracies are inevitable. An article in the New York Times notes:
“[Yelp] operates on the premise that reviewers tend to be truthful and that greater accuracy will emerge from more reviews.”
However, in rural areas where fewer people participate on sites like Yelp, one malicious review that slips through the cracks can drastically affect a company’s overall rating, positively or negatively.
Problem 2. Myth versus Fact
In February of 2009, the CEO of Yelp wrote an article titled 9 Myths About Yelp. Deciphering the myths versus the facts of Yelp can be difficult, especially if you’re a business owner that feels wronged by the rating/review company, or just a skeptical consumer. This article will at least allow you to decide for yourself.
Countering The Problems With Yelp
One of the more consistent issues I’ve encountered in my research pertains to the final myth. Creating a Yelp account can help alleviate this problem, but there seems to remain a disassociation between Free Speech (see Myth #7) and Business Voice (Myth #9). The issue is with erroneous information within customer reviews on Yelp. The good news is that, with a Business account, you can now respond to reviews as well – this is a feature that was not always available.
They also give some good tips in responding to customers. Any response should be well thought out; after all, your customers will be reading what you write, so write constructively and considerately.
Hot Spots near Downtown Mount Vernon
For locals, here are a few of downtown’s highest rated restaurants:
- The Porterhouse: 4.5 Stars, 8 Reviews
- Skagit River Brewery: 4 Stars, 18 Reviews
- Pacioni’s: 5 Stars, 1 Review
- Empire Ale House: 5 Stars, 1 Review
Most of these restaurants have only a few ratings, and in some cases just one. Like the place? Create an account and write a review.
That being said, I just noticed Same Old Grind has one review and a 4 star rating. I read it, marked the review as useful (other options include “Funny” and “Cool”), checked out the picture the reviewer took (looks pretty neat in there), and am making a mental note to check it out next time I’m in need of a good Americano. Later I think I’ll head home and contemplate what to write for Il Granaio Italian Restaurant’s first review.