Yelp redesign for Procore Technologies
What is Yelp?
Yelp is a local-search service powered by crowd-sourced review forum, as well as an online reservation service. Yelp also trains small businesses in how to respond to reviews, host social events for reviewers, and provides data about businesses, including health inspection scores. The reason why I chose Yelp for this challenge is because I use the app almost daily and have not yet thought about what pain points I see from it as a user. It is certainly not a perfect app, but I was intrigued in seeing what other users thought about the app.
Company’s purpose : To connect people with great local businesses
What is Yelp for consumers?
In major metropolitan areas where there is an abundance of small local businesses, a tool like Yelp is very helpful in helping users make decisions for where to eat, what to do, and discovering other nearby services. With 72% of yelp searches done through a mobile device, the app utilizes the phone’s geolocation feature in a way where users can easily see the services in their vicinity. The rating system of Yelp has also become a powerful tool for businesses to increase visibility and attract new customers with feedback from “real customers”. But most importantly, Yelp has empowered the voice of the consumer. Before Yelp there was little to no way for a consumer’s complaint to be heard. Any complaint or compliment was heard through word of mouth which is often unreliable, but now with Yelp, users can talk about their experiences to the point where what they say affects the business significantly. Yelp has grown to be used by so many users that now it is a critical part of the business that business owners must take into consideration.
The introduction of Yelp was not a simple addition to the way we ordinarily did things, but it had completely changed the way users discover new local business. By making the discovery of new businesses a part of social media, powered by crowdsourcing, users quickly found enjoyment in being a critic and having a say, making the app more and more valuable with the increasing amount of reviews.
How users discovered new restaurants (before Yelp)
How users discover new restaurants today
User Research
I consider myself a frequent Yelp user — maybe even an example of the “typical Yelp user”. But in order to better understand what the issues around Yelp are without any of my own assumptions, I scoured the internet to listen to what Yelp users really think about the app. I looked on various forums, subreddits, articles, and even facebook groups discussing their thoughts about Yelp. I was surprised to find so many passionate Yelp users, wanting to discuss with the greater public about their experiences with Yelp. Surprisingly, the majority of feedback I found online were from business owners wanting to discuss how to utilize Yelp to benefit their business. But to find out more about what the consumers thought about the app, I turned to my peers to get their experiences on the app. Below are a couple quotes from users online and in person who had things to say about Yelp.
Business owner pain points
Consumer pain points
Analyzing all the different reviews I can find about Yelp, the greatest pain point from consumers and business owners seem to all point in one direction: the reviews. The distrust of reviews, the inaccuracy of reviews, the amount of reviews, etc. have all been voiced to be the common concern around the use of Yelp.
Yelp’s reviews are controlled by an algorithm that is kept as a secret from the public, so there is no way to propose a solution around fixing their algorithm. But can there be a way to restore faith in user reviews by changing the experience of how users review and rate businesses? Is there a way to regulate the reviews in a transparent way so users can know who the reviews are coming from?
App design pain points
After researching to understand the voice of the consumer, I looked further into the app to see how the design of it may be affecting all the pain points around the reviews.
I discovered a couple features that could be affecting the way users review. With an app like Yelp, where there is little to no instructions on how to write a review, it becomes entirely up to the user in what they want to say. This can lead to users losing sight of writing a review that may be helpful for other users who are discovering new places to try. Depending on what triggered the user to want to leave a review, the value of what that will mean to another user can vary a lot.
After research and analyzing user feedback, I came upon three of the greatest paint points for Yelp and how it affects three different user personas.
Painpoint 1:
Reviews are left to the consumer and there is no structure or guideline to writing it. This can be intimidating for users to write an honest review because of the effort it will take, and when a review is too detailed and long it becomes difficult for users to skim through and come upon decisions by the reviews.
Painpoint 2:
There is a single rating system that is supposed to apply to their entire experience. There can often be good and bad parts of experiences and every consumer values the parts of their experience differently so it becomes difficult in evaluating what about the service is good and bad.
Painpoint 3:
Business owners can only communicate with their reviewers by commenting on their reviews. The only way the business can prove they are doing their best is by maintaining and reviewing each and every review on their page. This can be very tedious and may lead to bribery or other unorthodox methods to get reviews in their favor.
User Persona 1
User Persona 2
User Persona 3
The redesign
What I felt that Yelp needed in order to address the different pain points that the user types are having was to 1. Add structure to the reviews for both writers and readers, 2. Simplify and consolidate the extra functionality within Yelp so that users can navigate to find what they are looking for easily and 3. Have communication between the business owner and all their customers in a transparent way that can keep owners honest.
1. Users are separated into 2 types. Yelp Elites and the Yelp Flock, which is the user base of non-elite members. These are users like Doris who just want an honest review of a business and often find the Elite reviews are difficult to trust because of their relationships with the restaurant. This idea came to me as I was looking at the review feature of Rotten Tomatoes, where reviewers are either critics or just the audience. Critics take every bit of the experience into consideration with an “expert” lens when evaluating the business, but the audience just wants to watch a good movie, and sometimes that’s all the other users want to know when trying to make a decision.
2. A single evaluation scale to represent an entire business can misrepresent what a user would want to know to try out a new restaurant. A scale that is more granular and separates the top 3 things users value as part of their experience can provide the user with a little more context and help with their decision making. For Yelp Elite users like Henry T who value service over cleanliness, he can be honest about all three aspects of the restaurant without having a thoroughly negative review all affected by one rude waitress . An added benefit of this feature is that it allows for more information on what factors the user values, so recommendations to try out new places can be more accurate based on the trends of previously visited businesses.
3. In order to allow more transparent communication between the customers and the business owner, a status feed of restaurant updates is implemented. Responding to each and every review is not time efficient and can result in misunderstandings of reviewer/owner relationships (like bribery). Some customers will enjoy their experience, and some will not, and it is important to let users know that the business owner is doing their best to address all reviews and not just the top review from the top Yelp Elite users to up their social media presence.
4. A consolidation of all the added features of a business is tucked away in a single call to action that will persist at the bottom of the phone screen. This will allow users to use all the features of Yelp more efficiently and carry out the task they were meaning to do. Yelp is not only a discovery tool for new places for users, but it is often used to revisit businesses to find specific bits of information or feature.
A more organized navigation of all the features available for a single business on Yelp and separating the reviews between Elite and Flock so users can easily filter through and find the consumer voice they are looking for.
Next steps and learnings
The next steps for the redesign would be to test how users would react to these changes in the app and ultimately look to see if it changes the patterns of reviews in any way. Some problems I foresee with these design changes are that the existing reviews on business pages become outdated because of the new starring system. For a while, there would be a mix of new and old reviews and the overall ratings of the restaurant on their main page would be slightly skewed. But I also see this as an opportunity for users to be aware of the outdated reviews and want to give places another chance.
One of the biggest learnings from this design challenge experience was realizing how much an app can change the culture of the local business industry. It can create new business opportunities for business owners, new methods of discovery for consumers, and empower the user’s voice. Users are free to speak their mind on an app like Yelp and although everyone is entitled to their own opinion, sometimes a bit of regulation is needed to filter through the voices to find what voice resonates with you the most.