Yelp...

Since moving to San Francisco I’ve gotten a bit into Yelp. But the more I get into it the more I hate it. But I hate for the right reasons; they leave SOOOOO much to be desired. The concept, the content, it’s all great, but the product lacks so much. They do NOTHING interesting with the data. The design/layout leaves so much money on the table I’m besde myself. I look at it and think, do they even have product people? Do these people think about how to grow the community outside of getting folks to be evangelist? It doesn’t appear so. Here are some examples:

• Logging in isn’t prominent. Logged in users mean so much more to a business. As a user I don’t feel obligated to login, and until I do, the homepage experience isn’t interesting to me at all.
  
• Once I login the first thing I notice is to see my profile, why? Narcissism?
• Cramming the most important field into the top of the header (despite it being red) puts into users ad blinder region.
  
• I don’t know what this “talk” crap is. Perhaps you should only show me if I’ve interacted with the feature?
• STOP making me keep input my neighborhood - remember it! and sort my search results based on proximity. I am a lazy bastard and don’t want to truck halfway across the city to drop off my laundry - HEY, you could even be smart enough to sort based on proximity for certain searches, i.e. LAUNDRY!
• Help me make friends with other Yelpers.
• Help me see the reviews of my current friends (new reviews is not sufficient)
• Make your search algorithm better, find some way of showing me the best reviewed places that are both near me AND have a decent number of reviews. You know…creating a respectable sample size.
• Make me want to start a new review, prod me: “Where did you have lunch yesterday?”
• Create different types of reviews: if I’m busy can I just vote? or throw a skunk at a place? (I know, I know, poor skunks, they’re so cute)
  
• Build a better recommendation engine - you know what kinda places I like, find me more of them.

That’s it for now. I’m sure I’ll have more later.