Establishing the idea
Prior to laying the notion behind Yelp, it is eminent to quote these words-
“I got sick and needed to see a doctor. Back then there was very little information on the internet; it was frustrating. We realized the best way to find a doctor, or other services, was by word of mouth.”
Jeremy Stoppelman, Co-Founder of Yelp
An Insight!
Yelp, founded by Russel Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman in 2004 , is a business directory listing website which helps consumers to find local or small businesses such as bars, restaurants, doctors, beauty, electricians, etc.
Not only this! What it actually serves is the “Word of Mouth!”
In other words, the customers tend to give feedbacks, share pictures or write reviews and even drop ratings for a business or service. With this, Yelp has more than 171 million reviews today!
Well that’s a great deal of it!
Most us might still think so as to why it is so popular?
Well then, its time for a real time example. Suppose, you have recently relocated to a new city. Unaware of any food junctions or grocery stores, doctors, electricians, etc, you have no idea of what you should be doing next!
That’s when “Yelp can be of great help!” Just navigate to the its website/ application, find the service of your choice, (such as a food point) and you’re good to go; but will you be choosing just any restaurant you find (or any such service). Definitely No!
You would look for restaurants which have a good star ratings (5 or 4 star rating, preferably) and filter restaurants where customers have jot down their positive experience.
I am sure you could relate to this one! That’s why, Yelp! as one customer shares his experience with a business/ service, shares and recommends it to other beings.
Yelp Entities
Moving further, there are three core entities of Yelp that we must know of-
- The arbitrators or reviewers,
- Local Businesses, and
- Users, who reach out to businesses by reading the reviews.
Of the three entities given the most exigent is the Arbitrators or Reviewers.
The reason being, they are the ones responsible for those “171 million reviews” and other website visitors access these reviews and ratings and draw closer to a business or service.
Now that we have injested the basic idea about Yelp, let’s take a deep dive and explore its nitty-gritties.
Characteristics Properties of Yelp Website/ App
One of the major challenges in the E-Commerce cosmos is to connect “Business Entrepreneurs to People or Customers.”
This is where Yelp comes into picture.
It provides an arena where the customers, after availing a service through Yelp, will drop their valuable reviews, that will be read by respective business’ owner.
On that account, before establishing an idea so as to how one can create a Yelp Clone, let’s take a dive and acquaint ourselves with some essential traits of a Yelp Website/ App.
Traits: Yelp Website/ App
- First thing first, Customer Reviews/ ratings: The customers can share their experiences through photos, render star ratings and reviews.
- On the basis of location, it lists local businesses and sets its geographical area on the map.
- Allocates multiple categories and sub-categories for different business types.
- Facilitates analysis of user reviews, and provides and Elite status to effective reviewers.
- Meanwhile, the reviewers can filter services on the basis of cost, location, reservations, etc.
- Yelp exhibit events organized by various businesses on their websites. The visitors go forth and make bookings for an event(s) as well.
- It allots a distinct login for each business entrepreneur; by virtue of which, they can allege a place on Yelp.
- One Yelper can have a word with other Yelpers!
- Yelp facilitates a most essential feature, i.e. login through social sites, such as Google or Twitter, Facebook, etc.
- It posts ads for businesses as well but listing a businesses add is a paid service.
- Just as significant as a good news, you can consume Yelp services even on the android and iOS devices.
Drafting a Yelp Clone!
Now that we have an insight to its features, let’s progress to see the exigent elements for creating a Yelp like website/ app.
Choosing the Native Market
The first thing that must be taken care of is amongst what kind of customers/ people do you wish to establish your business; thus target a specific set of area and customers.
We must not forget to mention the Hyperlocal Systems (Zomato, Swiggy, for instance), which share a same concept in terms of reviews/ rating; but specifically it is a food delivery site/ app.
Likewise, we can even address “Yelp” as “Zomato which does not accept Orders!
Apart from this, we have mutiple sites similar to Yelp offering different services such as travel services, for instance, Booking.com, Make My trip, Trip Advisor, etc.
Similar to Yelp as they entertain reviews/ ratings, different in the aspect as it offers other services, such as travel, flights, booking & reservations, as well.
The Right Platform
After choosing the target customers, the prime and most important step is to choose a right platform for creating your Yelp Clone.
There are multiple e-commerce platform you can choose to develop a Yelp like website/ app. For instance, Magento 2.
- Magento, is the most efficent and flexible e-commerce platform known, that supports an extensive range of features.
- An effective product/ catalog browsing, a easy to go order placing process.
- Apart fron this, its shipping/ payments are extremely feasible.
There are various other e-commerce platforms that you can choose to create a Yelp Like Webiste- Opencart, WooCommerce, Bagisto, Prestashop, Shopify, and the list goes on.
To know more, please refer to the following links-
https://store.webkul.com/magento2-multi-vendor-marketplace.html
https://store.webkul.com/magento-multi-vendor-marketplace.html
https://store.webkul.com/woocommerce-multivendor-marketplace.html
https://store.webkul.com/Odoo-Multi-Vendor-Marketplace.html
https://store.webkul.com/CS-Cart-Multi-Vendor-Marketplace.html
https://store.webkul.com/magento2-multi-vendor-marketplace.html
Selecting the apt Web Hosting
After making the choice of platform, it is even more essential to select the right web hosting which best suits your business.
As per the business’ niche and requirement, either giant or small scale, one has to choose the appropriate hosting service, i.e.
- Dedicated Hosting:
Specifically for large scale online businesses because as they need a comparatively larger bandwidth and disk space to host the websites.
As they are expensive in terms of cost, but it is completely lets you have the owner rights and you are the one who manages everything.
- Shared Hosting:
Shared Hosting is best for small scale or newly started website as it is stored on the servers along with other websites. All the websites share the same server and its resources, and therefore it is cost friendly.
You can choose from Google Cloud Hosting, cloudkul AWS, etc. so as to host your websites.
Integrate Some Additional Features to make your Yelp Website enticing
To make the Yelp website more fascinating and exclusive, one can even inculcate advanced features, such as-
- A prominent search box, as the customers will not like it if they’ll have to move here and there looking for a cafe or a salon service.
- One can also integrate the search suggestions feature so as to ease the search process.
- Instill UI tool that even guides your customers throughout the website/ app. Click here, to know more about UI/ UX design tools.
- Features like Voice Search even can be a part of your Yelp Website Development.
Some “Must-Knows about Yelp!”
Almost all of us are a part of social networking realm where trolling is quite in. Yelp at the same time is a completely different concept.
It serves as an arena for customers where they can put forth their most genuine verdicts and share their experiences with other visitors.
But anyway, how can just a piece of writing contemplate another Yelper’s mindset?
Okay! let me put forth a real-time example in here.
Recently, one my hometown friend had posted a picture of a newly open cafe on Instagram. It’s cheerful caption spoke about my friend’s experience of the place.
Well, just a caption instilled a positive aura in my mind and I was obstinate to visit that place.
That’s the “Power of Words!” and Yelp is a platform thats serves the customers and gives them a freedom to express their views and opinions about a business/ service.
In light of the above, let’s kick around some “must-know” facts about Yelp!
- Does Yelp entertain just Positive Reviews? No, not at all! ? It has room for both, Positive and Negative Reviews.
- It’s Homepage is the most essential source of traffic!
- Is it all about Restaurant-ing? Misconception! The most dominant category on Yelp is Shopping & Retail acquiring almost 23% of all the categories it pocesses; Restaurants, just 19%.
- Yelp never recommends you to ‘Ask for Reviews!’ It has a software that tracks such reviews. Hence, give your customers the best of your service and grab those overhauls.
- Moreover, Yelp encourages high quality customer service as it immensely affects the rankings and reviews.
- Do you own an independent business? Then you’re definitely Yelp’s choice as it abstains on chain businesses. It says, “all McD’s round the globe will serve you the same,” and hence it prefers local businesses over chains.
- As it lists local business, it gives customers’ exposure to the local store, thus most of them end up making a purchase from these local stores.
- Yelp believes, ‘a picture speaks a thousand words!’ and so it instigates the customers to post pictures as well to share their experience with other visitors. Maximum customers use the Yelp app to post the pictures.
- Yelp’s a female fan and most of the its visitors are Females!
Want those ‘Yelp Stickers’ glued on your storefronts?
- Give your customers a lifetime of experience, grab those reviews and earn “People Love us on Yelp” stickers.
To know more about the ditrectory listing websites, click here.
That’s all for the How to Create a Yelp Clone? If you face any issue, feel free to add a ticket at webkul.uvdesk.com