Running Head: YELP ANALYSIS

Online Community Analysis & Redesign: Yelp

Julia Lista
Online Culture
Marist College

Running Head: YELP ANALYSIS

Consumers Online
Online user generated communities establish individual connections
that engage people and form communities based on different interests,
ideas, and opinions. People actively participate on social forums in order to
express their ideas and facilitate engagement and influence among users.
One of the most popular online platforms where consumers are able to
publish their reviews about any particular place or brand based on personal
experiences is through the website Yelp.com. Yelp gives consumers the
ability to publically rate and review a business in an open forum style.
Participation among the website is simple, with a few steps a free account
can be created and users can publish their reviews, photos, and any other
content deemed necessary to inform the community about a business or
product. The demographic that Yelp targets are basically anyone who is a
consumer with access to the Internet, which constitutes the majority of our
worlds population. The website is active in 32 countries and has 90 million
reviews and counting.

Social media has become a valuable resource for

consumers and Yelp has capitalized off of the undeniable influence that user
generated content has in our technology driven culture today.
Methodology
I began my research of consumers and their interactions online, by
creating a yelp account. This was not my first time using the website, but it
was my first time using a personal account and navigating the site in search
of patterns, interactions, or possible problems. Creating my account was

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simple; all I needed to submit was a username, email, password, zip code,
and birthday. Upon logging in, Yelp uses your zip code and recent searches
to create a timeline of recent activity near you. My timeline mostly consists
of restaurant reviews in Poughkeepsie. Having lived in Poughkeepsie for the
past four years, I decided to look through the reviews of some of my favorite
spots and compare my experience to the experience of others. Through my
search of restaurants near Poughkeepsie, NY, Rossi Rosticceria Deli ranked
number 5 on the list, with an overall review of 5 stars. Although I would say
that this Deli would be top three for me, as I scrolled through the nine pages
of 179 reviews, I would have to agree with the majority of the reviews;
almost every review was spot on. As a frequent customer, I
can certainly say that the reviews about service, prices, food
quality, and even parking are all extremely credible. For
someone who has never been here, the reviews allow
individuals to get a very accurate idea of what the dining
experience would be like. The images uploaded by users also
create a great visual of the food and the outside view.
I continued to search other businesses within the area
some that I was familiar with and others I was not. It was
nearly impossible for me to find any problems in terms of the
sites audience engagement and information provided.
Although users provide most of the information and reviews that translate
into the overall rating of a business, the way the website was created makes

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Yelp a great resource of general business information. Yelp provides

directions, contact numbers, website links, hours, price range, and other
helpful details that may not be found on a businesses general website
(Figure 1).

In terms of community engagement, I was quite surprised to find that

beyond just reviews and comments there are other ways users interact on
this site. There is a page on the site entitled, talk, where the users are
able to post conversations and interact about really anything. Yelp
encourages user interaction on this page by publishing the conversations
that discuss current events within your area. Based on area code and
frequent searches the site is able to generate content relevant to you. I have
been an active user in the Poughkeepsie area so the first conversations
shown for me included discussions about the best places to purchase
Christmas trees near Rhinebeck, questions about where to go for happy hour
in Wappingers falls, and cool places to camp near Ulster county.
Crowdsourcing
Yelp is an effective platform for crowdsourcing and people continually
participate within this community because its content has speadability.
Spreadability in media, as defined by Henry Jenkins in the text Spreadable
Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture, refers to the
technical resources that make it easier to circulate some kinds of content
than others, the economic structures that support or restrict circulation, the

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attributes of a media text that might appeal to a communitys motivation for

sharing material, and the social networks that link people through the
exchange of meaningful bytes (Jenkins, 2013, p.4). The content published
through Yelp has mass appeal and spreadability because our world thrives off
of consumers. The reviews on the site establish a certain amount of
credibility because they are not employed by businesses, everyday people
with relatable experiences submit the information. The individuals who post
reviews on yelp, or any review site for that matter, are motivated to share
their opinions knowing that the site does not restrict circulation and anyone
can access their published content. Research proves the impact online
consumers have on one another, and encourages the growing participants
among user-generated review communities. A McKinsey iConsumer retail
survey was taken in 2011(Figure 2), this study was conducted to assess how
social-media users are likely to be influenced by other online consumers; the
results proved just how influential user-generated reviews can be (Niemeier,
Zocchi, Catena, 2013, p.102). 57% of consumers were found to trust other
users on retail sites, which was 10% more than those who said they would
trust site-generated recommendations.

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As a result of the accessibility and ability to spread an intended

message through this site. The participatory culture on the Internet is
extremely prevalent, and yelp is a comprehensive platform for this culture,
and crowdsourcing in particular. Crowdsourcing allows people publish
collective intelligence through online communities to serve business goals,
improve public participation in governance, design products, and solve
problems (Brabham, 2013, p.16). The way that people come together on the
site based on proximity allows people to create virtual local communities.
Locals collaborate to support and critique businesses and problems within
their community. As discussed by Daren Brabham in Crowdsourcing, space
and place is an important aspect for successful crowdsourcing:
because crowdsourcing involves an organization that reaches
out to a crowd distributed across the Internet and located in
many different geographic locations, crowdsourcing gives an
organization an opportunity to gather place-based intelligence
from individuals in the crowd (Brabham, 2013, p.31-32).
For these reasons users are motivated to continue their participation
knowing that their peers in the local community value their opinion.
Redesign

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Based on the way people are able to interact as an online community, I

believe that Yelp has succeeded in terms of bringing together consumers and
implementing the use of crowdsourcing. The content is informative and
insightful, consumers can really find anything they need to know through this
site. In terms of design, there is always room to make public websites easier
to navigate and more user-friendly. The way I would approach redesigning
Yelp would be to simplify the homepage, make the searches categorized
upon initial search, organize related searches, give more details about the 5
star rating, and finally make it more visually appealing.
When a user first accesses Yelp, the homepage has a lot going on; with
content clustered on the page. Most of this content consists of reviews of
the day, best places in your area, and recent activity. For someone who
is an active reviewer on the site and wants to interact with the others users
in the community, this design works, but for a consumer only visiting the site
to conduct a search that is quick and specific; it is overwhelming. I would
begin by changing the format of the homepage, making it consist of a single
search bar to specify what you are looking for and in what location. On my
simplified version of the home page I would also make the list of categories
more clear because on the current site they are somewhat hidden. In order
for people to access some of the content that is found on the current home
page, I would organize them on individual pages that can be assessed by
clicking a link.

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Yelp allows individuals to rate the business or product on a 5 star scale,

but I think that this system could be improved if the scale incorporated
specifics pertaining to that business. For example, when a user is reviewing
a restaurant, they should be able to rate the service, atmosphere, food, etc.,
on individual 5 star scales rather than a single overall scale. Yelp would still
be able to generate the average ratings just as they do now, but show
specific breakdowns of the rating. The reason this would be more efficient is
because in order to know why a business or product got a particular rating,
you have to read individual comments, which can take long. This rating
system would also be beneficial for people looking for specifics; such as
atmosphere over food, or food over service. Users would be able to see right
away the overall rating of the food or atmosphere, rather than sifting through
comments.
All of my redesign ideas are shown through the wireframes I have
created to make the site more concise and visually appealing.

Yelps Homepage

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My Changes

Yelps Review Page

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My Changes

References
Brabham, D. C. (2013). Crowdsourcing. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com

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Running Head: YELP ANALYSIS

Jenkins, H., Ford, S., & Green, J. (2013). Spreadable Media : Creating Value
and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York, NY, USA: New York
University Press (NYU Press). Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com
Niemeier, S., Zocchi, A., & Catena, M. (2013). Reshaping Retail : Why
Technology is Transforming the Industry and How to Win in the New
Consumer Driven World. Somerset, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons.
Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com

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