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Yelp introduces tools for businesses

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

Online review site yelp.com has just introduced tools for businesses to reach out to their customers.  Our original coupon Website, CityVantage, also feature reviews.  While we weren’t looking for advertising or listing dollars from the merchants, we did get a taste of how merchants could easily be turned off from being listed on our site when negative user reviews were posted.  Since Yelp receives advertising dollars directly from the merchants listed on their site, it seems they’re looking to these new features to allow merchants an opportunity to reach out to dissatisfied and satisfied customers alike.  According to TechCrunch, Yelp is introducing the following features for merchants:

  • Message customers who have reviewed their business
  • See how many users have reviewed their business page
  • Update business information
  • Receive new review email alerts

Yelp will need to continue to try to balance the customer need for honest reviews with Yelp’s own need to demonstrate to merchants that Yelp has a real ability to move people from behind their computer monitors and into their businesses.  It will be interesting to see how the local merchant community responds to these new features.

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