UPDATE: This story was picked up by TechCrunch, The Next Web, Screenwerk, and Mashable, was syndicated in Business Insider, and made it to the homepage of Techmeme.
Yelp has been quietly testing a Daily Deal offering in Sacramento for the past few weeks, according to a Yelp community manager, Olivia Loy, on their discussion thread (screenshot below).
The offer described is $45 worth of salon services for $20, available for a limited time, where consumers pay in advance. Sound familiar? The message board also references a deal at a restaurant named “Taste of Tuscany”.
Why Yelp Could be a Winner
As you know, we’re extremely bullish on the publisher opportunity in the Daily Deal space, and Yelp might just be the best positioned of them all. Here’s why:
Yelp already has authority. Users have been relying on Yelp to decide their local consumption for years. If this local authority translates to a higher conversion rate per deal, Yelp’s users could become more valuable than those of other Daily Deal services.
Yelp already has distribution. At over 33 million monthly visitors, Yelp more than quadruples Groupon’s subscriber base. And compete has Yelp.com’s traffic at more than twice that of Groupon’s. If Yelp focused on driving its visitors to its Daily Deal product, they could very quickly build a huge audience.
Yelp already has a sales force with relationships with thousands of small business advertisers. One of the struggles of the Daily Deal space is scaling operations to multiple cities. Yelp already has a sales force reaching 50+ cities.
Yelp already has a killer mobile app. TechCrunch reports that 27% of Yelp’s searches are performed on their iPhone app. The iPhone app is quickly becoming a must in the Daily Deal space as a way to lower the friction of redeeming the offers.
What Yelp’s Daily Deal Product Should Look Like.
If Yelp just rolls out a Daily Deal clone, the product won’t live up to the promise. Users can’t think of Yelp’s Daily Deals as advertising. Instead, we recommend Yelp launch a product positioned as more of a reward / perk to the their community:
- Only Business With at Least Four Stars. Yelp doesn’t have authority, its community does. So, Yelp needs to highlight deals from businesses that the community likes.
- Exclusive Discounts. The deals should be available to all visitors but Yelp community members and elite yelpers should get a slightly better discount. Not only will these deals feel exclusive to the Yelp community but it will encourage more people to review businesses. Perhaps elite Yelpers could invite their friends to share their better discount? Perhaps people who have checked in to the business get a larger discount (as a way to encourage more check-ins)?
- Email Distribution. Email is key in the space and for Yelp to sell enough deals, they are going to have aggressively push email alerts.
- Manage redemption from the Yelp mobile app. Reduces friction associated with printing the coupon.
Heard anything else about Yelp’s pilot program in the Daily Deal space? Comment below or call us out on Twitter:@yipit. Otherwise, we’ll get back to building Yipit, which finds and filters daily deals based on your tastes. >
i like this proposed implementation, aspiration is good… but now yelp has to stop giving elite status just to young hotties, lol.
Yelp and group purchasing
Yelp and group purchasing
Yelp and group purchasing
Love these ideas – if Yelp for once just added Yelp when copying someone else instead of a pure knockoff – it could be a runaway success.
Thanks Michael. I hope they don't just put up daily deals like ads on their site. Would be a lost opportunity.
Yelp = Fake Review. Most of the reviews are fake. This done to make themselves look “popular” – then they can sell ads.
Also, If you own a restaurant, and pay their $500/month fee to “manager your page”, they give you fake positive reviews so you CONTINUE TO PAY! Kinda like a drug dealer give you a few free hits to hook you.
I actually wonder if one person has more than one Yelp persona….just sitting a a computer witting reviews all day long under different names. They sponsor party (at least it says so on their web site) so they have hired help in lots of cities.
This “reviewer” (link below) has been a member of Yelp since Jan 2008. He has reviewed 983 – yes 983 places. That is an average of one a day for 2.5 years. Look at the lenght of the reviews. There nothing short of New Yorker short stories. WHO DOES THAT – paid employees thats who. Yelp is fooling advertisers and those business owners who pay. Seems like fraud. I mean, how many reviews do you or your friends write a month – a year?!
http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=MurRkRS...
The one below is a beauty. It's called Berkeley Pizza. Opened some time early December 2009 in San Diego. Has 84 reviews. 3 a week. They are DEVIVERY ONLY! Who writes long reviews on a delivery only pizza joint. Paid reviewers thats who.
http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=h4o8e_X...
There are hundreds if not thousands of these examples. Just spend a couple of hours looking at reviews. Look at how many mention the owner by name – I have never met the owner of a place unless I was there on business to meet the owner.
Smart move for Yelp. Looks like this is their ticket to big profits
Very interesting. Don't forget that Yelp is not liked by most merchants (particularly restaurants). And this doesn't appear to be a major company objective unless Jeremy Stoppelman is very, very sly (see interview with BoomTown). Yelp has sat on its ass for years…I don't see them capturing much of this market. http://kara.allthingsd.com/20100723/yelps-stopp...
Finally, there's a new site in SF that has similar quality requirements to the ones you suggested. It's called Feastery (http://www.Feastery.com) and I'm still trying to get a membership (heard it's really promising from two separate foodie friends).
thank you for sharing…why would they launch in Sacramento?
have a great day!
staff at SuperQpon.com
thank you for sharing…why would they launch in Sacramento?nnhave a great day!nnstaff at SuperQpon.com