Yelp Rolls Out A New Personalized Home Page & Search Experience
Photo: Yelp
Yelp recently announced the rollout of a new app experience that allows users to tailor the app based on their interests, diet, lifestyle, and things they love to do most.
As a result, for the first time, when two people with different lifestyles open up the app, their home page and search experience will be different as it will be personalized and organized for them.
“For example, a gluten-free pet owner who likes hiking and brunch will see a very different home screen and search experience than a vegetarian parent who loves donuts, farmer’s markets, and breweries,” the company wrote in a blog post.
The experience works by users opening the app and tapping a new heart icon on the home page, which then brings them to the ‘Your Preferences’ page. On this page, users indicate their dietary preferences as well as lifestyle and accessibility options that include the following:
Dietary Preferences: 32 million¹ Americans have food allergies and many more care about what they eat. Yelp is now surfacing information that helps people discover which restaurants have options for those who are gluten-free, halal, keto, kosher, pescatarian, vegan or vegetarian. Personalized highlights within their search results will identify if a restaurant has some or many food options based on their dietary preferences.
Food and Drink: People can choose from more than 30 food and drink categories — from brunch to happy hour, and Chinese to pizza — letting Yelp confidently recommend cuisines they’ll enjoy most.
Interests: The new personalized Yelp experience will suggest more than just restaurants. People can also select their favorite things to do, so Yelp can recommend activities most relevant to them — including surfacing live music bars, farmers markets, date night spots, suggesting kids activities, hikes and more.
Lifestyle: Parents and pet owners can better plan their next outing with personalized shortcuts to filters. We’re also helping people find their next go-to business, whether that’s a new hair salon, massage spot or landscaper.
Accessibility: People who need wheelchair accessibility or gender neutral restrooms will benefit from greater visibility of relevant search filters and personalized highlights within their search results.
Once they save tap 'Add Preferences’ to save their preferences and refresh the app, the home page will surface businesses and things that they most likely care about, now based on what they indicated as preferences. The home page also features new sections that include "Picks for you," "Stuff worth planning," and "Things to do."
Photo: Yelp
The new experience is currently available for millions of iOS users with the exception that it will roll out to all iOS users by the end of fall. As of right now, Android users can only access the new search functionality but are expected to get full access to the new experience later this year.
SOURCE: Yelp Blog
