About HomeStarsThe Yelp Model – Transparency or Dollars
We came across a great article about how Yelp, sells their service. It’s a good read for our customers.
There’s some interesting points about ‘adjusting the reviews’ for their paying customers. Although they do not remove the bad reviews for their clients, they will reorder them to have the good ones at the top.
They are also not completely transparent in their review process:
“Review order is determined by a combination of recency and user voting,” the Web site states. “Yelp has a system which automatically determines which reviews show for a given business . . . We don’t show every review.”
At HomeStars we post all approved reviews – good or bad – even for our paying clients. While we are, of course, trying to help our customers get more business and grow their home improvement ventures, we have to respect that our site is trusted by our readers. Our readers definitely let us know if a bad review disappears. (See Nancy’s earlier post)
The other thing worth notable point in the article was on the pricing:
The company offers a range of advertising options. At the basic level, a business can pay $150 a month to have what the site calls an enhanced profile. It lets a business place a favorite review at the top of its profile, add pictures and announcements, and track the number of people who visit its Yelp profile.
Starting at $300 a month and going up to $1,000 a month, the company will let businesses advertise on the review pages of local competitors. The more a business pays, the more times its advertisement will show up on a local competitor’s profile.
HomeStars is a good deal! At $80/month for a single category in one location, we’re well below our competitors, and, in the home services category, quite likely have more traffic.
Posted by BrianS
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