Communication Dashboard of Yelp - Essay Example

Communication Dashboard Project Ying Cui Section Communication Vehicle Following an August survey carried out by Eater.com, it was revealed that Yelp, through the organization’s website that the company was worth $5 billion and at the study moment it had up to 130 million unique users. Having been founded in 2004, Yelp is an online based customer service which allows users to write reviews regarding the restaurant industry. The organization has found itself in legal problems after its open source website for posting reviews do not auger well with owners and shareholders of the company. However, with the company’s dominance in its business line, the growth of the organization as well as the increased data traffic in its website is owed to social media connectivity which enables users to post reviews based on first-hand information or research. The purpose of the yelp.com is to collect information from users all around the San Francisco area and use it to provide customers with market information regarding the businesses and organizations active in the restaurant industry. The overreliance of the website’s reviews from online social media shows that the company embraces technology and uses as a business tool. While the site is informative in business terms considering business-to-customer relationship, it also aids the restaurant industry to maintain regular and sustainable growth and development. However, since yelp offers information regarding services offered around the San Francisco’s restaurant industry, it faces challenges from competition comprising of consultant firms, experts in market analysis, professionals with high levels of experience in evaluating business performance, as well as internal sources that companies provide shareholders with in terms of annual financial results. Based the base factors, this study aims at analyzing the communication process of the company’s website as the communication vehicle. Yelp is an organization that uses a website to link customers with customers and businesses with customers as the organization’s website is used as the communication vehicle. Under the notable features of the website are financial strategies, business strategies, as well as customer attraction to San Francisco restaurants. Financial Strategy San Francisco’s economy is highly dependent on the number and output of businesses within the region. Based on this case, San Francisco has been applying and implementing strategies that can help trade resources available within the state. On the other hand, the number of visiting customers from other states continued to grow based on the fact that most of transport constraints faced some years ago are no longer in place. Modernity and globalization effects are enabling customers to be more engaged in businesses as well as venturing to new territories for both business purposes and personal pleasures. With the tourism industry closely linked with the hotel and restaurant industries, it is within states’ jurisdictions to attract market for their resources that yelp.com uses the communication vehicle to showcase customers from around other states that San Francisco is endowed with restaurants that meet various customer preferences. Based on the need yelp.com offers to the business fraternity, the site’s homepage shows an interface that resembles a search engine as it offers a text box for rating and stating one’s review under the “Your Reviews’ Awaits” tab. Based on the homepage layout, users are able to navigate through reviews, through the best offers offered within San Francisco with each category accompanied with reviews. Financially, the site’s strategy is targeting business establishments whose ratings either suggest ways to improve service delivery for the sake of increasing revenues or for managements to either cut down on some operations to improve areas they are well rated on. This approach influenced management to employ strategies that not only meet customer demands, but one whose financial returns are sustainable of the business’s goals. Illustration 1: yelp’s homepage Business Strategy Illustration 2: yelp’s registration form One way for businesses around the world to accumulate profits and perform to the expectation of founders or shareholders is through the protection against corporate scandals. The initial design of yelp.com involved an open platform where any user could login into the site and leave an anonymous review against any company within all the categories provided. As illustration 2 above shows, the use of personal information to store visitor identities is a strategy that is employed to cut corporate scandal. For instance, in January 2014, the organization was orders by the Virginia Court of Appeals to reveal the identities of reviewers who left negative opinions regarding Virginia businesses. Based on the case, the organization’s business strategy involves the use of login details of reviews. The “about me” tab is provided as a sign up page for reviewers with no accounts to register one. While this move intends to increase authenticity of reviews in that reference to information is requested in cases involving legal matters. By more authentic reviews, the organization aims at providing reliable information to sustain its clientele while at the same time rectifying study results of year 2014 by Harvard Business School which showed that about 16% of yelp’s reviews were fake (Eater, 2014). Communication Objectives As the organization’s only communication platform in terms of acquiring and disbursing information, yelp.com aims to accomplish the following four communication objectives. These objectives comprise of; a. To offer customers with information regarding the service delivery of San Francisco restaurants. b. To provide a platform for customers to compare, choose, and make informed decisions based on customer ratings of various San Francisco restaurants c. To provide accurate and timely customer-reviews on service delivery, product development, and overall ratings on industry players. d. To influence San Francisco restaurants into adapting best service delivery strategies to rectify customer complaints. Justification of Objectives Objective A The data and information that is provided in yelp.com concerns three major areas within social and business contexts. Firstly, in order for the organization to accomplish the goals of being relevant and focused in its service delivery, the company’s communication objectives aim at collecting data regarding the service delivery by San Francisco restaurants in order to serve customers around the region and those with the ambition to visit. Based on this objective, the communication strategy of the company enables active players with the industry to rate their performances against that of their rivals based on user reviews of their service delivery systems. Third, while the restaurant industry has its reputation dented by fast food joints, the communication objective indicates the need to revamp the service delivery approach and future restaurant (Dixler, 2014). Objective B Within the business environment of Yelp, competition and other factors such as customer preferences affect the operations of restaurant owners hence requiring informative platform that different customers can use to make their informative decisions. While customers differ in the way they interact with various business establishments, the information provided at yelp.com offers them with insight on how different players within the restaurant industry operate, how they meet customer demand, and how players within the industry strategically influence higher sales for themselves. In this case, yelp aims at providing information to adherent patrons so that their decisions to choose specific establishments is based on factual, reliable, and up to date information regarding service delivery, product portfolio, and sustainability forecast of the current covered establishments (Yelp, 2015). Objective C One way that businesses are able to yield more success in generating profits is through resources’ management. Resource management involves all the units that are employed or deployed to ensure the completion of a course or a task is not only successful but also sustainable within the target industry. To meet this need, yelp.com offers customers with the information that enables then to access timely and accurately relevant information regarding various companies within the restaurant industry. Additionally, since different companies within the restaurant industry have the resources to ensure quality service delivery, yelp.com aims at ensuring that the provided information is not only useful but also indicates a time-factor that can be used by a variety of clients in real-life to make informed decisions on what business establishments to consider as well as those to avoid (Yelp, 2015). Objective D Although yelp.com is widely used as an information portal for restaurant patrons around San Francisco, it is also an informative platform for the companies that are in the restaurant business. Based on ratings and user opinions, companies are able to lose or gain popularity as well as acquire increased or decreased sales. Based on the influence of yelp.com, businesses within the restaurant industry study the reviews of their potential customers providing information on the service delivery and products’ range. In this case, the communication objective is justified in that businesses within the industry are able to base some of their service improvement strategies on the customer reviews. Additionally, customer reviews and comments regarding service quality is also an information tool for use by new entrants who seek to establish restaurants with the San Francisco area (Yelp, 2015). Section 2: Organizational Environment According to Exact Target (2013), as of 2013, the City of San Francisco was monitored and controlled through the use of social media. This means that the authorities, which do not make part of the business entities, were using social media in their departments to ensure that the city was running in accordance to the state’s policies (Carver, 2013). With as many as 33 Facebook accounts, 39 Twitter accounts, and 16 YouTube accounts at the time of Exact Target’s reporting, this data shows that the use of social media in the business of San Francisco inhabitants as well businesses and authorities is a common social trend (Carver, 2013). Based on effects of globalization, San Francisco market place is made up of many sellers and buyers in various instances of for-profit businesses and use social media to get in touch with information, customers, manufacturers, and retailers as well (Yelp, 2015). Considering the use of social media in San Francisco and the high number of tech-literate individuals, the use social media to influence various aspects of life has been a marketing and social norm. For instance, based on e-business, online shops targeting busy customers offer delivery systems that limit the physical engagement of customers in search for products and services as the increased users of a flexible platform, social media, attracts high sustaining sales (Planning Department, 2015). Most of the visitors of yelp.com are US citizens while the least are India followed closely by Canada. U.S. India, and Canada have 92.5%, 1.3% and 17% respectively to show the traffic and users of the communication vehicle at hand. With a high number of potential customers to various industries using social media, it has been the dedication of yelp.com to offer them with a chance to talk about interesting and non-interesting things. According the organization’s homepage, the site is dedicated to those society members with reviews about things they liked and did not like within the San Francisco’s business environment. While most companies around the world offer customers with an opportunity to share their opinions or to air their experiences, most of these companies do not release this information to the public as they wish to protect their business reputation. When considering the use of social media to link customers together against the restaurant industry, yelp offers an independent platform providing customers with information about the industry players. Based on the protection of whistle blowers, the relevance of the organization within the industry is to ensure that customers can access information that businesses cover up as a means of maintaining sustainable value. Additionally, the high competition and the market structure of San Francisco’s restaurant industry leaves room for service quality issues which yelp offers a platform for customers to monitor businesses and their service delivery systems (Dixler, 2014). Profile Target Audiences With reference to the means with which customers and reviewers access the information or leave reviews on yelp.com is facilitated by the number of communication channels at the disposal of the business and the customers. As from the Alexas analysis, the above window shows the summary of global rank of the website. Based on the output, it is seen that yelp.com is influential on the global scale with a global rank of 60 worldwide while at the same time ranking 8th within the US. As of the data summarized in the table above, it is observed that the website ranked better in 2014 while in 2015 the sites’ rankings went down showing that the competition was either catching up or the use of the service was no longer useful for customers. Based on the target market for the organization, it is observed that the high number of social media users is associated with the target age group as well as the technical knowhow of using the same. For instance, social media and the high number of tech-savvy individuals in San Francisco make contemporary businesses the target of young adults to middle age individuals (18 years to 40 years). The age cohorts available within this age-group are characterized by high level of information access through communication channels available in portable devices. Section 3: Internal and External Benchmarks Among the competitors that yelp.com has include the craiglist.org which as a website dedicated to providing reviews as well as advertising privileges to small business enterprises across US as well as Canada. The performance of yelkp.com against its benchmark is weak in all senses. Firstly, while yelp.com considers craiglist.org as its benchmark, it is seen that yelp.com has a bounce rate of 39.90% showing that significant instances that prospective users of the communication vehicle in question do not surpass its competitive benchmark. In addition, the communication vehicle in question, yelp.com also does not meet observatory benchmarks such as daily page views per visitor as it has a rating of 4.18% against the benchmark of 16.75%. Additionally, the daily time per visit for yelp.com and that of its benchmark competitive entity, craiglist.org, differ significantly as the former has a score of 4:11 while the latter has a score of 13:49 on daily time on site. On the other hand, the search visits show that yelp.com has a higher number of search visits than craigslist.org with 27.10% against 7.30%. Past Performance Yelp has existed successfully within the social medial and has provided various information users with an opportunity to utilize web resources in the conduction of business. However, based on the regional focus of the website as well as the scope covered within, the site is highly local and provides information to only potential customers to the included business establishments. However, studies confirm the historical usefulness or relevance of a resource, data on the historical performance of the website is missing from the internal sources as well as from the public domain. While the organization itself is valued over $5 billion and attracting up to 130 million unique users, it lacks historical data to show whether the company’s traffic generation is slowing up page content loading speed or whether the company has been making any improvements to sustain reliable surfing experience to visitors as well as to active reviewers. To the reviewers and customers, a thin line exists between the two since individuals with experience are given the opportunity to rate the businesses they have interacted with. Following the presence of both current and future reviewers as well as customers, each category is fit to represent the other. For instance, a customer writing his/her review can use information by another reviewer to make up his/her mind on where to dine and what service to expect. The lack of historical performance data sets the current study as the primary research that can be improved in future by testing the same variables to establish differences, connections, and trends in the use of social media in Yelp’s communication vehicle. External benchmarks are set and put in place by various technology companies that track website performance through web analytics. Among web analytics companies include Alexas Analytics which tests the keywords from search engine and various other variables. Since the size and focus of webpages determines how many times it can be visited by a set number of users, the same number of users can also determine the stability of the website. Using cross-industry data on website rating in both Average Response Time and Average Availability of the website as potential benchmarks, among the listed companies include Google as the highly ranked website in terms of response time while craiglist.org. is rated 60th (see illustration 4 above). In this case, since craiglist.org has been on business longer than Yelp but both have embraced the use of social media from the second half of the last decade (from 2006). In this case, the external benchmark for yelp.com is craiglist.org based on the resemblance of marketing environment, nature of customers, difference in services offered, and the total amount of traffic the website handles. With reference to the rankings of craiglist.org, it is seen that the past performance of the website for the last one year shows that the popularity of the website has continued to diminish with time. Additionally, while the popularity of the external benchmark has continued to decrease over time, yelp.com on the other hand has had a fluctuating popularity performance as indicated in the screenshot below. Based on the illustration below, it is seen that yelp.com has had a period of decreasing popularity as from October 2014 with a severe negative growth. Global rank of the website indicates that towards May of 2014, the website was almost 100th in ranking. Currently, the website ranking is 146th in the world while in the US it is 34th. This data shows that the website’s popularity as well as its use to customers and users has not been receiving positive reviews. Based on research by Harvard Business School, it was shown that 16% of the reviews in yelp.com were fake and did not have meaningful authenticity to users and neither was the website performing well against competitors. Based on social media signals within the Apple’s site, it is observed that the site incurred up to 1,850,000 of page traffic in terms of social media shares. On the other hand, yelp.com only has 65,500 social media shares showing that the region-oriented focus of the organization has a negative effect on total social media traffic shared. Goal Verses Actual Since sharing information in the virtual space has been regarded as safe and at times unsafe, business around the world would like to see a third dimension to the ratings. Businesses around the world, as depicted in Paine (2013), do not only have to measure their performance, they also have to be aware what they are measuring and whether it is useful to the business. Based on the nature of the current business model, the free source of information from customers and reviewers restrict the financial ambition of the organization as it relies on donations, marketing, and other online services. Since subscribers to yelp.com are not customers of yelp.com, their increase affects the popularity of the organization while a decrease lowers the website’s ratings. Based on these factors, the organization actual and target goals are not feasible under business context as none are currently in place. Section 4: Developing Key Performance Indicators Paine (2011) argues that in order for a business to be successful, it must ensure that it is able to define goals as well as allocate meaning to use of communication platform. For instance, Paine suggests that businesses have to identify their social media efforts and measure the effect they have on prospective customers. The development of key performance indicators relies on various aspects as such as the communication objectives of the organization. From the four, earlier stated communication objectives, corresponding key performance indicators are included in table 1 below. These key performance indicators are leaning more on numerical changes. Thus, with the use of metrics to rate an organization’s communication vehicle, changes in any of the independent variables such as the power of rivals, the increase in technological access, and knowledge on how to use online resources to enhance customer experience and satisfaction; corresponding changes in terms of response rate, number of reviews (in total), and general affirmation are expected outcomes from the users (Dixler, 2014). As Paine (2011) argues, the use of social media is a vital approach which provides web trends for sites where the use has control over. For others such as yelp.com which cannot be analyzed through analytics, Paine (2011) advises users to use information disseminated by the sites. Communication Objectives Output KIPs (measurement tool) Attitudinal KPIs Behavioral KPIs To offer customers with information regarding the service delivery of San Francisco restaurants. Increased web visitors (overall hits per page and individual reviews) Changes in overall traffic (survey) Increased web users’ numbers (hits per page) Increased interest (online search) Site loyalty (Metrics) % of new site visitors (metrics) To provide a platform for customers to compare, choose, and make informed decisions based on customer ratings of various San Francisco restaurants Competitive use of best practice (sustainability and development) Reduced customer complains (+ve reviews) Increased output by lowly rated establishments (reviews mentioning the establishments) Perception of fairness and credibility of reviews (focus group) Number of reviews s (Metrics) % of visitors participating (metrics) % of visitors making restaurant reservations based on reviews (metrics) To provide accurate and timely customer-reviews on service delivery, product development, and overall ratings on industry players. Time management and resource management in general (No. of communication platforms) Reduced decision making period (metrics) Level of resource management (time spend online versus time spent for traditional shopping) Degree of user satisfaction (survey) Change in the number of customers visiting various joints (Metrics) % of social media users (metrics) To influence San Francisco restaurants into adapting best service delivery strategies to rectify customer complaints. Higher bargaining power. (+ve change in reviews) Change in service delivery (survey) More control over products and services offered (changes in individual basis) Degree of change in restaurant service delivery (focus group) Increase in overall reviews (Metrics) Rate of service delivery changes (metrics) References Carver, S. (2013). How the City of San Francisco uses Social Media to Connect with Citizens. Accessed online on June 7, 2015 from http://www.exacttarget.com/blog/how-the-city-of-san-francisco-uses-social-media/ Dixler, H. (2014). Yelp turns 10: from startup to online review dominance. Accessed online on June 7, 2015 from http://www.eater.com/2014/8/5/6177213/yelp-turns-10-from-startup-to-online-review-dominance Paine, K. (2011). Measure what matters: Online tools for understanding customer, social media, engagement, and key relationships. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Planning Department. (2015). San Francisco Food and Beverage industry cluster study. Accessed online on June 7, 2015 from http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=3541 Yelp. (2015). Yelp San Francisco. Accessed online on June 7, 2015 from http://www.yelp.com Read More