How to Create a Yelp Clone?

Establishing the idea

Prior to laying the notion behind Yelp, it is eminent to quote these words-

“I got sick and needed to see a doctor. Back then there was very little information on the internet; it was frustrating. We realized the best way to find a doctor or other services was by word of mouth.”

                                                      Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO, Yelp

An Insight!

Yelp, founded by Russel Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman in 2004, is a business directory listing website.

It helps consumers to find local or small businesses such as bars, restaurants, doctors, beauty, electricians, and other types of services. 

Not only this! What it actually serves is the “Word of Mouth!”

In other words, the customers tend to give feedback, share pictures or write reviews and even drop ratings for a business or service.

With this, Yelp has more than 171 million reviews today!

Well, that’s a great deal of it!

Most of us might still think so as to why it is so popular. 

Well then, it’s time for a real-time example. Suppose, you have recently relocated to a new city.

Unaware of any restaurants, grocery stores, doctors, electricians, etc, you have no idea what you should be doing next!

That’s when “Yelp can be of great help!” Just navigate to its website/ application, find the service of your choice, (such as a food point) and you’re good to go.

But will you be choosing just any restaurant you find (or any such service)? Definitely No! 

You would look for restaurants that have good star ratings (5 or 4-star ratings, preferably) and filter restaurants where customers have jotted down their positive experiences. 

I am sure you could relate to this one! That’s why Yelp! as one customer shares his experience with a business/ service and recommends it to other beings. 

Yelp Entities

Moving further, there are three core entities of Yelp that we must know of- 

• The arbitrators or reviewers, 
• Local businesses, and 
• Users, reach out to businesses by reading the reviews. 

Of the three entities given the most exigent are the Arbitrators or Reviewers.

The reason is, they are the ones responsible for those “171 million reviews” and other website visitors access these reviews and ratings and draw closer to a business or service. 

Now that we have ingested the basic idea about Yelp, let’s take a deep dive and explore its nitty-gritty.

One of the major challenges in the E-Commerce cosmos is to connect “Businesses to people or customers.” 

This is where Yelp comes into the picture.

It provides an arena where the customers, after availing of service through Yelp, will drop their valuable reviews, that respective business’ owners will read. 

On that account, before establishing an idea so as to how one can create a Yelp Clone, let’s take a dive and acquaint ourselves with some essential traits of a Yelp Website/ App. 

Traits: Yelp Website/ App

• First thing first, Customer Reviews/ ratings: The customers can share their experiences through photos, render star ratings, and reviews. 
• On the basis of location, it lists local businesses and sets its geographical area on the map. 
• Allocates multiple categories and sub-categories for different business types.
• Facilitates analysis of user reviews, and provides an Elite status to effective reviewers. 
• Meanwhile, the reviewers can filter services on the basis of cost, location, reservations, etc. 
• Yelp exhibits events organized by various businesses on their websites. The visitors go forth and make bookings for an event(s) as well. 
• It allows a distinct login for each business entrepreneur; by virtue of which, they can allege a place on Yelp. 
• One Yelper can have a word with other Yelpers!
• Yelp facilitates the most essential feature, i.e. login through social sites, such as Google or Twitter, Facebook, etc. 
•  It posts ads for businesses as well but listing a business ad is a paid service. 
• Just as significant as good news, you can consume Yelp services even on Android and iOS devices.

Now that we have an insight into its features, let’s progress to see the exigent elements for creating a Yelp-like website/ app. 

Choosing the Native Market

The first thing that must be taken care of is amongst what kind of customers/ people you wish to establish your business; thus target a specific set of areas and customers. 

We must not forget to mention the Hyperlocal Systems (Zomato, Swiggy, for instance), which share the same concept in terms of reviews/ratings; specifically, it is a food delivery site/ app. 

Likewise, we can even address Yelp as “Zomato, which does not accept orders”! 

Apart from this, we have multiple sites similar to Yelp offering different services such as travel services, for instance, Booking.com, Make My Trip, Trip Advisor, etc. 

Similar to Yelp as they entertain reviews/ ratings, different in the aspect as it offers other services, such as travel, flights, booking & reservations, as well. 

The Right Platform

After choosing the target customers, the prime and most important step is to choose the right platform for creating your Yelp Clone. 

There are multiple e-commerce platforms you can choose to develop a Yelp-like website/ app. For instance, Magento 2 (now known as Adobe Commerce). 

• Magento is the most efficient and flexible e-commerce platform known, which supports an extensive range of features. 
• An effective product/catalogue browsing, and an easy-to-go order-placing process.
• Apart from this, its shipping/ payments are extremely feasible.

There are various other e-commerce platforms that you can choose to create a Yelp clone website- Opencart, WooCommerce, Bagisto, Prestashop, Shopify, and the list goes on.

To know more, please refer to the following links-

Marketplace Multi Vendor Module for Magento 2

Multi Vendor Marketplace for WooCommerce

Odoo Multi Vendor Marketplace

Opencart Multi Vendor Marketplace

Selecting the apt Web Hosting

After making the choice of platform, it is even more essential to select the right web hosting that best suits your business. 

As per the business’ niche and requirement, either giant or small scale, one has to choose the appropriate hosting service, i.e.

• Dedicated Hosting:

Specifically for large-scale online businesses because they need a comparatively larger bandwidth and disk space to host the websites. 

As they are expensive in terms of cost, it completely lets you have ownership rights and you are the one who manages everything. 

• Shared Hosting:

Shared Hosting is best for small-scale or newly started websites as it is stored on the servers along with other websites.

All the websites share the same server and resources, and therefore it is cost-friendly. 

You can choose from Google Cloud Hosting, AWS Hosting, etc. so as to host your websites. 

Integrate Some Additional Features to make your Yelp Website enticing

To make the Yelp clone website more fascinating and exclusive, one can even inculcate advanced features, such as-

• A prominent search box,  as the customers will not like it if they’ll have to move here and there looking for a cafe or a salon service. 
• One can also integrate the search suggestions feature so as to ease the search process. 
• Install a UI tool that even guides your customers throughout the website/ app. Visit Webkul Design, to know more about UI/ UX design tools.
• Features like Voice Search even can be a part of your Yelp Website Development. 

Almost all of us are a part of the social networking realm where trolling is quite in. Yelp at the same time is a completely different concept. 

It serves as an arena for customers where they can put forth their most genuine verdicts and share their experiences with other visitors. 

But anyway, how can just a piece of writing contemplate another Yelper’s mindset? 

Okay! let me put forth a real-time example here. 

Recently, one of my hometown friends posted a picture of a newly opened cafe on Instagram. Its cheerful caption spoke about my friend’s experience of the place.

Well, just a caption instilled a positive aura in my mind and I was obstinate to visit that place. 

That’s the “Power of Words!” Yelp is a platform that serves customers and gives them the freedom to express their views and opinions about a business/ service. 

In light of the above, let’s kick around some “must-know” facts about Yelp!

• Does Yelp entertain just Positive Reviews? No, not at all! It has room for both, Positive and Negative Reviews. 
• Its Homepage is the most essential source of traffic!
• Is it all about Restaurant-ing? Misconception! The most dominant category on Yelp is Shopping & Retail acquiring almost 23% of all the categories it processes; Restaurants, just 19%.
• Yelp never recommends you to ‘Ask for Reviews!’ It has software that tracks such reviews. Hence, give your customers the best service and grab those overhauls. 
• Moreover, Yelp encourages high-quality customer service as it immensely affects the rankings and reviews.
• Do you own an independent business? Then you’re definitely Yelp’s choice as it abstains from chain businesses.

It says, “all McD’s around the globe will serve you the same,” and hence it prefers local businesses over chains. 

• As it lists local businesses, it provides its customers exposure to the local stores; thus most of them end up making a purchase from these local stores.
• Yelp believes, a picture speaks a thousand words! and so it instigates the customers to post pictures as well to share their experience with other visitors.  Maximum customers use the Yelp app to post pictures. 
• Yelp’s a female fan and most of its visitors are Females! 

Want those ‘Yelp Stickers’ glued on your storefronts? 

• Give your customers a lifetime of experience, grab those reviews and earn “People Love Us on Yelp” stickers and slap them on your storefronts! 

Also, to know more you can also read an article about how to start a directory listing website. 

That’s all for the How to Create a Yelp Clone website. If you still have any queries please feel free to add a ticket and let us know your views on our Webkul Support System.