AT&T Interactive has launched redesigned and much more visual YP.com/Yellowpages.com. It’s organized around the concept of “eat, play, live” (not to be confused with novel/movie Eat, Pray, Love). And it seeks to move the site and brand from a more utilitarian directory product to a lifestyle guide that also happens to feature contractors and plumbers.
The company says it will now take fewer clicks to get to the delicious Tootsie Roll content center. There’s also going to be a new marketing/branding campaign for the site and the “eat, play, live” concept.
The need to evolve and differentiate IYPs from the myriad sources of local data and information is more pressing than ever because of the rapid proliferation of new LBS services and content providers (including Facebook now). But figuring out what content the product should contain and how it should function across platforms is quite challenging.
Should it focus on its core strengths? Should there be a single YP site/brand that offers broad utility or should publishers develop a range of sites with different demographic groups and use cases in mind? Should they do all of the above?
What do you think of the new YP.com and its more visual style? Like it? Think it will help position the site for more frequency and engagement?
Interestingly the press materials I received sought to remind people that the site “matters” and should remain a part of the local/LBS discussion: “YP.com currently hosts 24M+ monthly unique views – more than Yelp or CitySearch.”
August 19th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
The homepage looks nice but I wonder how much that matters? Yelp’s homepage comes more from the Craigslist school of design and it seems to work just fine. It’s the activity that makes the site inviting v. magazine-ish graphics. And since most people will enter the site from search engines via a side door they’ll probably never see the homepage. So it will be interesting to see how/if YP.com starts to work it’s new positioning into the results pages and it’s profile pages. My guess is they are going to be reluctant to do much more than play with the header as they don’t want to get in the way of advertiser clicks/conversions. As always eager to be proved wrong.
August 19th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
Grammar update: It’s “its” not “it’s” and “proven” not “proved”. Hope my mother doesn’t see this.
August 19th, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Andrew, I think based on both of our recent posts, you also might have meant “most people entered” rather than “most people will enter” from search engines…?
August 19th, 2010 at 11:07 pm
Now now David. Be nice.
August 20th, 2010 at 4:41 am
Here is a thought, what if traffic starts coming from places other than Google search results, Wouldn’t this IYP formate play nice on an ipad? or some other location aware device that didn’t rely on search to force the user to make the first declaration? Wouldn’t the glossy magazine feel play well in social and alternate discovery devices. While I am thinking of futures could someone figure out how to make sure I don’t make grammer and typo errors via my iphone.
August 20th, 2010 at 4:45 am
Gib. The homepage and related “visual” pages look great on the iPad but that ends when you get into the profile pages, which look fine but don’t have the style of the homepage — which looks like Flipboard sort of.
August 20th, 2010 at 4:46 am
Andrew – good point about the entry door. I was poking around in ComScore and I was surprised (at least according to their data) that the % of traffic from SERPs to yellowpages.com is actually smaller than I would have thought. Under 20% for Google and the big 3 combined are under 50%. That said still a big chuck of users by-passing the home page.
Side observation – playing with yellowpages.com on an iPad, the format plays well. I wonder if there was any design influence (maybe a potential app coming).
August 20th, 2010 at 4:47 am
Here’s what it looks like on the iPad: http://twitpic.com/2gdahc
August 20th, 2010 at 4:48 am
Darby:
iPad must’ve had an influence . . .
August 20th, 2010 at 4:52 am
As you pointed out, very Flipboardish, at least the home page anway
August 20th, 2010 at 4:53 am
It’s sort of disappointing that it doesn’t go farther
August 20th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
I stand revealed as the luddite I am. Agreed re Flipboard. Darby, the front-door metric is impressive. Nothing like a great brand to push SEO to the back seat.
August 20th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Agreed with what Andrew just mentioned…. relying on your brand name vs. having an active SEO initiative for such a large and content-rich site speaks volumes. AT&T’s smartest move in the development of this IYP was being able to secure the name and url. This site’s SERP rankings are less than Superpages but yet it maintains comparable traffic numbers….truly credited to it’s mere name one must think. Any ideas on why SEO has taken a backseat at YP.com?
August 20th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
I doubt SEO has taken a back seat there, but given where Google and Facebook are headed, along with the kajillion other location-focused start-ups, I imagine AT&T decided a while ago that brand and customer experience need the most investment. They already have a number of deals to buy large amounts of traffic, which is somewhat more predictable than SEO. So maybe SEO is riding shotgun at the moment.
August 20th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Darby, this is a great stat:
“Under 20% [referrals from] Google”
Speaks to what Andrew and I have been writing about for the last couple of months. I think this’ll continue. I didn’t mean to rain on the parade for YP.com. Quite the opposite in fact. I think this update in some sense reflects that they’re starting to grapple with the fact that Google referrals are trending to zero. Focusing on partnerships and interfaces is a great idea, especially for some of the newer mobile opportunities like Gib was talking about above.
September 25th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
My first thought when i looked at yp.com was “ipad”.. maybe cos of my own exposure to flipboard, but is easy to see how it could look great on an ipad. Eat, play, live is also a very campaignable concept but would be good to see it go deeper into the website experience than the graphical ‘signposts’ (hate that word).. Also could benefit from connecting content with social and location data (through open APIs) from the open web, to offer different, more-engaging types of content discovery than searching or category browsing.. Also giving the content a sense of time (real-time events, deals etc) will help boost frequency..
September 26th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Sunil:
Yes: all that gets to what content should be included in YP and what content falls “outside.” It’s a bit of a moving line. But this is now the basic question facing these companies: how much expansion can the brand sustain?
September 26th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
I agree.. brands should be brave with this imho. the way content is being consumed is changing for many customers. Brands like yp need to translate their traditional listings business (=good content) into online (and mobile) services delivered with contextual relevance.. i’m pretty sure they’re already doing some of this on mobile platforms but there is a great opportunity to also make the online offering more compelling. I actually the think the propects for yp are quite good despite Google’s online brand strength.