How to Create an App Like Yelp?

Yelp app has been developed by the US-based Yelp Inc. company. What does Yelp do? Let's find out it. It allows you to find quickly on the map all establishments you need. And it doesnt matter what you are looking for - whether for the most luxurious city restaurant or for the gas station. Furthermore, you can read reviews and see the rating of every pizzeria, hotel, shop and any other place to choose the best one.

Upon the first start, the app detects your location and displays a list of all interesting establishments nearby. Hairdressing salons, shops, markets, cafes - the list is rather long. Not to confuse yourself, you should apply a filter and decide on the category useful for you. Then you can choose priority.

• Wanna find something as near as possible? -Sort places by distance.
• Something cheaper or more expensive vice versa? - Sort them by price. 
• Looking for the most popular hotel? - Sort them by rating. 

It is as simple as it can be!

When you made your choice, check the more detailed information. Correct address, phone number, working hours - the Yelp business app can provide you with this information. The route to your destination point will be laid on the map. So you can look through visitors reviews and photos. And after visiting the hotel, for example, you can register in the app and post your own comments and reviews there.

Yelp is a very popular mobile app and it gains about 145 millions of unique users per month for today. If you want to know how to create a review website like Yelp, you should consider it's business model.

If you want to know how to build a website like Yelp, you have to understand the market condition and what obstacles you may come across. For the promotion of the Yelp-like app you have to consider the following business models:

• Determination of the target audience. It depends on the country where you are planning to launch a startup. But main users of the app similar to Yelp can be local dwellers, travelers, businessmen etc. According to Yelp developer, approximately 70% of users are interested more in the Restaurant/Food category than in others. So maybe the app should be targeted on this sector.
• Determination of the market. Undoubtedly, before starting your own business, you must scrutinize the travel market to understand what competitive apps already exist. 
• ASO strategy. Having developed the mobile app, owners usually add it to app stores whether it be Apple Store or Google Play. But it is necessary to promote it to involve as many potential users as possible. That is why you must pay the rapt attention to App Store Optimization. It is very important.

• Key values. If your app is just one among others, why shall it be interesting for users? So it would be better to integrate something new. For example, your travel app will provide users with delivery services or it will allow them to make reservations.
• Main costs. Involvement of new clients, new technologies, and new content - all of this requires investments. So if you are going to create something new in the app world, you shouldnt forget about serious costs that you may have to bear.

Yelp monetization strategy includes:

• 1. Local advertising. Local business owners pay you for adding their advertisements to your app. What's more, you can provide users with some paid services like ad removal from their profile. Any person interested will be able to upgrade his or her profile for a certain amount of money.
• 2. Affiliations. For example, restaurant owners can promote their restaurants by paying you a fixed fee on a monthly basis. Thus, these restaurants will appear in the top of the list during the search.
• 3. Additional tools. If we draw our attention to Yelp, it has quite pleasing tool dubbed SeatMe. This feature makes it possible for restaurants and cafes to manage their table reservations. Of course, owners of these establishments pay for using this tool.
• 4. Discounts and deals. It is self-explanatory. Users can find impressive discounts and deals for some services that are available only in your app. Therefore, both users and service providers are in the pocket. You gain money per every deal. That is one of the ways how Yelp makes money.

It's not enough to know how to make an app like Yelp if you want to succeed. Monetization is a vital part for any online product which helps it stay afloat. Above, we've listed the ways how to make money on the Yelp-like app of your own. They are based on the monetization strategy of the original Yelp platform. 

A number of features in your future app may vary depending on your demands and costs. But each app has it's minimal features it cannot operate without. Furthermore, the minimum viable product allows you to get the feedback from the first users. If it is really crowd-pleasing, it makes sense to integrate more features.

So in our case, Yelp clone app should have the following main features:

• News feed. What is this? It is the central component of many corporate social media platforms. Chronological list of the previous activity, news, notifications, modifications can be displayed in your app.
• Geolocation-based search. One of the key function of such app. You don't need to point out the city of your residence since geolocation service will do it for you. Saved time - happy clients!

• User profile. All your reviews and photos are storing here, besides, you can browse all the places visited by your friends. Meanwhile, you can add to favorites all places you liked.
• Reviews and ratings. Despite the fact this feature may seem ordinary and common, it is exactly what draws (or discourages) potential clients. So it is also one of the main Yelp features.

But if you want to build a really powerful and multipurpose Yelp clone app, you must add some functions like:

• Social sign-in. Everything is clear here. A user-friendly feature that makes it possible to register via social media and find the required dining place within several seconds.

• Reservation. Very handy function. You can make a table reservation in the certain restaurant directly from your app.
• Pictures and video uploading. That means users can share photos and short videos of certain places to show how they look.
• In-app purchases.Users are searching for the hotel in the foreign city and they want to make the booking. But, for example, they need to pay for the booking. That is where in-app button Pay comes in. It makes it possible for users to pay directly from the app.

• Chat. Users should have an opportunity to chat with a service provider or write tech support if they need to solve any issue. To create a user-friendly chat, it should have delivered and sent status as well as a capability to send video and photo is a must-have one.

Admin panel

Also, don’t forget about admin panel integration that should available in the web version. If you work as an admin, you will use CMS (content management system) to edit, manage services, delete, block, and so on.

The feature list can be extended as much as you need it. Our company will help you equip your future app with interesting and attractive functions. The only thing you shouldnt forget about is common sense. It means that features combination must be topical and fascinating and should include aforementioned main Yelp app components.

In 2018 we created oMap.pl app and it's subsidiary app Menu+. The main goal of these two apps is to find different services in Poland and check ratings, read reviews. In the future, the product will be available for other countries as well.

However, using oMap.pl you can find any services like barber shops, car service, shops, hotels, and so on. Menu+ is focused mostly on food and drink market.

The main challenge for a customer was an idea for oMap.pl app to let services promote themselves using this app. This will be beneficial both for an app and for services.

Besides that, oMap.pl doesn’t require additional commissions for orders, whereas other competitors do it. It makes an app more attractive to users.

If a business owner wants to add his/her type of service to the app, they just need to contact admin and agree on this issue.

Advertisers can buy a premium account and it allows them to create preferences-based offers and be at the top of the list.

• Elasticsearch. A search engine that gives you prompts when you input a specific data;
• Facebook API. Sign-in authorization using Facebook.
• Google Maps API. Users can find everything they need on Google Maps
• Google Directions API. It allows users to plan their routes
• PayPal. Payment system.
• Socket.io. A library for chat integration
• Node.js. A language to create back-end part
• Angular.js. JS framework to create front-end
• AWS. Cloud web services from Amazon were used to store all information efficiently.

Our customer had a large database of services that he wanted to add to the app, and in order not to overload the system our developers wrote a special script that made it possible to add the full list of services at once.

To test the app properly, our QA engineers also created a script for automated testing to understand the capacity of AWS servers.

As a result, oMap.pl app is available for iOS and Android. Also, it is expected that the app will cover other countries in the future.

So, how much does Yelp app cost? We reached the main point of the article - the price you need to pay for the app development. Development costs depend on many factors, but we can define an average market price - $50 per hour - for calculation of this hard-working and inspiring process. Ok, let's go!

Platform

Design

• UI/UX. According to the market price, UI/UX design will take 120-340 hours. App for tourists must be easy-to-use so that clients could orientate themselves quickly during app using.

Additional features development

Taking into consideration that the customer may demand additional features to be integrated into the app, the ultimate price may increase. Don't forget that A-class IT developers play the key role in the future success of your app. So to invest your funds in the development of a unique application, you have to find really skillful specialists. Our company is proud of collaboration with the real fans of their work - web and app developers. Our company - your success! Feel free to get in touch with us anytime.