Foursquare may have started the game, but it seems Yelp is attempting to take home the crown. Now offering Check-In Offers, this allows Yelp business owners to offer incentives to their returning customers with rewards such as: percent off, free or fixed prices.
With thirty percent of traffic coming from the Yelp mobile app, and a fifty percent increase month over month, users are already tapped into Yelp to search for businesses around them. The continued growth that Yelp has captured suggests its ability to influence user behavior. With the growth of a Yelp location-based service, it may overshadow any services that previously offered similar incentives.
Although location-based services are nothing new, the amount of traffic that Yelp receives from its customers definitely threatens other check-in players. The newly renovated Yelp for Business Owners offers new navigation, the ability to manage multiple business listings, and also provides mobile tracking and analytics to view redeemed offers.
With Yelp entering the game, the playing field has some new competition – and in the end, only one can come out on top.
