We’ve been hard at work on some home page updates for the past week and rolled them out to CitySquares.com last night. Here’s a rundown of the additions:

Down the right side of each city and neighborhood homepages we’ve got two new sections: “Featured Deals” and “Featured Reviews”

• “Featured Deals” highlights deals and coupons currently being offered by businesses. Watch this section to get some great discounts on local businesses in your area.
• “Featured Reviews” highlights recently posted business reviews in your area. Read what others are saying, or post your own review!

In addition to the sidebar changes we’ve reworked the entire business listing section.

• “Browse By Category” allows you to jump directly to a specific category right from the home page.
• “Browse By Popular Tags” lets you search for the most popular tags in your area.
• You’ll also see a featured video from our video library of local businesses. And keep your eyes peeled for even more videos coming to the site shortly.

Even better, every one of these features is location specific. Love the Back Bay? Every Deal, Review, Tag, and Category featured on the Back Bay home page is tailored specifically to that area. Prefer Harvard Square? No problem, with our true hyper-local focus, you’ll get only the best local business information.

We’re not sitting back and relaxing yet though, we’ve got a number of features planned for the coming weeks to improve the user experience and make it even easier to find what you’re looking for. We’ll be adding amenities information for restaurants, so you can know ahead of time what type of payment they accept, if they take reservations, what type of cuisine they offer, and what the ambiance is like.

Also upcoming on the home page is a section we like to call “What’s Hot.” This will give you a quick look at the top rated businesses in a number of popular categories for your location.

Something else in the wings, and a bit of a pilot test, is a new way to contact businesses directly and search for what you need. Enter your phone number and what you’re looking for, businesses matching your search are automatically contacted to match your needs, and you are automatically and anonymously connected when a match is found. Your phone number remains private, you get exactly what you need, and save time calling them all yourself.

Well that’s all we’ve got for this week. As always, feedback and ideas are welcome, leave a comment or send an email. Check back next week for the latest updates, and keep checking the site for new features!

-Michael

Ben Saren is Co-Founder and CEO of CitySquares.com, the premier hyper-local search site for small businesses nationwide. Ben is also a guest writer on Local Search News and a a regular at industry conferences and within the Boston high-tech and entrepreneurial scene. Ben's actively blogs at Your Suspect, where he writes about his experiences and perspectives as an entrepreneur. Email this author | See all posts by Ben Saren

Tags | Coupons, Deals, Features, Product, Reviews, Search