As you likely know by now, CitySquares recently completed our national expansion.  So, it’s time to get back to building and implementing all the cool, hyperlocal features we’ve long envisioned, and start making the site just a lot of fun to use.

As CitySquares.com grows we need to make sure that the site continues to be easy to navigate and that all the people who use the site can find everything they’re looking for. One of the big additions to the site is a greatly improved navigation system that makes getting from one place to another much easier. We redesigned the header area at the top of the site so it would take up less space which in turn moves important content higher up the page. Now you can just change your location by typing in the city, town or zip code directly into the ‘change location’ text box as shown in the sample below.

Speaking of improvements, we created a cleaner and simpler home page that better articulates to our neighbors and merchant audiences just what CitySquares.com is about, and what you can do. On the new home page we added a really cool ‘What’s New’ scrolling ticker so users can see, in real time, what is happening on the site. The ticker shows the latest reviews, ratings, merchant profile edits and other activities on the site. We also added a more obvious call-to-action so small businesses can quickly jump into updating or upgrading their profile. There is also a list of top cities and a prominent location text field so users may jump to the location of their choice with ease. Visit the new home page here.

We think we’ve done a great job at providing valuable business content to users but we wanted to add more fun and engaging stuff too, so users could share their favorite businesses with friends and family as well. After figuring out what we wanted, and coincidentally meeting the folks over at AgendiZe, we entered into a partnership with them to bring you just the goods we envisioned! Agendize offers a plethora of viral tools for users such as sending a text message, add to Facebook and other bookmarks as well as instant messaging, saving to Outlook and so much more. You can see a sample of it here on this profile. Just click on on the of yellow buttons below the profile information and you will get a window of options. Every single profile on CitySquares.com has these tools so please start sharing your favorite businesses.

Lastly we added national events to the site which is just one of the early steps to truly become what we’ve long envisitione – to be your neighborhood online. The events are brought to you through our partnership with another great company called Eventful. You can find local, and hyperlocal, events all across the country on all the city, town, and neighborhood pages on CitySquares.com. Go here to see hyperlocal events in Wrigleyville Chicago!

Well, that’s quite a bit since our national roll out! And that’s not it either. Very soon we’ll be rolling out even more – including hyperlocal news, community information, classifieds, and some really fun tools to allow users to find everything they need about their location on CitySquares but more specifically, in their real world, their community.

Stay tuned for more updates and improvements to the site! We’re on a mission to provide the most hyperlocal content on the web – from business info, to real community info, events, news, classifieds, you name it. We aim to be Your Neighborhood, Online! Now the fun really starts.

If you have any questions or feedback please feel free to leave some comments here! We’re always happy to chat and hear your thoughts.

Bob Leland is Co-Founder and VP Product at CitySquares. Email this author | See all posts by Bob Leland

Tags | agendize, classifieds, eventful, Events, expansion, facebook, Features, home page, hyperlocal, navigation, news, partners, roll out, sms, vision