The product team is proud to announce the integration of Loki, a location based search utility that allows us to find you with one click of a button and display local businesses that are closest to you. Loki is developed by our good friends over at Skyhook Wireless.
Here is an example of how this works on CitySquares.com. Let’s say you are on your laptop having a cup of coffee at True Grounds in Ball Square, Somerville and you wanted to find a flower shop so you could surprise your significant other with a gift. The thing is, you may not know where the closest flower shop is. What you would do is go to CitySquares and, providing you have Loki installed on your browser, you’d click the “Find me with Loki” button on the navigation bar. See screenshot below.
Loki then finds you, and pretty darn close to your precise location. That information is then sent to CitySquares’ search engine and you’ll taken to a business results page based on your Loki location. So it actually finds where you are and shows you what’s nearby! You can then search for “flower shops” or browse to florists with our useful faceted search feature and you will find that Capelos Floral Design is right down the street. Not bad huh? And this is just the beginning of our location based offerings, there’s more to come.
To make this all happen you do need to download and install Loki on your laptop or desktop computer. Once you’ve enabled Loki you may travel all over the Boston area and find the businesses closest to where you are.
In addition to the Loki integration we’ve really spiced up our city and neighborhood homepages with more useful features such as listing local coupons and special deals in each neighborhood. You can also now read the latest reviews for businesses on the homepage or jump to different business categories without having to navigate to the businesses page.
We are working hard to make your experience on CitySquares a fun and easy way to find local businesses and events in your neighborhood. As always feel free to ping me if you have any thoughts or feedback.
-Bob
Categories: Product
Tagged: Coupons, location, loki, skyhook wireless
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
Categories: Product
Tagged: Coupons, Deals, Features, Product, Reviews, Search
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