Towards the end of last year, Tripadvisor launched a Facebook application called Local Picks.
As I write this, on Tripadvisor there are 252,835 restaurants worldwide and 823,248 reviews already written.
Wow. That's a lot of restaurants and a lot of reviews.
So... is it any good?
Well, according to Facebook, there are 25,297 daily active users. I noticed however that this is down from the 100,000+ daily users that they were gaining a few weeks ago. I guess that's partly down to the holiday season. Also, it could have had a wave of adoption and is now slowing to a natural plateau of stickiness. Personally I can see myself using it once in a while, but not every day. I mean, I eat out a fair amount, probably once a week, but even that wouldn't warrant a daily visit. Maybe once or twice a month.
Anyway, I thought I'd add it to my Facebook account and try it out.
- Is it easy to start using?
- Is it easy to add a review?
- What about restaurants that are not already listed?
- How significant is the social angle?
- How useful is it for choosing a restaurant?
- Can I book online?
Is it easy to start using?
Overall, it's pretty intuitive. The design is simple and easy to use. Nothing too flashy or complex. Nice. The only think that threw me is that although it recognised my hometown to be London (from my Facebook profile), it still set the default map view to be Boston, USA. Once I'd saved my settings and re-started the app from the menu, it got it right.
So - I get a map of London and a list of top rated restaurants listed below it. I couldn't really see much on the map. There were apparently 1690 restaurants in London, although only the top 20 show on the map. Also, the map markers were a discreet grey (not the usual red I expect on a Google mash-up). I figured out after a while that you need to zoom in to see the detail. I mean, if you had 1690 map markers, there would be no map left!
I zoomed to my local area and saw 4 restaurants. I know for a fact that there are about 20 restaurants in our area. 20% coverage is OK, but it still has a way to go.
Is it easy to add a review?
Yes - very easy. All you need to do is to rate the restaurant on a scale of 1 to 5 stars by clicking the star. You can also choose if this is a "Favorite" (Shame - why can't they use "Favourite" for us Limeys?), and whether this is a place you "Want to go". You can also add free text.
As with all questionnaires, the more detailed the questions, the lower response rate, but the better quality of data. Conversely, the easier the questionnaire, the less meaningful the data. In this case, because you can just rate a restaurant and not leave a comment or state the reason why, it's difficult to know why a restaurant does so well or does not do well.
I should think that a rating for a business lunch would be very different to a rating for a night out with friends, a family lunch, a romantic date or a pre-theatre meal. Speed of service, childcare facilities, wine lists, atmosphere, food quality and choice - these all matter to greater and lesser extents depending on the occasion.
In terms of adding a review - yes - it's very easy. Too easy maybe?
What about restaurants that are not already listed?
I wanted to add a review to a restaurant that I enjoy visiting regularly, but found that it was not listed.
I could enter the details of the restaurant, starting with the name and the address. In my example the address was not recognised from the postcode, so I had to manually pinpoint the location on the map. There were a couple of other screens to go through after the address screen.
I was all set add my review. Too bad then that I now have to wait 24 to 48 hours before restaurant is added to the listings.
How significant is the social angle?
Right or wrong, I trust my friends more than I trust the rest of the unknown folks in the world. So - if I can get reviews from my friends for restaurants, because I know them, what they like and who they are, I can "trust" their reviews more than an anonymous user. Good idea then.
To be honest I'm not a heavy Facebook user. I don't have that many "friends" registered and only one of those has the application on their account. However, the idea seems to make sense. Every time I am shown a restaurant review, it shows me the reviews from "everyone" and from "friends".
My reviews are added to a page called "My Picks". My friends "picks" are listed on a separate page.
For the social angle to really work, all my friends that I regularly eat out with would need to add this app to their profile and we'd all need to rate restaurants as we visit them.
I really doubt that many Facebook users actually use it in this collaborative way.
Still, it makes sense that you start off using the app by yourself, get reviews from the wider world and then as your friends start using it, get their opinions too.
How useful is it for choosing a restaurant?
Say I just use the app to help me find restaurants. How useful is it?
On all of the three primary filters (Geographic, cuisine and price, see below), you then get to see restaurants listed by highest rated (either by friends or by everyone). You can also choose by most ratings, most favorites or most want to gos.
Geographic. Well, I can zoom on the map very easily. If I want to find a restaurant near a certain place, it's great. Many restaurant search tools still could do better in this area, so top marks here.
Cuisine type. Yup, good filter here if I am after a certain cuisine type.
Price range. Shame this is in dollars for some of the restaurants in London. Because of that I'm not sure how much I trust it to be honest.
One more thing I'd really like is to be able to filter on are some of the restaurant attributes such as business, child friendly, outdoor seating, romantic etc. These are all features offered when you list a restaurant, so it would be good to be able to search by these too.
Can I book online?
Alas, no. It seems that the good old telephone still rules for most these restaurants.
Some have website links though, which is a good start.
Overall impressions
Overall, this application seems to deliver on volume and spread. Almost all major cities have a decent spread of restaurants listed. Where it lacks (I feel) as a truly useful decision making tool, is the level of detail available against each restaurant.
So, to improve?
1. Make it so you could easily rate the restaurant on a number of additional factors such as:
- menu
- service
- atmosphere
- comfort
- wine list
- value for money
2. Add further clarification on suitability for categories such as
- families
- business lunches
- romantic setting
- party atmosphere
3. Enable searches and filtering on the following dimensions
- Geographic (done)
- Price range (done)
- Cuisine type (done)
- Occasion categories (see point 2 above)
- Ratings (done)
- Sub ratings (see point 1 above)
- Friends ratings (done)
This would really create a very powerful restaurant recommendation engine.
Finally, add a facility to link to a restaurant's website or some other way of enabling a booking. Tripadvisor would want to figure out how make this lead generation pay for itself with whoever they partnered with to deliver the booking interface.
Even better, add a tool that allows friends to collaborate over the decision making for the restaurant, and once booked sends all of them the confirmation details.
There you'd have it. A truly one stop socially enabled decision making and booking system.
Good effort from Tripadvisor.
Once again, another step towards distributed, user centred content and a step away from destination sites.
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