Blog

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

You Spoke, We Listened...and It’s Working!

As you know, we recently updated the MerchantCircle.com website experience.  It’s only been a few weeks, but we’re happy to report that consumer engagement with the site (especially merchant listing pages) is at its all-time highest level!  

This means that more consumers are finding more businesses on MerchantCircle than ever before.  Customers are spending more time on Merchant business listing pages, and they are reading and writing reviews about Merchants they love.  This has been our goal from the very beginning - connecting local Merchants directly with Neighbors who need their products and services.

The recent improvements are the direct result of Merchant feedback.  We asked what you thought, and you told us what you liked and what you wanted to see done differently.  We took what you said to heart and focused on the features and capabilities you valued the most.  

  • You asked for improved search across the site - you got it!  
  • Merchants didn’t really care for the anonymous reviews, so they’re gone...replaced with reviews from registered MerchantCircle Neighbors.  
  • The pages are cleaner, less cluttered and it’s much easier to find what you’re looking for.  



We will continue to make improvements that make the overall MerchantCircle experience better, faster and more relevant.

In fact, on the development side, our MerchantCircle Product Development Team, the magicians behind it all, have been working their magic indeed. The team has been using a version of Agile Product Management (it's a tech thing) that allows us to push updates to the site much more often. This means that we can resolve issues faster, add features quicker and easier, and continue to improve the Merchant and Neighbor experiences as fast as we can.

Over the next several months, you can expect to see more features and new capabilities for both Merchants and Neighbors.  Here’s a short list of the stuff we’re focused on delivering in the next month or so.
  • More social media features and functionality
  • A new mobile app - an extension to the 4.5-star rated Merchant app
  • Prominent focus on Reviews & Compliments
  • Optimized search functionality making it smarter and easier to use
  • Better "request a quote" functionality to reduce the time from search to transaction
If you have suggestions, questions or any other input - please join us on the MerchantCircle Forums

Sincerely, 
The MerchantCircle Team