As Is Analysis: Yelp

   1. Visibility of system status

• When entering selections the page, there is a slight delay between the selection being made and it displaying on the screen. During this time a loading logo will come up (reflecting the yelp logo)  on the screen and no more choices can be made until the site is done processing your previous choice
• the logo is animated to tell you it is working
• Navigating between other pages moves quickly and does not require a loading icon

   2. Match between system and real world

•  The language is easy to understand and follow and does not hinder navigation of the site
• the language will change if you select a different country on the front page. This was actually kind of confusing because if I travel to a different country I would still want to see everything in English. There is also an option to change the country in the search bar which does not change the language.

   3. User control and freedom

• It is easy enough to search the site to find what you want however, one you're in a business' profile, there is not "return to results" button, so if you click around within the profile you may have to hit back several times in order to get back to your original search
• A nice feature is the sidebar where it lists other places people have looked at after looking at that business' profile page
• can also search for things near the place you're looking (like shopping places near a restaurant you want to go to etc)
• Searches allow you to enter any number of things into the bar itself and filter them on the search page
• these filtering options do not come up until after you enter your original search terms

   4. Consistency and standards

• Some search features don't seem to always work perfectly, for example, filtering results by highest rating did not actually put the results in order according to highest number of stars. It was unclear how they were actually sorted
• Business' profile pages all had the same format which made it easy to quickly find basic information like location, hours, etc.
• unfortunately there was no way to compare places to one another

   5. Error prevention

• I did not encounter any broken links
• All links seemed to pretty much go where I would expect them to go and did not navigate to anything unexpected 
• I liked that the only links that navigated away from yelp were the links leading to a business' website, this made it easier to move throughout the site without worrying about accidentally getting sucked into another website

   6. Recognition rather than recall

• Most information is listed in a nice condensed list once you click on a profile - doesn't require scrolling or going to a different page to see different information

   7. Flexibility and efficiency of use

• I think the front page would be significantly better if the "best of Columbus" section were at the top instead of random recent reviews for various places ("recent activity"). It would also be nice to have the Columbus neighborhoods closer to the top instead of at the bottom of the page in case you don't know exactly what you want but maybe you want to look in a specific location in Columbus. Experienced users may only use the search bar at the stop of the page but others might want to look at pre-made lists to help their searches.

  8. Aesthetic and minimalist design

• The site seems to have a lot going on - especially because it is based on user reviews there is a lot of text, especially on the front page, that make it seem cluttered and difficult to read through and find what you're looking for
• The side bar on the right side may be a lot of the problem - the information sees useful but it would be helpful if it were spaced farther away from the main page or if the side bar it was in were a different color of some sort so everything didn't blend together so much.
• Not very many pictures - the ones that were there were very small
• I'd personally like to see larger pictures related to the business across the top (instead of the tiny ones that are there) and smaller pictures of the people reviewing things (I don't care what these people look like and am not sure why they have a picture at all - if I want to see who they are I will click on their name to go to their profile)

   9. Error identification/recovery

• I did not run into any error messages while navigating the site

   10. Help and documentation

• The main links for more help related information were neatly listed at the bottom of the pages
• the FAQ page was terribly laid out and was just several columns of questions under subcategories - very busy and hard to find what you're looking for
• most other help pages were laid out better and were more user friendly

This website was review based and had a lot of good information which was generally pretty easy to navigate. Overall, my biggest problems included: the layouts of the pages which were too busy and had too many words to look through without enough pictures, the search features that did not always seem to work quite right, and the poor quality of the front page of the site. However, I did like the search features , although I would have liked to see more, and I liked the way they condensed the information to the top of the profile pages for each business.