We created the Yelp Small Business Advisory Council four years ago to get insight and guidance from our core community of local business owners. Beginning with only a handful of North American businesses, today the council represents a wide cross section of industries and geographies. This year, the group includes an ice cream maker from Munich, a salon owner from Melbourne, a food truck owner from LA and more. Last month, the council gathered at Yelp HQ for an action-packed, two-day summit and it was exciting to witness their enthusiasm.

During the summit, the council met with Yelp executives and engineers to discuss a wide range of topics from Yelp business owners. The main goal of the event was to kickstart new ideas for Yelp's management team to consider and build on action items from years past. Check out the video recap below from our CEO Jeremy Stoppelman:

In case you're wondering what sort of influence the council has, here are some examples of improvements we've made over the years with their help:

  • Yelp Metrics were launched to help business owners track customer leads

  • are now visible on mobile

  • We developed a free Revenue Estimate tool to calculate the value of leads from Yelp

  • The customer activity feed was created to track when and how Yelp drives customers to businesses

  • More performance based advertising options were rolled out

At the end of this year's summit, the group put their heads together to generate a healthy list of new ideas and action items. Be sure to check out our Blog for Business Owners to stay updated on the new products and features we launch with the help of their feedback.

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