Over seven million company profiles have gone live at Groupon.com as the daily deal site looks to give its customers a more in-depth view of the businesses they redeem offers from.
Yelp-inspired rundowns of selected companies are now live via a new platform called Pages. The feature provides basic information on merchants including their address and contact details as well as user reviews and a list of the offers they currently advertise.
Pages recently went on trial to local businesses in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Seattle and is now set to roll out to companies across the United States.
Under one roof
A launch for detailed company information at Groupon.com signals an obvious intention to provide for a growing US customer base, but there is also a sense of fear about the actions of users that migrate from the site to find out more about a company.
A quick search for a company on Google could even return offers and discounts from sites other than Groupon, forcing the user to consider which can offer the best deal.
Eric Lefkofsky, Groupon CEO, adds that his company definitely has the information and resources required to help local businesses get noticed online.
“We’re giving these merchants their own space on Groupon and new tools to highlight their business and bring new customers through their doors. No one knows more about local commerce than Groupon, and we’re putting this knowledge to work for merchants and our customers,” he continued.
While the only entries at Groupon’s Pages section have been created by the company, retailers have the ability to customise their profiles to include additional information. There are also plans to add a premium version of the platform for the instant promotion of deals and access to marketing analytics, while a mobile version is expected to land month.
For now, though, companies are being urged to contact Groupon in order to ‘claim their page’ and see how they can better inform their prospective customers.