Sep 19, 2009
Review: Lookaly.com
Lookaly is a new service that has been developed in order to act as a gateway for people based in Belfast and Northern Ireland to share their experiences of goods and services provided by local businesses.
When you first visit Lookaly the first thing that will standout is the design, this has clearly been taken very seriously and a lot of thought placed on making the user experience as smooth as possible through a clean and well structured interface.
The businesses that are available for browsing have been placed into a range of categories which include:
- Automotive
Eating, Drinking and Nightlife
Financial and Legal
Leisure and Sports
Public Services, Education and Careers
Travel and Transportation
Once you have located the business you are interested in you can simply view all the reviews, photos and contact details that are associated with it. If you own a business or have an experience you want to share I would highly recommend adding it to their directory, so far it has helped me several times on choosing where to go for lunch in Belfast.
Lookaly also provides a blog which covers topics such as local events, products and of course businesses.
Another nice feature from Lookaly comes from utilising the social networking platform Twitter, they will often tweet a summary of reviews that have been posted, so it is a good idea to follow @Lookaly if you are a Twitter user.
Overall I think Lookaly is an extremely useful service and I am looking forward to seeing it grow as more businesses are added to the directory.
I was talking with some prospects yesterday and this thing about review sites came up. First point, any business listing is letting themselves be wide open to a review that’s out of their control and therefore most businesses will be reluctant to list.
Secondly, there’s no real trapping for competitors who post naff/slanderous reviews on a business. It happens from time to time on Yelp and Trip Advisor so much so that I know of businesses who have removed their listings once they found out competitors were able to post comments and reviews. You can remove reviews but there’s always that risk that the damage is already done.
I do like the site though and what it stands for. Lee’s done a great job and I respect him for that. Ultimately you can only do one of two things: either list businesses (old hat and there’s plenty of competition) or just post reviews (there’s no revenue).
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