Yell Leads Customers Straight To Your Door - 21 July 1999
Yell, the portal website from Yellow Pages today (21st July 1999) introduced its latest service enhancement.Every business listed in the Yellow Pages which carries a postcode will now have a free map showing their exact location and each advertiser has the opportunity to further develop it by adding directions to their door from anywhere in the country
The standard map, accurate to within ten buildings is free to all businesses featured in the directory. Yellow Pages directory advertisers, with additional displays, will have an enhanced map service featuring details accurate to within one building and they will be fully dynamic enabling the user to move around the area and zoom in and out. In addition customers will be able to consult detailed directions of how to reach the advertised business from any part of the UK mainland.
The new service has been developed following a six figure investment by Yellow Pages, in partnership with Etak The Digital Map Company Ltd, a Unit of the Sony Group.
Eddie Cheng, New Media Services Director, Yell said ‘We are delighted to introduce such a revolutionary service. We know from our work with Etak that the addition of a map not only helps customers to find businesses quickly and easily, but helps encourage speculative visits.’
Nicolas Babin, Managing Director for Etak UK added ‘ The partnership of Etak and Yellow Pages will bring major benefits to every web user. The ability to search for businesses throughout Britain and then generate routing instructions - including detailed maps - is totally unique to this website.’
At present, the service includes journey times and distances as well as street names where appropriate. Visitors to the site will be encouraged to contact Yell by e-mail should they encounter any new road changes or alterations not featured on the map they are viewing - with updates being made at regular intervals. Future developments will see the addition of landmarks on the map to ease navigation and the introduction of maps to cover Northern Ireland.
To access examples of the new map service, type in Yellow Pages in the ‘Company Name’ section of the Yell search on www.yell.co.uk. A number of Yellow Pages offices are listed, some of which feature the new map and map/directions option.
