It was revealed by the Herald yesterday that New Zealand Post seems to have designs on the directories business, after it snaffled Yellow’s ex-director of sales Greg Murphy and three other national and regional sales managers. But, not one to lie down in the face of adversity *ahem, Google, ahem*, Yellow is still trying to up the ante and has announced the launch of its new, locally developed iPad and iPhone apps.
With almost 300,000 online business listings searchable in Yellow online, Yellow says the apps make this information instantly available on Yellow mobile products, all for free. And if you’re an advertiser, Yellow reckons you’ll get an even better return on your investment because it allows more people to search for products and companies online.
The release of the apps is all thanks to you, apparently, the estimated 150,000 iPhone and iPad users, all of whom expect access to information and communication anywhere, any time.
“This simultaneous iPad release and iPhone update is a direct result of our users’ feedback. We’ve seen consumers increasingly use our mobile products and our advertisers query how they can harness the power of the mobile web,” says Yellow’s digital director, Peter Crowe. “Locally developed in NZ [by Smudge Apps], we think we have some true global innovation in our iPad release with device pairing, notes and personalisation. This comes on the back of an optimised search experience and backend upgrades to make the search experience even faster.”
The new apps replace the first Yellow iPhone app, which was launched in August last year. Aside from being digital, embracing GPS technology and making searches even faster, the functions of the new apps echo the old school paper version of Yellow, with users able to search based on a person’s name, business name or business category, with the added benefit of being able to browse through popular searches and save any notes added.
