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A Year In Review: A Year of Building, Growing, and Bringing Local Communities Together with Loca

2025 was the year Loca got its true name and continued its mission.

It was a year of expansion, and we helped award $134,000 to local customers, which is an average of 8 new or returning customers per month for all 550 local businesses on Loca. A year where our team worked block by block, update by update, to bring local discovery to life in a way that feels instant, rewarding, and genuinely community-driven.

Here’s the story of how Loca evolved this year.

For Creators It was Exciting and Fun!

It Started With a Simple Goal: Make Local Life Feel Effortless

At the beginning of 2025, we set out to answer one big question: How do we make exploring your city as easy as opening your phone?

So we rebuilt the foundation. The entire app got a fresh, modern design. Our loyalty system was rethought from the ground up - with instant rewards, no points, no hoops, no hassle. It was the beginning of a smarter, cleaner, more intuitive Loca.

Loca Expanded Into New Cities

What started in Austin began stretching outward. By spring, Loca officially reached:

• Houston
• Dallas
• San Antonio
• Eugene
• Portland

Each city brought new faces, new businesses, new stories - and a whole new wave of creators and explorers who wanted to share their experiences. Loca was no longer just an Austin app. It became a multi-city community.

Discovery Got Smarter - Much Smarter

As more cities joined, discovery needed to evolve. We launched a completely new logic with multi-layer relevance:

• Search by title, tags, keywords, or intent
• Clean filters
• Better visibility of rewards
• New design and layout improvements

Suddenly, finding “what’s happening today” felt natural. So we made events and offers more visible, they surfaced exactly when users needed them.

Rewards Became Instant and Fun

2025 was the year we leaned hard into one of Loca’s core beliefs: If you support local, you should get rewarded instantly. So we shipped:

• Flat loyalty rewards
• Earn-on-visit bonuses
• A reimagined earn page
• Easy cash withdrawals

We made rewards easy to understand, fast to redeem, and satisfying to earn.

Loca Became More Playful: Quests & Gamification

Exploring your city became a little more fun. We introduced Local Quests - small tasks like visiting a business or uploading a video and earning extra cash rewards along with fun badges. They encouraged users to get off the couch and discover what’s around them.

With these new gamified experiences, hundreds of users began turning their weekends into Loca adventures.

For Businesses 2025 Was a Turning Point

If there’s one thing we focused on this year, it was this: making small businesses feel seen, supported, and genuinely cared for. 2025 became the year we rebuilt Loca’s business tools from the inside out — not because it was on a roadmap, but because local businesses told us what they needed. And we listened.

Seeing Success Became Easier With Advanced Analytics

For years, small businesses struggled to answer a simple question: “Is this actually working?” So we built the tools that finally answer it clearly. With 2025’s analytics upgrade, businesses can now track:

• who views their campaign
• who adds events to their calendar
• customer patterns
• revenue impact
• ROI on every campaign

Campaigns stopped being guesswork. They started being intentional - and measurable.

More Visibility. More Precision. More Control.

We strengthened every part of the business experience: city filtering gave business owners clarity in multi-city markets. Smarter referral logic made business referrals cleaner and more effective.

Plus, we introduced new user segmentation in the Business Portal to help owners understand more about their customers.

Businesses can now see:

• who visits most
• who engages with rewards
• who responds to events

With clearer insights, campaigns became more targeted, more effective, and easier to optimize. Segmentation turned guesswork into confident decision-making.

Loyalty Rewards: Where Every Visit Matters

In 2025, we set out to rethink loyalty for small businesses. Not as points, not as punch cards, not as something customers forget in their wallets - but as something that feels instant, simple, and genuinely rewarding.

So we built a loyalty system where every visit counts. For businesses, it became a powerful way to turn first-time visitors into familiar faces. And for us, it became a reminder of why Loca exists: to make supporting local feel effortless, appreciated, and worth coming back for.

Activities: Bringing People to Your Door

Events became one of the strongest drivers for small businesses in 2025. A happy hour, a live music night, a weekend promo - these moments don’t just create foot traffic; they create connection.

Loca worked on the smooth UI to make it appear on the app super intuitive. Plus, easy to add and easy to edit on the business side.

Public Business Profiles Became Digital Storefronts

This was one of our proudest launches. For the first time, businesses received their own public, SEO-friendly Loca profile - a real online presence, built automatically. A page where customers can:

• discover offers
• see events
• explore photos
• read details
• find rewards

It’s simple, beautiful, and incredibly effective. A digital storefront powered entirely by Loca.

Don’t Forget about Business Trial Period

Every small business deserves a fair chance to test tools before committing. So we introduced the Business Trial Period - a small feature with a huge impact. It quietly opened the door for dozens of new partners. It helped hesitant owners feel confident. It allowed them to experience the value firsthand. And it’s already shaping how we think about 2026 and beyond.

Don’t hesitate, use your trial credit and check yourself at business.loca.us.

What 2025 Means for Loca

It wasn’t just a year of updates.

It was a year of momentum.

A year of creators sharing their favorite coffee shops.

A year of businesses earning their first repeat customer.

A year of events discovered, rewards earned, and cities explored.

It was a year where Loca grew up - technically, creatively, and as a community.

And the best part? We’re only just getting started. We have a lot of plans for 2026! We are grateful to everyone for being the part of our Loca community. Let’s keep exploring local and earning cash rewards together!

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