What is lilaguide.com?
lilaguide.com is the new city-by-city parenting survival guide to shopping, activities, restaurants, baby gear, essentials, and more. This guide is more than a bunch of facts. While it’s helpful to know about the features a product offers, how you know if you even need the product in the first place? How do you know THE places to shop, to take your kids on the weekend, or to find childcare? So much depends on where you live, how you live, what you do, and who you are. That’s why we created lilaguide.com. Think of us as the insider’s guide to not only your neighborhood, but also everything you need or might want for your new family. More than just facts, lilaguide.com goes to the source -- parents like you. We’ve gathered hundreds of thousands of reviews from real moms and dads on the best baby shops, activities, and products! Get the inside scoop on what other parents have to say and don’t forget to share your own opinion.

Is lilaguide.com free?
Yes, you can search for recommendations and write your own reviews on lilaguide.com -- and it’s all FREE. You can even join our communities on TheNestBaby.com and lilaguide.com and meet other parents like you. Some features require that you become a member of TheNestBaby.com and lilaguide.com, but there is no cost to join. It’s simple -- just fill out our membership form, create your username, and you’re ready to join in on our boards, write reviews, and more.

Why use lilaguide.com?
lilaguide.com is the word-of-mouth survival guide for new parents -- written by parents for parents. In our day-to-day lives as parents, we’ve realized that nothing can compete with real word-of-mouth information. So we’ve taken the inside scoop, and made it all available online in a searchable, browsable database. And, even better, you can add your own opinion or recommend products and vendors we may be missing in our guide. We’ve also paired up with TheNest.com to offer communities on TheNestBaby.com and lilaguide.com, where you can meet other parents like you and share information and ideas.

How does lilaguide.com work?
We’ve tried to make lilaguide.com as easy to use as possible. First, decide what you’re looking for.

Do you want to find resources in your neighborhood? If so, select your insider guide, (such as Los Angeles) and you’ll find a list of all the stores, services, activities, and restaurants we cover in your area. You can find baby gear stores, doulas, kid-friendly restaurants, and more!

Are you trying to figure out what you need to gear up for your little one? If so, just browse our full guide to product reviews. Pick a category and you’ll be on your way. For example, want to figure out what stroller you should get? Click on “Strollers & Joggers,” and you can start reading reviews.

And you can always just jump into a keyword search. From any page, you can type in your keyword and city/state/zip (if you want to search locally) and click on the “Go” button. We’ll get you results right away.

After you’ve searched, you can then read our profiles of products and vendors, where you’ll find all of our reviews.

Tell me more about how to do a keyword search on lilaguide.com
On the top of every page, you’ll find our keyword search. You can search only by keyword (this will give you our product reviews) OR you can search locally by entering a keyword and your location.

In the keyword field, enter your search term. This is what you are searching for. For example, you can enter “strollers” or “furniture stores.”

In the location field, enter your search location. This is the location you want to search. For example, you can enter any of the following:
• City, State, (such as, “Los Angeles, CA”)
• Zip code, (such as, “90066”)
• City, State, Zip, (such as, “Los Angeles, CA 90066”)

I have my search results, now what?
After you’ve done a search, you can do a couple of things. You can browse through our results by clicking on the page numbers or “previous” and ”next” links at the bottom of the page. You can also refine your search. We offer search options found on the left every search page. These options will vary based on the type of search you’ve done. Some of the refinement options include brand, neighborhood, and listing types. Once you’ve picked a refinement option, you can always go back to all of your results.

What if I want to change my search location?
If you’ve picked an insider’s local guide and you’d prefer to browse a different guide, you have a couple of options to change your area. The easiest way is to select a new search area from the drop-down of your left toolbar. Or, you can either go back to the homepage by clicking on the lilaguide.com logo OR clicking on “Start a New Search” in the left toolbar. And, you can always use the keyword search at the top of every page.

What if I want to see a different category?
It depends. If you’re in a local insider guide, you can jump to a new category by using the category drop-down in the left toolbar. Or you can click on the city name in your breadcrumb. What’s a breadcrumb? At the top of the page, you’ll see text that tells you exactly where you are in your search (such as, “Searching for: San Francisco Services > Parenting Groups”).
If you’re browsing products, you can use the category links in the left toolbar to change categories at any time.

Does lilaguide.com only cover select cities?
lilaguide.com provides insider guides to shopping, activities, and more in the following 26 areas.

• Atlanta • Baltimore • Washington DC Metro • Boston • Chicago • Cleveland • Dallas-Ft Worth • Houston • Denver

• Detroit • Los Angeles • Orange County • San Diego • Miami & South Florida • Tampa Bay • New York City • Westchester • Long Island

• Philadelphia • Pittsburgh • Phoenix • Portland • Seattle • Saint Louis • San Francisco Bay Area • Twin Cities

But, keep in mind that our whole site is driven by real reviews from parents like you, so our list will continue to grow with every review and recommendation we receive. In other words, we are going to have listings in markets beyond the ones listed above.

How do I write a review?
It’s simple. Just find the product or vendor you’d like to review by searching or browsing until you find the listing and then clicking to view the vendor or product profile page. You’ll see an orange “Write a Review” button next to the vendor address or product description. Then, just fill out the review form and click “Submit.” You can view any of your reviews at any time just by clicking on the “My Reviews” link at the top of any page. You can then view, edit, or delete any review you’ve written.

What should I review on lilaguide.com?
lilaguide.com covers the two most critical areas for new parents: local resources (family-friendly local stores, services, and activities) AND product reviews for baby gear, essentials, and toys. We cover everything from kid-friendly restaurants, parenting classes, and baby gear stores to parent-rated car seats, strollers, and bottles. What makes our service so special is that it is written for parents by parents -- so don’t forget to add your own opinions!

Who can see my information and my reviews?
Any visitor to lilaguide.com can browse all of our reviews and recommendations. Visitors will see the reviewer’s username (this is the community name you create when you sign up). Only lilaguide.com members can write reviews, comment on your (or anybody else’s) reviews. Any visitor or member can also flag a comment or review as inappropriate for us to review. We also allow members to submit private reviews, which are for our editorial team’s eyes only. We are very sensitive to the care and security we provide to our community.

How do I recommend a new product or vendor I don’t see on lilaguide.com?
It’s easy, you can submit a recommendation for us by clicking on the “Recommend My Favorites” link on the top of the page. You can then fill out a form to recommend a new product or vendor and we’ll review it and put it up on our site as soon as we can.

What are lila picks?
Think of lila picks as “the best of the best”, as voted by moms. lila pick status is based on two variables: the number of reviews submitted by parents and the overall rating of those reviews. At the end of the day, those businesses or products with the most reviews and highest ratings are listed as lila picks on our site.

How do I become a member?
It’s easy! Just click on the “Join” link on the top of the page. You can then fill out our membership form and create your community profile. It’s quick and FREE. Then you’ll be all set to start writing reviews and comments, and to join the communities of TheNestBaby.com and lilaguide.com.

How do I verify my lilaguide.com account?
After you’ve created your membership and community profile, we’ll send you an email to verify your account. Open the email and you’ll find a link back to our site. Just click on the link to be directed to lilaguide.com. At this point, you’ll be ready to go. If you have any problems, send us an email at customerservice@lilaguide.com.

Does this mean I have to wait to write my review?
Yes, unfortunately, we do require that you verify your account before you submit any reviews or comments or use any of the community features on TheNestBaby.com or lilaguide.com.

How do I edit my profile?
You can update your profile at any point by logging into your account and clicking on the “My Profile” link on the top of the page. You can then update your info and email preferences.

How do I change my email address?
Your email address is part of your profile. Just log in and edit your profile to update your email address. Remember that every time you update your email address, you’ll need to re-verify your account.

Who can see my name?
We’ll only display community profile usernames when you write reviews, comments, and/or participate in our community features. We will not show your name unless you’ve made it part of your username.

The only time we’ll show your first and last name is if you decide to email a lilaguide.com page to a friend.

How do I cancel my lilaguide.com membership?
We hope that you won’t want to cancel your membership. You can always keep your membership and choose not to write a review, comment, or use our community features. And, you can always browse our great local insider guides and product reviews. If you do decide to cancel your lilaguide.com membership, just send an email to customerservice@lilaguide.com with the word "Cancel My Membership" in the subject line. We require that you send an email from your membership email so that we’re sure it’s from you. Our customer service department will then handle your request and you’ll receive an email confirming that we’ve canceled your membership from someone on our team.

We’d also love it if you’d let us know in your cancellation request why you’re leaving us. We’re all about feedback from our users, so we’re always looking for information that will help us continue to improve our site.

What do you do with my personal information?
We are very serious about our privacy policies at lilaguide.com. We will never sell, rent, share, trade, or give away any of your personal information, unless you’ve asked us to or we are required by law. We ask you when you become a member whether you want to receive personalized newsletters and special offers from us. We will only send that information to you if you’ve requested it, and you can change your email preferences at any time by updating your profile. Please refer to our complete Privacy Policy for more information.

If you find that any lilaguide.com members have violated our privacy policy by sending commercial emails to other members, we will investigate. Please notify us if you receive such emails or any other message that is abusive. Please forward emails to legal@lilaguide.com.

CONTACT US
Suggestions & Feedback
Is there something missing that you desperately need? Your feedback (good or bad) is VERY important to us, so please email your opinions to feedback@lilaguide.com.