Wahanda TechBlog

Another 2 weeks has passed and we have yet another release coded up and live for everyone to play with.

We’ve been focusing a lot on the back-end of the system recently so don’t have a whole lot of public functionality to shout about.

Multi-Venue Products

One of our most visited pages is the main product information page. Something our suppliers have been asking for lately is the ability to see all of their venues which accept a given product. This is especially relevant for someone like Dove who currently have 27 spas spread across the u.k. with a product range that is common to all. It’s certainly more compelling to know that you have options when buying one of these vouchers.

With the new product page you can easily see all of the venues which accept the product, both plotted on a map and as a simple list.

Product - Redeemable Venues

Coming soon we’ll be offering “Chain” pages which enable the showcasing of the brand in a single consolidated place.

Product Map Counters

It’s really only a little thing but as everyone has said how useful the custom map of the u.k. is on the main deals page we thought we’d add a little extra something to make it even better.

Now you can see how many deals are available in each region without having to click through to the listing page!

Wahanda Deals Map - Counters

Anonymous Reviews

Something we wanted from the very beginning of the site was to offer consumers a way of providing reviews without having to give up their identity. This could be for regular customers who have had a bad experience or for someone having a treatment they would rather not advertise to the whole community. Unfortunately this has back-fired a little (pun not intended) and the number of people posting anonymously has been disproportionately high.

As a result we’ve changed the submission process so that only profile of level 2 or above can use the anonymous feature. This should prevent some of the issues we’ve had with bad reviews while still enabling our regular contributors to make use of this option.

Getting yourself to a level 2 is pretty easy.

Check out the ‘More about Points’ page for details.

The last couple of weeks we’ve been really focusing on improving some areas of the site previously untouched since we launched almost a year ago.

Venue Listings

Formerly known as the spa listings pages these have lagged behind some of the newer types of entity on the site.

We now have over 3,000 active venues worldwide and browsing through them wasn’t the quickest or most intuitive process.

In the latest release they’ve been completely revamped with new filters, list controls, mapping functionality and content.

The filters are based on the design we use for products and therapists and should make browsing through the list of wellness venues on the site a little more straightforward.

Venue Listings

Venue Types

When is a Hotel Spa a Day Spa? When is a Fitness Centre a Yoga Studio?

Sometimes they just have to be both!

As of the new release a venue can be categorised as up to 3 different types rather than just the 1 previously.

This means if you run a Hotel Spa but accept non-hotel guests (i.e. as a Day Spa) you can now be found in both the Hotel and Day categories.

Simple.

Contact Details

For some time now we’ve posted an ‘Email the Venue’ link on listing pages. However there were a couple of problems with this functionality.

• Users needed to have an email client configured (doesn’t work with webmail).
• Not everyone wants to give out their email address.
• Emails sometimes get lost.

We’ve now converted this link into a small form. This should solve the problems above and mean we help more customers get in touch with the right venue.

Venue Email Form

Promoting Deals

Until recently we’ve always showcased the deal with the best discount or lowest price on a venue page.

We’ve now added the option to specifically select which deal appears in the all-important summary space.

Community Hub

When we first launched our community page last summer we didn’t have that big a community to showcase.

Fast forward to now and we have a ton of great content coming all the time, from venue reviews to therapist blogs. As a result we’ve restructured the community hub to be a little more useful.

We’ve added links to all the latest blog entries, added more profiles to the “Most Active” section and a bunch of other tweaks.

Enjoy.

As usual we’ve added a bunch of small improvements, fixed some niggling problems and conjured up some exciting new features.

Affiliate Program

Mostly we’ve spent the last couple of weeks working behind the scenes on adding support for our affiliate program. (If you’re interested in becoming an affiliate drop us a line at hello@wahanda.com).

There’ll be more details on this once we’ve finished setting everything up.

Profile Hints

We’ve had questions from a few of our therapists about why their profile is showing at less than 100% complete in MyProfile.

To help make this a little clearer we’ve added a tips list which tells you all the things you need to do to be 100%.

Wahanda Profile Completeness Bar

This should make it easier to see what’s missing. As soon as we get a chance we’ll add some extra info in to give hints on findability.

In addition the completeness bar is also now available for our non-professional users.

Deals Map

Probably the most exciting new feature for those of you looking for our great deals is the new map.

UK Spa Deals Map

The new map allows you to quickly navigate to spa and salon deals in the area you’re interested in.
Check it out here.

We’ll be adding more maps with more features in the next few releases so watch this space!

Suppliers

If you’re a spa, salon or other wellness venue and not listed on the site we’ve introduced a new form that help’s get you listed faster.

If you fill out the supplier signup form you’ll be pushed right to the front of the queue for our hard-working venue setup team.