Profile Management
When we first implemented profile management we tried to follow the model whereby the page would look the same regardless of whether you were viewing the private or public version of the page. On the private view you would simply have additional links next to all of the editable content which would take you to the relevant form to change that content.
After 12 months of trying to make this work we’ve changed tack. This mainly came from the positive feedback we’ve had from suppliers using the Venue and Product Management tools but also from some of the reported confusion with the integrated interface.
The new interface is in many ways a more traditional application. The menu on the left gives you access to all of your information, which is editable on the right.
The various sections are as follows:
Dashboard
Currently this only shows the core points information and your completion status. We’re working on adding a lot more rich information here to help you see how your profile is being accessed by customers what more you can do to increase your visibility.
Your Profile
These are the core forms for managing your profile details. Therapists, professionals and consumers share these attributes so this is a common view.
Professional Details
If you’re signed up as a therapist or other professional then you can access the more detailed information about your practice here.
Your Content
Any questions, answers, reviews you’ve posted to the site are shown here. For those of you who are posting blog content to the site we’ll soon be adding the ability to manage this here too.
This is only the first iteration of this so expect a lot of new features to appear over the next few months.
If you’re currently selling your own vouchers via the site you may be interested in our latest option for simplifying the customer experience. If you don’t have the option of sending our physical vouchers but still want to sell deals directly to the public this could also be the option for you.
We’ve taken the eVoucher model that’s been so successful with the MobDeal products and allowed it for all 3rd Party Vouchers. This means that on checkout a customer has the option (if available) of selecting to have their voucher provided electronically. This is especially useful if they’re not looking to buy a gift but simply to access a great deal and use it immediately.
If you’ve already run a MobDeal you should be familiar with our eVoucher:
To take advantage of eVouchers let your account manager know and we’ll get you set up.
What a month! On Monday we launched our take on collective buying – Wahanda MobDeal.
This is an area of eRetail which is really picking up momentum in these cash-strapped times so we were obviously hoping we would get a good response. As usual our supply team have pulled together some amazing offers and combined with the immediacy of the 24-hour availability period it’s so far proved very compelling.
The premise is fairly simple, and in that respect is a take on a fairly old idea: Collective Purchasing Power. We negotiate an amazingly good deal with a supplier which is only available if we can deliver a minimum number of orders. It’s then put front and center on the site for just 24 hours. So everyone knows what the deal is for that today we send the details via email early in the morning (well early for us techies).
Combined with giving the user the ability to easily spread the word (Facebook, Twitter etc.) it creates a buzz that is truly astonishing.
Getting it built
So what have been the challenges with this from a Technical perspective?
In many ways this was quite a straightforward project. The goal was to best combine features we already have on the site, rather than re-invent any wheels. This made the project far more about the detail than a big engineering effort. We chose the christmas iteration to implement some new designs (more on that to follow) which also created a lot of attention to the little things.
Thanks to the use of electronic fulfillment (a printable voucher) we were able to cut down the booking process to a single page. We then had to implement differing handling based on whether we have reached the required minimum and build lots of different email templates for each variation. Chris did a great job adding the dynamic elements that make the product feel so vibrant. Countdown timers, dynamically updating sales counters and the like. We haven’t made the hourglass actually functional yet but we will. 
ZQueue
A pretty crucial part of this process is the ability to only authorise payments up until the point the deal is on. If we don’t hit the minimum then no one pays anything. Up to this point we’ve always authed and completed in a single step so this proved to be quite a big change. Fortunately we were already on the way there with some of core technologies.
We’ve been slowly changing our architecture to make a lot more use of asynchronous message queues. Usually associated with enterprise class systems messaging based systems are a great, simple of way of clearly separating out parts of the architecture, and hence making the development split easier. So the lead developer on the main process was able to simply concern himself with the workflow and not the resulting offline actions like sending emails and processing payments.
Our queuing system was built in-house (it’s really very simple) and is totally persistent. All it consists of are a bunch of stored procedures in SQL Server which deal with doling out items to process or adding items to defined queue. There are some additional maintenance jobs that run to ensure nothing ever gets missed, as well as ensuring the indexes on the queue are usable.
In addition we have some features which break the FIFO rules, allowing prioritization of items and automatic failure mgt. (with re-queuing) if a downstream process is unable to deal with an item successfully. This makes it a great way to see what’s going on at any one time but watching the flow of data across the queue.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy MobDeals. There’s lots more very cool stuff in the pipeline so watch this space!
The last few release have been very much focused on delivering a major new piece of functionality, namely the ability of any supplier working with us to log into the site and update their details, add and edit products and generally manage their site presence.
This is such a big thing in and of itself I’m going to write a separate blog entry introducing this new application. As such this post is just a quick update of some of the smaller things we’ve added over the last few weeks.
Leads Improvements
Leads generation (offer products) has been really growing in popularity over the last couple of months. As we find out more from you (our suppliers and customers) about what works and doesn’t work we’ve been incrementally adding features.
Date / Time Capture
If you have an offer which is very time dependent (e.g. a free session) then you can now specify that you require this info on the product. When we see this option we add a new field to the leads form and make it required.
Multiple Venues for an offer
If you have an offer which is applicable at multiple venues (also good for free sessions) we know automagically include a selection field and ask the customer to tell you which venue they are interested in visiting.
Confirmation of Leads
This is a feature to try and help track our leads a bit easier. Similar to how we track the fulfillment of vouchers we now ask you to confirm when you’ve received a lead. This means we can assure our customers that their requests are being dealt with.
We’re going to add these to the venue management tool soon so you can keep an easy track of the leads you’ve received (if you’re a supplier).
Therapist Gender Filter
When you’re doing searches for therapists you can now add a filter to the results to limit the therapists to a specific gender.
The last month has been a bit of a slog for the development team here at Wahanda. If you’re been following you will have noticed the gap in release posts is longer than one would expect from a team that prides itself on a fortnightly development schedule.
Release 26 (released on April 22nd) was a big release for us but didn’t really deliver that much functionality onto the site. Lots of back end reworking and the like. As there wasn’t that much to say I thought I’d save myself for this iteration, where we have something to really get excited about!
Release 27 was about one thing and one thing only. Venue details. The original page for venues hadn’t changed too much since we went live over a year ago and over that time the layout / design hasn’t really kept up with the amount of additional content we have. As a result we went back to basics and rebuilt the page from the ground up. We hope you like the result.
Here are some of the highlights:
Overview
The goal with the overview is to create a hub for all the content linked to the venue. This is usually in the form of a snippet (e.g. descriptions) or a selected item from a bigger list (e.g. reviews, fans).
We’re hoping this model will last us a while as we add more and more community features.
Description
On the previous version of the page we had the full description on the overview. As part of making the overview we’ve given the description it’s own tab. We’ve also moved some other elements that didn’t seem to fit anywhere else onto this tab, like facilities and amenities. We’re going to be doing some more work in this area over the next few months I think.
Menu / Deals
Along with the overview this is the tab that’s received the most attention. We’ve merged the old deals and menu tabs and dropped the simple treatment list for venues where we have a full menu.
We still use the basic treatment list when we don’t have a menu so if you want to really make your venue page shine get in touch and we’ll sort out a full menu for you.
Gallery
The gallery has also had a bit of a makeover. The biggest difference being that we now show full-size images. This does unfortunately mean that when we haven’t been given top-quality images the gallery is lacking.
Ok. Back to work for me. We’re working really hard throughout May to build an extranet system that will allow all our suppliers to manage their details directly. Watch this space.