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.
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.
I really can’t believe we’re already on our 22nd release!
For those used to products from the huge megaliths of Microsoft and Adobe this must sound like a very large number of releases. In some ways it is. Excepting special circumstances (e.g. Christmas or everybody getting some strange virus) we release a new version of the website every 2 weeks. Each release gets a new number. We’re about 6 weeks away from our 1 year anniversary hence… Release 22.
We did think about using sub numbers so we would be like the cool kids (e.g. 0.5.1.22) but we’re too long in the tooth to worry about what the coolest kids are doing.
It make take some time to get the format for these release posts right. This is the first one so expect a certain rambling element and lack of polish.
Findability
We’ve been working hard of late on what we like to call ‘Findability’. Release 22 included a lot of work on what we call products but what everybody else insists on calling Offers.
We’ve re-designed the product listing page, adding such coolness as filters, sorting and a handy map.
For example this page is all of our products we’ve tagged as special offers. On the left of the page we have filters for price range, location, treatment and days of the week for which the product is applicable. Nifty.
Community
‘Most Active’ algorithms updated
We’ve made a tweak to the most active lists on the community page to take around 6 months of activity into account. Previously we were only using a couple of weeks so it was disproportionately favouring newbies, something a few of your noticed and didn’t like.
Privacy Options (for Therapists)
Those that have been following us for a little while know we released a major update to our therapist management area back in January. I this release we added privacy options. If you’re a therapist you’ll find it on the right hand menu when you’re logged into your profile.
Currently all that seems to make sense if the ability to control whether or not others can see you email address, phone number or website address. As we add more functionality you might want hidden we’ll add additional options here so it can be protected.