Spa, Salons…
The latest release saw the introduction of a completely new hub page for our venue content (spas, salon, fitness centres, yoga studios etc).
Earlier in the year we launched a custom interactive map to allow easier browsing of the deals and offers we have in the u.k. This has proved to be pretty popular so we’ve now added a similar map to help browse our venues worldwide. In addition we’ve taken the opportunity to clean up the hub page a bit.
We currently have interactive maps for:
- The World
- United States
- Europe
- United Kingdom
They take a little while to build so we’ll only be adding new ones gradually.
You should see a back arrow on the sub-map once you’re clicked through. Simply click on that arrow to go back to the parent map (see below).
Interactive Map - United States of America
Venue Email Contacts
Previously we’ve been using a simple pop-up form when customers want to simply contact a venue for more information. This has worked on a small scale but has led to a number of contacts that can’t be followed up easily due to lack of information.
Given how important these leads have become we’ve moved this functionality to the same process we use for fulfilling offer based products. Now when a site user clicks on the Email the Venue link they are taken to a more detailed contact form.
That’s it for now. More coming soon!
Release 31 is now live and I wanted to share with everyone some of the exciting new features we’ve added to the site this week.
Chains
We’ve displayed when one of the nearly 4,000 spas and salons on the site is part of a larger chain for a while now. What we haven’t done is group those venues together in a meaningful way.
In the latest release we’ve created pages dedicated to each chain in our database. On this page we show similar content for a spa or salon but pulled from all of the chain locations. This gives an easy way of seeing where all of the locations are, especially useful if you’ve purchased one of our exclusive deals which is applicable at all of then (like the ever popular Enlighten Body Detox Package at Dove Spa). You can also see the best deals across the chain and reviews submitted by the Wahanda community.
Deals Wishlisting
We added a new type of wishlist item: Deals/Offers.
You can now with one click add a deal or offer to your scrapbook. This makes it extra easy to let people know what they should be buying you for your birthday, for christmas or just because you’re had a hard week/day/hour.
If anyone is feeling generous I'd love this as a present!
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.
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.