Overview
We are currently working on various upgrades to the business directory add-on and would like some feedback from Metro Publisher clients. This discussion will be open for comments until the end of day (Pacific Standard Time) Sunday, May 27, 2012. We welcome your comments and look forward to hearing from you.
The purpose of these proposed upgrades will be to:
- Create a better browse experience for your readers, while making it easier to find businesses
- Increase the visibility of listings for your advertisers by creating additional "touchpoints"
(ie. new sprocket, coupons!) - Provide additional configurable options for each listing allowing you to offer options to your advertisers
- Improve the layout of the listings pages
We appreciate your input and are working hard to make sure that Metro Publisher continues to improve. This next release of the directory is but one iteration in a process that will continue over time. We want to focus this next step on some basic user interface improvements as well as some new configuration options for featured listings.
Please read our proposals below carefully and let us know what you think. Leave comments freely! Your insights are vital to our efforts.
Thank You!
Metro Publisher Support Squad
1. Categories: Increased Granularity
With the re-release of the business directory, we will be introducing finer control over categories. Currently, when creating categories, the connection to location types (facets) is rather limited. You can create a category called something like "Going Out" and include the facets for bars and restaurants. However, if you wanted to target a specific type of retail establishment such as auto stores in one category and bridal & wedding in another, that would not be possible because you can not currently also select anything other than top level facets. With the next evolution of the directory, that will change. You will be able to create categories and select one or many facets as well as sub-facets, activities, and goods/products. The result should free you to make more useful categories in your directory.
For example:
Bridal
- Retail > Bridal & Wedding
Automotive
- Retail > Auto
- Personal Services > Auto Repair
Gardening
- Retail > Plants & Garden Supply
- Home services > Gardening & Landscaping
2. Featured Listing Options
Another important new feature we'd like to introduce, is the concept of featured listings. That is to say, in addition to the enhanced business listing which allow businesses to be included in the directory search and appear as a highlighted listing in the location searches, there will be new options for those listings to also show up preferentially within the directory searches, location searches, and among the content of your site via a directory sprocket.
Options for Featured Listings:
- Show this listing at the top of its category (displays in random order)
- Show this listing on the directory's right rail (displays in random order)
- Show this listing on corresponding location searches' right rail (displays in random order)
- Include in "Directory Listing Sprocket" throughout site (display rules configured within sprocket settings)
Below you will see mock-ups of how these work.
3. Directory Search Page: List View
Major changes have been proposed here for the search experience. The most notable is a toggle for users to switch between a list view and a map view of the directory listings. These pages will have unique URLs which will allow you to link to them separately from anywhere within your site.
LIST VIEW HERE:
Directory Search Page: List view
Here are some of the new features:
- Keyword Search: Users can use keywords to find businesses. Search will scan businesses titles, addresses, and description fields.
- Map Toggle: This allows your users who prefer a map based search to switch.
- Featured Listings: Up to five randomly displayed listings within current category. Listings can be included here via a check box within the listing edit page.
- Right Rail Featured Listings: Up to five randomly displayed listings. These are not limited to listing from within current category. Listings can be included here via a check box within the listing edit page.
- Search Filters: Filter search by category and facets.
- Search Results: When the page initially loads, search results are ordered by creation/last modified date. Once user makes any kind of selection or filter choice, ordering will convert to alphabetical. This will allow newer listings or ones that have been recently updated to appear at the top until bumped off the list by new activity. The result will be to make the directory appear more dynamic to users as well as eliminate the bias towards businesses who's names start with numbers or letters found up front in the alphabet.Also, listings results have been simplified to be more space efficient with essential contact info displayed.
- Links: Links to reviews, events, and coupons (highlighted) dynamically appear if content is present in listing.
- Banner Ads: Standard banner ad slots for search pages (728x90 top, 205x90 house top, 300x250 right, and 728x90 bottom).
4. Directory Search Page: Map View
For users who prefer a map-based search experinece or for areas where the map search is more useful, there is also a map view of the directory.
MAP VIEW HERE:
Directory Search Page: Map view
Here are some of the new features:
- Quciklinks: Quicklinks to allow users to jump to specific areas.
- List Toggle: This allows your users who prefer a list based search to switch.
- Size Proportions: New size proportions for the map to allow better alignment and zoom of odd shaped areas.
- Listing as Map Layovers: Listings appear as map layovers and automatically adjust position to be aligned within map area.
- New Map Search: New map search includes cluster icon for areas of high density. On click, clusters zoom in to show close-up of that map area to better distinguish individual listings.
- Search Filters: Filter search by category and facets.
Directory Search Page: Map view showing scrolling - Fixed Max Scroll Height: To ensure high quality search experience, map remains fixed to top of browser window when user scrolls. This creates a more app-like experience by allowing the map to be visible and above the fold for a majority of browsers and screen sizes.
- Scrolling for Filters: While the map stays fixed, various filters can be accessed by user as right side filter navigation scrolls and dynamically adjusts height based on user's choices.
5. Directory Listing Page: New Layout & Added Features
Here are several improvements to the listing page. These proposals are to combine and re-organize the listing and location pages.
Directory Listing Page showing video tab
Here are some of the new features:
- Essential Contact Information: At the top of the page will be the essential contact information for the business including business name, phone number, address and link to website.
- Additional Business Information: Share tools (which can also be configured to appear below) and additional business information.
- Thumbnail Image: Thumbnail image. Smaller than the full sized photos, this is a good place for logo or low-quality and/or low-resolution images of business.
- Reviews and Events: Like now, reviews and upcoming events will be displayed. Reviews will be changed to show title, thumbnail image, and descriptive text.
- Additional Content Tabs: These tabs only appear if the content is included in the listing. Tabs appear in order - Video, Photos, Coupon, and Map.
- Description: The current description field will stay at the bottom of the page to allow for short as well as very long descriptions.
Directory Listing Page showing photo tab - Photo Slideshow: Photos will be displayed as slideshow.
Directory Listing Page showing coupon tab - Coupon: This is a new feature. Listings may have one coupon. Upload graphic and enter title, descriptive text, and start/end dates. Print button opens full-size image in new browser window to allow for printing.
Directory Listing Page showing map tab - Map: Map appears on this tab within the listing instead of opening in a new page. Like present, events and nearby businesses can be browsed by user via map tools.
6. Location Search Pages: Featured Listings
The location search experience will remain unchanged for the time being. The only proposed changes with regard to this release of the directory is to add featured businesses to the right rail which serve as an additional "touchpoint" for advertisers' listings. This feature would allow up to two randomly displayed "featured" listings to appear in the right rail. These listings would not be limited by any specific location type.
Directory Search Page: List View
Here is what the featured listing includes:
- Right Rail Featured Listing: Up to five randomly displayed featured listings. Includes title, address, phone, and links to reviews, events, and coupon, if present in the listing.
- Location Search Results: Preferential treatment as a configurable option.
- display order = random or alphabetical
- number of listings to display = input number or all
7. Directory Listing Sprockets
A new sprocket is proposed that functions similar to the automated list sprocket but for featured listings.
Directory Search Page: List View
Here are the details of the new sprocket:
- Right Rail Featured Listing Sprocket: Includes title, address, phone, and links to reviews, events, and coupon if present in the listing. The workflow would be to make the selection within a listing to "Include this listing in any directory sprockets throughout site." Then you would create a sprocket using various filters that would pull any listing with that option:
Display Order
- Most Recent
- Random
Show # of Listings (pulldown)
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 10
Categories (check boxes)
- All
- Category 01
- Category 02
- Category 03
- Left Rail Featured Listing Sprocket: Re-sizes to narrower width. Includes title, address, phone, and links to reviews, events, and coupon if present in the listing.
8. Event Search Results
Preferential treatment for events occurring at locations that have been enhanced .
1. Highlighted Search Results: Events will appeared visually highlighted in event search results for locations with an enhanced listings.
I love the upgrades you are making, especially the inclusion of coupons, which have been very popular for us but are currently hosted on a separate site. We'd love to bring them into our MetroPublisher site IF we can have a section/page specifically for our coupons. This would be a HUGE feature addition for us. We'd also love to have featured coupons for the people who paid for the print coupons in our print edition's coupon section.
We'd love to be able to add our own categories for Locations. There are so many location types that just aren't there.
Are the share buttons for us or for that business? That should be made more clear. We'd love to be able to add social stuff to our listings.
We also love the map/list toggle feature. Could you also add that toggle to the calendar?
Very impressed! Do you have an ETA for these new features? I will tell you that we were considering getting rid of the upgraded directory because it only seems to let us do video, which isn't something that we'll sell much of out here in the boonies. There's just not really any other feature, but if you're implementing all of this, we'll keep it!
Will it be possible to create a separate listings sprocket for ...a "Classifieds" section? That would be HOT! I could use it for real estate agents, and temporary housing listings.
Also, I thought you guys said that Quantcast was coming in this next release? Is it available yet?
Have a great weekend!
-E
I'm with Eugene, I would sooooo love a classifieds section in our MetroPublisher site, even if I paid a little more for it (not too much more because there's so much open source software out there for it already). We don't need anything fancy, just something that lets me setup a category and enter itty bitty listings with an expiration date.
Hey Everyone,
Classifieds are a great idea. But they are really completely different. For the purposes of this discussion we are proposing improvements to the existing directory. We want to improve the user experience and utility of the directory. These changes will also be important following the upcoming release of the Metro publisher API. Having a more useful directory can translate nicely into a map based mobile directory app. Feel free to start a new discussion about classifieds if you like.
The share buttons are the same share widgets that can currently be inserted into your content pages which can be positioned above, below or both. They allow your users to share a link to the listing page.
Hi I think its a really impressive addtion to the offering. I am new so I dont use the directory yet, but I am planning to later in the year, so I think the features will help market it to cusomers. I also especially like the coupons as I have a number of advertisers that are looking at special offers for their customers so, so this gives them the opportunity to do so.
Great work.
Yvonne
At the moment, our not-for-profit site doesn't accept advertising, so a directory like this doesn't seem to have an immediate use for our publication.
HOWEVER, my experience with Metro Publisher has been SO positive that I'm now researching establishing a separate, for-profit publication for which a directory like this would be of enormous help. I agree with the MP support folks that classifieds are a whole other animal in advertising, requiring tons of space and software. The business directory feature would be more of a benefit to me than classifieds at this point.
Thanks for all you do for us and our users!
I think the proposed enhancements are terrific and will create additional revenue opportunities. I would like to be able to add our own categories or at the least, submit a category add to your support staff to add in a reasonable amount of time. Adding a comments section for readers to submit their reviews or rating would promote more user engagement. Overall, the listing layout seems more polished and professional, can't wait for this upgrade.
Seaside has a great point about comments. We would also love comments to be opened up for locations and directory listings.
My business partner and I are very excited about this upgrade. Once you have things figured out, we'd love an ETA on the coupons feature.
This all sounds good. I am anxious to add these new features. When do you expect this to launch?
I know MP has other publications like ours that are niche-topic-based rather than niche-geography-based. Minimizing requirements to link to a location or have a brick-and-mortar address would be helpful to us, particularly in the directory, where we would like to encourage listings by online retailers (who do not need/want an address field, phone field, or especially an hours field).
I'd really like to see the directory listings integrated into the location searches that people are accessing through our events calendar and not just through the directory sprocket. I'm a bit confused if this change is going to address this and give directory listings with "inside views" a preferential placement in things like nearby location searches accessed outside of the directory listing. Right now things only appear alphabetically.
In your notes above you say under Featured Listing Options "Show this listing on corresponding location searches' right rail_ (displays in random order)_" but under Location Search Pages: Featured Listings you say "The location search experience will remain unchanged for the time being. The only proposed changes with regard to this release of the directory is to add featured businesses to the right rail which serve as an additional "touchpoint" for advertisers' listings. This feature would allow up to two randomly displayed "featured" listings to appear in the right rail. These listings would not be limited by any specific location type."
Two listings to appear "randomly" doesn't seem like enough for me to tell my directory advertisers that they will be featured throughout our website's map features, instead of just in the directory. We have so much more traffic to our events calendar than we do to our directory listings that I really want to encourage our readers to "make a day of it" with other nearby advertisers, not the first listings to show up alphabetically.
Here are some quick responses to some requests above:
1. Toggle for event searches
2. Niche online only advertisers
*3. Comments for Listings
*
More to come...
Here is some more info in response to the recent comment about providing more preferential treatment for listing to the location search pages and related locations.
There is already above a proposal to add two randomly displayed "featured" listings at the top of the list view of search results within the directory. This could also be applied to location search results as well as the search results for related locations.
These should also have a configurable option:
By adding these options, a directory with a lot of enhanced listings could limit the number to display and make them random so the featured results display more equitably among advertisers, while a directory with fewer listings could just have all of them show up at the top in random or alphabetical order.
Listings in the directory would then potentially show up in several places:
The suggested improvements are excellent and cover pretty much all of the issues we've come up against. Very happy with showing a list instead of the map, as at the moment there is too far to scroll before getting to the list. It's also going to be helpful to offer preferential listings to some advertisers - we've had complaints about the alphabetical order as it's always the same ones on the front page. I also like the new layouts of the listings - greatly improved.
Just a couple of other things:
Being able to create our own location categories would also be important for us.
Also, allowing comments would be great.
Thank you all for the feedback and please keep it coming until we close this thread.
In the directory you can create your own grouping of locations and give them any label you want. But location types will continue to be standardized and centrally created. There hasn't been a release we can recall where Metro Publisher didn't include new location types or refinements to location types so let us know what location types you require (but please not in this discussion).
Standardized location types are going to be very important to any developers working with our API to build applications for you (in particular mobile applications) but will continue to gain importance in other fields such as SEO.
Not sure if the suggested changes you are working on which are all fabulous will allow me to customize my events to pet related activities. If not that would be helpful. I can certainly share suggested sub topics if needed.
We had a Supplier Directory on our old site before coming to Metropublisher. We had products/services that were grouped under categories (Barns, Farm Equipment, Feed & Supplements, Fly & Pest Control, Grooming, Tack & Apparel, Healthcare, Stable Management). You could search for suppliers by name, category or product/service. Below is the list of products/services. We have no need of a mapping function. Will the new release accommodate our needs? If the new release as proposed will not, is there any chance you could make modifications so that it would?
Aisle/Safety Surfaces
Alternative Therapy
Apparel, Horses
Apparel, People
Architects/Planners/Builders
Arena Equipment
Associations/Breed Organizations
Autos/Trucks
Awards/Trophies
Barn Equipment/Supplies
Barn Machinery
Barns
Bedding Products
Books
Boots/Wraps
Breeding Equipment/Supplies/Services
Certification
Clinics
Composting
Computers/Software
Education
Event Supplies
Farm Equipment/Supplies
Farrier Equipment/Supplies
Feed
Fencing
Financial Services
Flooring
Fly Control Equipment/Supplies
Foaling Equipment/Supplies
Footing
Gifts/Accessories
Grooming Equipment/Supplies
Health Care Products
Hoof Care/Shoes
Indoor Arenas
Instructional Books/Tapes/CDs
Insurance
Jumps
Legal
Marketing
Nutrition
Other
Pasture Management
Pest Control
Pharmaceutical
Stall Equipment/Supplies
Stalls
Supplements
Tack English
Tack General
Tack Western
Therapeutic Equipment/Supplies
Track/Arena Surfaces
Tractors
Trade Shows/Conventions
Trailers/Vans
Training Equipment/Supplies
Transportation
Veterinarian Equipment/Supplies
Walkers/Treadmills/Exercisers
Watering Equipment/Supplies
Website Design
Hello Everyone,
Thank you for your valuable comments. Some of your input has been right on point and added to the specification for this round of upgrades to the directory. Others, while indeed important, are much deeper within the application and are out of scope for this round. Here is a summary of the main issues and what we plan to do about them.
Included in this Release
Q: Comments on Listings?
A: Yes, these will be included with this release with a configurable option to allow or not allow commenting on listings.
Q: Map vs List View?
A: Several of you commented that you have no use for the map search or that you would like to feature businesses that are web only or where the physical address is not important to their service. That is precisely why we are introducing the list view. We want to make the search experience useful in both map based searches and list based searches. Map based searches use combination of filters (such as category, keywords, location types, and quicklinks) in the context of a map. List searches, utilize similar filters (such as category, keywords, and location types) but do not present results based on their physical location (or lack there of).
Q: Additional Placements for Listings: More preferential treatment for listings on the directory search pages as well as location search pages and related locations?
A: There is already above a proposal to add two randomly displayed "featured" listings at the top of the list view of search results within the directory. This will also be applied to location search results as well as the search results for related locations.
These should also have a configurable option:
By adding these options, a directory with a lot of enhanced listings could limit the number to display and make them random so the featured results display more equitably among advertisers, while a directory with fewer listings could just have all of them show up at the top in random or alphabetical order.
Listings in the directory would then potentially show up in several places:
Q: Coupons?
A: Yes, these are part of this release.
Q: Improved Page Layout?
A: In addition to the new features, the new page layouts will add to your users' experience.
Out of Scope and Up for Further Discussion
Q: Custom Location Categories?
A: This has been the most consistent request we have received with regard to locations. We fully understand the desire to completely customize the location types. However, this is very deep in the code of the application and, while we have already been designing a solution that would add flexibility similar to what you are asking, it is not something that will done within this release cycle.
For the time being, in the directory you will be able to create your own grouping of locations and give them any label you want. But location types will continue to be standardized and centrally created. There hasn't been a release we can recall where Metro Publisher didn't include new location types or refinements to location types. So let us know what location types you require by creating a support request.
Standardized location types are going to be very important to any developers working with our API to build applications for you (in particular mobile applications) but will continue to gain importance in other fields such as SEO.
Q: Map/List View Toggle for Event Searches and Locations?
A: This is a great idea and something we plan to add to Event and Location Searches. But with this cycle, we will implement first on the directory.
Q: Classifieds?
A: We hear your suggestion for a classifieds application that would work seamlessly in a Metro Publisher site. You can expect a similar process in terms of community feedback in shaping this kind of product - more to come!