Backpacking Queensland functionality - Part 2
In yesterdays’ post I introduced some of the new functionality in the new Backpacking Queensland website (you can see that post here). In this part two I introduce some more.
Reviews and ratings: As I discussed yesterday the ability to review a product and have your say, and the ability to make purchase decisions based on other peoples’ input is an important part of Web 2.0. It was agreed very early on that this was a desired feature of the new Backpacking Queensland website. We added one “new” feature, if you like, to this; and that is the ability to add images to a review. If someone has something bad to say, such as the room was dirty, then they can back this up with an image. Hopefully, however, it will lead to users sharing good images as well - “had a great time, here’s me at the Calypso pool table soaking wet - don’t ask”. The greater the users interactivity the more successful the site will be.
Google translations: In a second part to Mr Geherts’ email that I have quoted in my two earlier posts on Backpacking Queensland he comments negatively on the use of the Google translator tool for different languages on the website. You will see in the top right hand corner of the Backpacking Queensland site flags for the different languages and then clicking on these a user is redirected to the Google server where the site is automatically translate. Of course, this is not ideal as inevitably the translation is not of a very high quality, however, it does provide a good intermediary solution to Backpacking Queensland. Anyone that knows anything about websites will know that translating a site can be both expensive and very time consuming. The intention here is for Backpacking Queensland to monitor the traffic and clicks over the next six months or so and should one or more languages prove very popular then they will consider the resources needed to do a proper translation. The Google tool, however, is not all that bad; one of its’ cool features is that it allows users to correct the translations that are not right through the “suggest a better translation tool” and also view the content back in English to assist with deciphering the content. Hopefully, travellers may even contribute to bettering the translations so that it becomes more useable for Backpacking Queensland over time.
On-site advertising: The Backpacking Queensland website uses the Swuzzlebucket onsite advertising network. This is a very new concept that offers an advertising network for the Australian and New Zealand backpacking industry only. It focuses on providing advertising only on adventure tourism and backpacking websites and only shows relevant ads. It means that the users are getting a better experience as they are getting appropriate ads and that advertisers are getting much better value for money as their ads are displayed to their target market. The Swuzzlebucket network works on a minimum charge per 1,000 times an ad is displayed and a cost per click meaning that advertisers only pay for when their ads are working for them.
Newsletters: The newsletter functionality is based on the Open Source solution PHP List. It is all managed on the Backpacking Queensland server and is using probably the most popular newsletter serving software in the world. Like my previous posts on why Xebidy chose the Silver Stripe framework for the Backpacking Queensland project (which you can read here), we chose PHP Lists because we do not see the point in reinventing the wheel. PHP List is awesome, it has great reports and monitoring ability to see who opens the newsletters, which are deleted and the links etc., that are most viewed. On the Backpacking Queensland site we have used the functionality to the fullest by collecting some demographic data as part of the sign up process. The users are asked when they are traveling to Australia, how long they will travel in Queensland for, some demographic information like age, sex and nationality and then there are options for their interests. Armed with this sort of data Backpacking Queensland can now run specific targeted newsletter campaigns; for example, they may want to send a newsletter to all females, from the UK, aged between 20 and 30 who are interested in diving, that are coming to Australia and Queensland in the next six month, offering some special diving products. There is enormous advertising revenue potential here.
So that’s the Backpacking Queensland new website in more than a nutshell. Its’ really a very large site and one that we at Xebidy have enjoyed working over the last four or five months. The girls at Gate 7 in Sydney, who are charged with maintaining the site, have been a wonder to work with and hopefully we can work with them again to extend the site. We already have lots of ideas about how to make it better and increase the reach. I am off to Cairns tomorrow for the launch of the site and look forward to hearing all the feedback first hand, positive and negative.
Tags: Backpacking Queensland, Web 2.0, Xebidy clients, You Tube