Need advice of a newly launched Bali directory site

lewiswebber

Guys.. I'm kinda new here, need some advice from you all about my recent Website balirun.com a directory Website to guide people around the island, to find hotels, villas, restaurants, bars, or nightclubs within their location. People can also rate and give a review to places that featured on the site. I also open for any kind of business opportunities, please just contact info[at]balirun.com for you who are interested. I really need feedback, comments, critics, and support from all of you.. Cheers!

hermit

[b]One more Bali Site[/b] Honestly,i would not know who is waiting for this. The trouble with most sites seems to be they are not complete,but advertise just the firms that probably pay the site to be included. Only if you make a really complete site that lists every single enterprise on the island,it will stand out from the rest. I do not see the added value of another Tripadvisor(rip off).

gilbert de jong

funny way of navigating.. but I agree with hermit, basically it ain't something new. and if there would be many places listed on the map...one can't see the map anymore, it would be just dot upon dot upon dot,

lewiswebber

Yes it is a bit slow, it needs to be fixed as well. 1000 restaurants and hotels, sounds a lot! I can't imagine having 3000 purple dots on a small bali map... My main propose is to get them to submit their own places, but yea I think it will be much better (and easier for me) if they can enter their own details from an admin page they will get. But it means that they will enter their Latitude and Longitude for the mapping themselves, and I'm afraid it will be difficult for them, unless I can make a system which will allow them to get the numbers by just clicking anywhere on the map. Will do that too! thanks ronb...

BKT

I design wordpress websites myself and I have to say this is awesome, I was actually thinking of designing a site very similar. Im liking the little tour button on the side. Not sure if you have a Facebook page for it, I could only see a like button at the bottom. You really need one if you don't, interacting with facebook fans could stop your site from falling of the internet A few things though, like Hermit said, the site will be useless if its not complete, if someone was looking for a restaurant, hotel etc on your site and it isn't listed they would probably not return. Well, i wouldn't anyway. Gil also pointed out if you are going to cover thousands of locations you wouldn't even see the map just a bunch of purple spots. Maybe you could limit the amount of purple spots to say 50 or for paying customers only. It took me a while to figure out how the search function works, I typed in Ubud and it came with one place and a 1/8 next to it, took me a few minutes to realize the arrows on the side were for jumping to the next location. Not user friendly at all You might want to add a smaller map on customer pages as well like this Goodyear Auto Service Centre Masterton Area | Yellow® NZ All in all though I think it could be useful to a lot of people on here. Especially the restaurants section

lewiswebber

Hi all, really appreciate your comments. Many thanks. Actually the site isn't completed yet, I need your advices and comments before I launch it, so it will be a better one then it is now. And things are quite difficult as I do all this my self, while TripAdvisor has probably loads of persons behind it. When the dots are full? How come it hasn't come across my mind? :D Anyway, there will be a way out.. But I don't think it will cover all the map if we zoom it in. And BKT was quite right, perhaps people don't even know that there is a zoom-in button at the bottom. It's actually explained in the tour, but perhaps the question mark at the top right doesn't say enough. It is not so user-friendly... I agree to all of you, that it has to be completed before I launch it. I'm still adding some new places to the site, but since it requires quite a lot of information and image gallery so it will take some time, and basically i just can list places that have a website, so I can get those infos easily. And I don't know will it be effective if I cost the customers? And I was just thinking to add some more category which will list places like Bali Safari, Birds Park, Water Sports, well -- things like that, instead of just hotels restos and clubs. What do you think guys? Maybe add a blog as well? BKT, Yea it took me ages to make this as it uses a lot of plugins. And to customize the functions and templates was a pain in the ass. By the way it uses buddypress as well for the membership thingy.. Actually it does have a facebook and twitter page, but haven't got the time to manage them. Again, i'm all alone. But see if I can get some partners to make things easier... By the way, the small map is a great idea, will add it soon!

balibule

You could solve the dots problem by allowing the visitor to choose which dots show up and which stay hidden. Yellow dots for restaurants, blue dots for hotels, red dots for nightlife ... . Still, it seems that you are still a long way of having the dots "black-out" your entire map ;)

lewiswebber

That's one thing I was going to do, but still haven't got the way up to now.. Actually at the moment they can choose from the main Menu, e.g. when they click on restaurant it will hide the others. But the colourful dots is a good idea, let's see what I can do about it.. Yes, it's a loooong way.. I would really appreciate it if you guys could help me promoting this to some owners... Anyway, there's also a forum, is it a good idea?

ronb

I'm at that time of the month where I've exceeded my quota of fast downloads and am on a slow link (until tomorrow). So when I went to your site, I got a big black square that eventually turned out to be the map - while I was gazing at this blackness, I fired up tripadvisor in another window and was able to get query responses. So performance on a slow link (common for travelers in Bali) is something to watch. But then as others say, it needs more entries. Others say it needs to be "complete", but I think that's almost impossible. But tripadvisor is an obvious competitor to check against. For restaurants it has over 1000 in Bali and 180 in Ubud, and the majority have recent reviews so you know they are still there. balieats.com has about 300 in Ubud, but some of the entries are fairly old, and it does list places that are no longer there. So an issue in the future is how to keep it current. I think for all Bali you need more than 1000 restaurants and more than 1000 hotels. If you are adding them, I guess you will find it hard to do 20 a day, so there is at least 100 days of hard work - probably much more. Alternatively, if you can get many sites to enter their own info and you just moderate, it may be possible to move faster - but it would require quite an effort with promotion to get people registering and submitting their sites. One last thought - tripadvisor has a "Things to do" category that lists cooking classes, spas, trekking, cycling, etc. Good luck.

lewiswebber

OK guys, now have applied different colours to different categories, e.g. restaurants are pink while hotels are purple. Still need to add a legend and filtering system though... And the dots are now smaller to avoid crowd. Any better?