As Wild As You Want It...
I posted this after attending meetings of the As Wild As You Want It campaign, a sorry tale of lots of money wasted, for most providers and for the tax payer too. The chair was Andy Middleton, the owner of TYF in Pembrokeshire and he made sure his coasteering business was the highlight of the website, paid for by the taxpayer and providing good salaries for the directors. Look for the website now and it’s gone… What an utter waste of time, effort and the public purse…
Originally posted Feb 2006
I have been involved in a long-running discussion relating to the position of my business on a publicly financed tourism website and have yet to see the results of these complaints. I am hopeful that the site will appear to be fairer and will supply better information to those that are viewing it.
The main issue with this type of problem is that I have been spending my valuable time chasing the developers of the site to ensure that the search results are equitable. Considering I advised on the design prior to publication but that my advice was ignored... Considering that rotation of searches would seem to be the BEST practice and should have been known to the web designers... Considering that there ought to be protocols in place for the addition of new suppliers...
It seems that if you shout loud enough or know the right people things get done in your favour and if you want to do the right thing in a gentle way you get nowhere.
Have a read of the e-mail discussion that follows and let me know what you think. I have changed the names of the people and companies to offer anonymity.
Q) I have just looked at the site and wonder why, on every activity, my business appears at the very bottom of every search.
A) The activity data is supplied/downloaded from WTB on a weekly basis and we have no control over this data. Operators are listed in the order they appear in the data extract from the Wales Tourist Board - this may be determined by the date you first register but you will need to clarify with WTB. Currently, activities appear to register themselves with WTB more than once and this does cause confusion - this is being discussed with WTB.
Q) Also why do I not appear on the interactive map for any activity?
A) The Map - this is hard coded by us. When we created the map your business had not been involved in the campaign and therefore did not appear. There is a cost implication to adding businesses to the map and we are currently exploring this.
Q) I did ask some time back if the position of the supplier in the searches rotated. Is this the case?
A) Coding the lists to appear in a randomised order is complex and costly and was not part of the original brief. It is feasible but this would have a cost implication and a budget decision would have to be made to justify it.
Q) Furthermore, why do you find a supplier offering coasteering or gorge walking listed above a supplier offering canoeing on the canoe section?
A) This again, refers to the data being supplied from WTB - which we have no control over. If an operator calling themselves 'learn to scuba dive' chooses to register as offering windsurfing they will appear in the windsurfing operators list.
I have only looked at the site for a couple of minutes and have found these rather serious queries. I do hope that I find no more.
I do hope that these are problems that can be cleared up.
I am not happy that I was not included on the e-mail list, especially after I made a point of ensuring that I would be at the end of the last meeting. it seems that I have a fair bit of catch-up to do and hope that getting me on the map and off the bottom of the searches can be treated as a priority.
The site is great looking but the content leaves a bit to be desired. my questions have not been adequately answered and I guess I will just have to wait for the meeting in march. I did ask if the supplier’s details were to be rotated before the site was completed, this is a very important issue.
I am still at the bottom of all the listings making it next to useless as a marketing tool for my business.
Not including a budget for new members to get onto the interactive map shows a lack of foresight and in any case, why were my details not included prior to publication? I had been showing an interest in the campaign and I had attended the pre-launch meeting.
If the WTB issue information is in a non-rotating pattern then the rotation of suppliers’ by you is very important to fix. I would regard non-rotation as a gross waste of the marketing budget as the budget is only benefitting the same suppliers at the top of the listing over and over again.
It seems that xxx and xxx have cornered the market on coasteering (similar trends occur on other searches) by listing many descriptions of the same activity but for different clients. I have listed one coasteering description and one link to my diary. This seems sensible and fair. Why on earth does canoeing on the Gower appear on the Coasteering page? the WTB should be removing items that are listed in this way and if they are not going to do so the formulae for delivering information to the website are never going to produce a user-friendly and fair listing.
A debate needs to take place within the marketing group either to clean up the listings on the Visit Wales site and to pressure all of those that appear on the site to do so and to urge the WTB to vet listings more thoroughly prior to publication or to find another way to list businesses operating in the area.
Finally, I have spoken to a few suppliers that showed interest in the campaign but no longer attend meetings because they see the campaign as Pembrokeshire centred ( I disagree and have asked them to return stating that more from other areas create balance) and that activity tags do not adequately reflect their business. For example, 'where is the info on climbing?' they say.
Sorry to be a pain but I think that all of these issues are very important if the campaign is to be seen as a tool benefitting all suppliers and as money well spent.
Hi Andy - your email raises several points, many of which are being addressed currently wherever possible, obviously we’re committed to working closely with Visit Wales and also as many relevant providers as possible and this sometimes renders certain areas, at least initially, beyond our control.
These issues are largely on the technical front but very pertinently, the number of times that operators enter data under different product names is a real problem in eth way that data presents and a potential customer views it - this one is a particular issue and fundamentally needs cooperation between operators in the way that they approach their data entry to ensure that they are customer focussed rather than simply producing multiple entries.
Your business will be added to the map but at the point of the site going live, we had still only had completed sign-up forms returned from a limited number of people who took them away at the meeting and thus there were problems with contact details and business specifics not being recorded from those who had not returned anything.
xxx or I’ll be in touch shortly with more details including info on how you can manage your own data and upload your own events etc. under the content management system but in the interim, thanks for getting in touch with these initial points and thanks also for your interest in the site
Regards
Thanks for that xxx, however, the issues raised have not been explained.
In particular, why am I at the bottom of the listings on ALL of the searches?
If xxx and xxx do not remove some of their entries, what then?
Is there going to be work done on the site to ensure rotation of the searches on a fair basis (I raised this with xxx in October 2005).
Furthermore, for the listings to be useful, the ticking of all boxes by activity providers when entering info on the visit wales site leading to canoeing appearing on the coasteering page etc must be stopped. providers should be informed of incorrect listings and be given one month to remedy or else receive a block on being listed on the ‘as wild as you want it’ site. Just one idea to effect the solution.
To be honest I am having the same discussion with a couple of other sites and I am just fed up with having to push for fairness, especially when EU and public money is being used. this is an incorrect use of my time.
If there is no response from xxx and xxx and similar to tidy up their listings and if I get no answers to the two main queries (why am I always at the bottom and rotation of listings) then I will have to take this further.
I know that this is a free service but if it only benefits a couple of businesses then that IS a gross misuse of public money and smacks of professional nepotism.
You see, until this is sorted, xxx and xxx get the first shout and I will probably get no referrals from the site.
Finally, I just can't believe that a professional web design team did not think of these basic problems occurring when designing the site and I think that they should remedy the problems, asap, free of charge.