New Online Directory - OnTheMap.ie - Public Beta

[OnTheMap]

The site "www.OnTheMap.ie", our first, ground up written in Ruby on Rails is being launched before the summer. We'd love some serious constructive feedback on the site itself, look and feel and ease of use. The concept was to go away from the overcrowded web page look, trying to keep it very clean and easy to see things, and of course logical to use.

In addition, as part of our market research we're asking everyone we meet whether they think that a 'Yelp.com' - like Review Based Yellow Pages is something the small businesses in Ireland, those that don't have any web presence or are currently paying too much for or not getting enough benefit from existing directories ... is worth being a part of ?. Hard question, but ... what would small businesses be willing to pay annually for having such a listing ?, and more crucially, are the Irish ready to 'give their opinion' on that Butcher, Dentist, Mechanic, Chemist, Cafe, etc ?.

If this is the wrong forum to ask the second question, apologies I'll post it in the correct place ... once someone can point me in the right direction :0).

In either case, all input ... good and otherwise ... is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Attila

 

[mneylon]

Interesting idea.

Until you have a lot more content I can't see how anyone would want to pay for a listing.

Maybe you should give away the listings for free until you get the numbers up?

 

[Forbairt]

ok I said 0 ... based on what I'm seeing in the site. You may be trying to go for a clean look but its not working for me ... reds and whites are just too harsh.

Your top "banner" piece is full width ... your main is what 1024 x 768 ?

I wanted to be able to click "onthemap" ... Maps .. Reviews keyword search in your logo.

As Michele said ... I'd wait for a while before requesting money for it ... it'd need hundreds / thousands of business listings before it becomes any major use apart from the link use

 

[Gavin]

I've voted 25 - 75 if the site had a good flow of traffic, ranked well and was friendly for visitors/search engines.

Just to let you know that I am lost looking at this. If I go into a category that has listings nothing is actually listed, I'm I looking at this wrong?

For example: under the business category it says there is 2 listing but clicking on the link only gives me a map.

 

[louie]

As Gavin said. I don't get it.
What's supposed to happen when you click on a category?
You show us a Google map, but what am I looking for?
A bit of "How to?" might help.

 

[Forbairt]

A bit of "How to?" might help.

If something needs a how to text its too complicated.

SEO friendly URLs would be good for the categories as well.

Figuring out where the user is coming from (assuming ireland) and having it default to their county might be handy ? ... majority of times I'm looking for someone local the extra clicking is unnecessary and would get to be annoying.

 

[mneylon]

Figuring out where the user is coming from (assuming ireland) and having it default to their county might be handy ? ... majority of times I'm looking for someone local the extra clicking is unnecessary and would get to be annoying.

That's not as easy to do as you might think, since the IP ranges in this country are so broad. An Eircom DSL line in Carlow will show up as Limerick

 

[Forbairt]

could also be costly getting the ranges no doubt if they were available .. have the country ones which can be way off at times as well.

At least have a remember my county link so you don't have to go entering it all the time

 

[mneylon]

Nah. Most of the GeoIP databases aren't that expensive ... Maxmind is only about a tenner a month - we use it for CC fraud checks

 

[OnTheMap]

Thanks for the comments thus far ...

OK, I can see how you might want more when you click on a category on the front page. I suppose I was just preempting the time when there'd be just too many places registered. The point of showing a map was to get someone to pick a location (using a map) for the category they'd just chosen ... category alone isn't mush use if the person is looking at all-Ireland. However, some hints as to what to do next are missing, fair enough :0).

I would have put up a map on the home page, but I wanted a home page that worked without Javascript. I've still some trimming to do on the home page to limit news, events, reviews text to a short sentence ... with a more ... link ... but for now I thought it would suffice.

As for getting folks to pay something, I was between a rock and a hard place. The problem being that for 50 quid the subscriber is getting atleast 3 things, of different value to each type of person ... web presence including interactive content, geocoded directory listing and reviews. To a small business that has no web presence, having effectively a very simple web page, backed up by a single 'News' page (and upto 10 Events pages) where they could publish their latest 'Specials' or something news-worthy, or some more info about their business ... is surely worth 50 quid ?. A proper web-site will cost a non-technical type anywhere in excess of 500 euro ... upto thousands of euro for interactive content ... which is what they have with our offering.

The directory part of it isn't going to cut it re: being worth 50 euro until we get a critical mass ... upwards of 10,000 businesses ... but we all gotta have more than one string to our bows. The only way we see this actually working is by strong branding, and that's gonna cost big money. We're happy to go that road, if we believe that the idea is novel, and Irish business owners put value in cheap web-presence, being found easily (re: location) and being reviewed.

As for the look and feel ... we'll take another look at the simplicity side of things .. thanks. As for the colors ... let's get some more opinions (maybe suggest an alternative ?) ... 'cause we thought there was just enough to not be too 'in your face' ... whilst still being memorable in a not-unpleasant way :0).

Thanks,
Attila

 

[Forbairt]

I would have put up a map on the home page, but I wanted a home page that worked without Javascript. I've still some trimming to do on the home page to limit news, events, reviews text to a short sentence ... with a more ... link ... but for now I thought it would suffice.

Why not a simple imagemap ? no javascript involved ... and onto it you can add some nice javascript features so it degrades gracefully ... maintains functionality .. and has that bit of extra oompf

 

[ziycon]

Ah i see how your doing it, its very confusing though, you should hav ethe markers on the map once you click into the category instead of having to select("Search") and area first! I found it a bit strange/hard to use so imagin other people that aren't as well up on the net as most of us here trying to use it!

 

[OnTheMap]

Yep, a few people are saying similar things ...

Yeah, I'll obviously need to put some work into simplifying it ... thanks. First off, when someone clicks on a category on the home page, I'll do a search directly instead of asking someone to click 'Search'. Same for the 'Places' page itself, whenever someone selects a category, a search will automatically ensue ... one-click search :0).

Some other feedback I'm getting is suggesting that I should go along the lines of free format 'google-like' search bar ?. Problem I see with that is the search terms are too hit-and-miss ... but I know it's what people these days seem to expect. I'm just not sure we need to be so Lemming-like ?. It makes much more sense (to me anyway) to pick a category, pick an area and select from a list of keywords .. no ?. As long as the concept is 'obvious', and the page isn't too busy, it's a much more accurate approach ?. Am I off the wall here ?.

Thanks,
Attila

 

[mneylon]

Try and implement some of the suggestions people have been making and see how you get on from there ...

Why doesn't the logo link back to the main page?

 

[OnTheMap]

Indeed ... am in the throws of it as we speak :0)

Thanks for the feedback. Once mods are made, I'll come back for another round.

Cheers,
Attila

 

[Davthalas]

I'm not exactly the voice of experianced web design but I personally don't see the point of this site at all really.

I get what your trying to do, but people could get these directions for free without using your site by using google maps and google search with relative ease.

Sorry if i'm being harsh but alot of people will probably think this when looking at your site.

 

[OnTheMap]

Ok ...

First, I've added some more JSP goodness, and reckon it's a little more obvious re: going from home page to search (place) page, and then selecting categories now does an AJAX search without having to hit the search button.

Also ... thanks Davthalus for the comment. Let me clarify. Ireland has no postcodes, and google's or anybody elses geocoding of street addresses simply isn't anywhere near accurate, especially outside of Dublin (and I'd hazard a guess it's not very accurate even in Dublin ?). The fact is until postcodes come into this country there's no easy way to 'guess' accurately where a particular place actually is, unless you have recorded with it a GPS coord.

But thanks ... as I said ... I'm looking for peoples opinions :0). I suppose the point isn't that people couldn't get directions in other ways ... it's just that google has no need or want to do any heavy lifting in Ireland (no point we're too small a population), so google won't really find a small boutique or hairdresser or chemist in a small village, it can't, since most small shops don't have web presence of any kind and auto-geocoding of addresses in those very same areas is almost useless. Can you imagine getting google to "find the chemist next to the pub with the green door, up the hill on the right ?".

 

[mneylon]

Onthemap - the feedback you get here may not always be gentle, but it's usually honest

 

[Forbairt]

Onthemap - the feedback you get here may not always be gentle, but it's usually honest

As I always say ... its better we say what ever criticism than a customer. Its not always the easiest thing to deal with being told something doesn't look good / work in the way people expect.

 

[OnTheMap]

I'm Ok with opinions :0)

Thanks folks. I would much rather be told that what I'm trying to do is daft, BEFORE I go and spend a billion bucks marketing it, than after :0)).

The website itself being a factor, but not the most important one, since ultimately if the idea is attractive enough, I can always get help on that side of things. However, opinions I gather here and elsewhere about the website is very useful feedback ... appreciated.

If the idea though really isn't going to solve a burning issue, then it'll be plan 'B' ... "anyone looking for a Ruby on Rails practitioner ?" ... ;0)

I suppose I need a little more evidence that I'm swimming against the tide though, both from the likes of here and my own door-to-door market research, before I contemplate plan 'B' exclusively.

Cheers,
Attila