BedandBreakfast.com Review Widget launched

[JBanczak]

We had talked about this quite a while back and had gotten some feedback from this forum. We put in into production today. This allows innkeepers to embed reviews onto their website. Pretty straight-forward - you pick the size, colors, etc. you want and it generates code that you or your webmaster can include. You also are not forced to show every review. If there are any reviews you do not care to put on your own website, you can easily select to keep them off. To access it, just go your BedandBreakfast.com Home Base - Review Widget. Here is a screen shot of the tool:

 

[Penelope]

John, my boss is not a forum member. Would you mind if I copied this info to an email and sent it to her? I don't want to use your words without your permission.
Thanks

 

[JBanczak]

Sure - no problem. We will be sending this out to all members sometime next week, but it is fully live and functioning right now.

 

[NW BB]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

 

[JBanczak]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.

 

[Copperhead]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.
.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.

NW - glad you checked this out. Gee John, I really do not know why any one would place this on their site if it could lead potential guests away from their site. B&B.com really should work on this issue. I pay B&B.com to send ME potential guests, not to send my potential guests to B&B.com. Your stats may be low (1 out of 100) but I work very hard to keep each of my viewers right on my site and to book...

 

[JBanczak]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.
.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.

NW - glad you checked this out. Gee John, I really do not know why any one would place this on their site if it could lead potential guests away from their site. B&B.com really should work on this issue. I pay B&B.com to send ME potential guests, not to send my potential guests to B&B.com. Your stats may be low (1 out of 100) but I work very hard to keep each of my viewers right on my site and to book...
.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.

NW - glad you checked this out. Gee John, I really do not know why any one would place this on their site if it could lead potential guests away from their site. B&B.com really should work on this issue. I pay B&B.com to send ME potential guests, not to send my potential guests to B&B.com. Your stats may be low (1 out of 100) but I work very hard to keep each of my viewers right on my site and to book...

Maybe Swirt can comment on hard this is to do - it really would require the property to build this. I think the benefits of having these widgets far outweigh any potential negative from a 1 in 100 click out. We did them in as best a way as we could - unlike Trip Advisor, we display more text, we let you choose the review, and we have all kinds of size and color options.
For a long, long time we've had something like a thousand properties who just put a badge up linking to bb.com - this product is leaps and bounds better than that. And this product links directly to your property review page. I really think the credibility of showing reviews on a third party site is an advantage - be interesting to see how much those 1 in 100 convert into reservations vs. your other customers... I'd bet it will be more - making that actually a positive, not a negative.

 

[swirt]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?

 

[JBanczak]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?

On who's site?

 

[swirt]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?

On who's site?
.

On whoever's site has the widget.

 

[JBanczak]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?

On who's site?
.

On whoever's site has the widget.
.

On whoever's site has the widget.

If it spawns a pop-up though, and it is on someone else's site - they would have to build it. Believe me - I'm more than happy to feed all the review data - we do it with Google/Uptake/Vast.com/Nileguide and a bunch other.

 

[swirt]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?

On who's site?
.

On whoever's site has the widget.
.

On whoever's site has the widget.

If it spawns a pop-up though, and it is on someone else's site - they would have to build it. Believe me - I'm more than happy to feed all the review data - we do it with Google/Uptake/Vast.com/Nileguide and a bunch other.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.

 

[JBanczak]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?

On who's site?
.

On whoever's site has the widget.
.

On whoever's site has the widget.

If it spawns a pop-up though, and it is on someone else's site - they would have to build it. Believe me - I'm more than happy to feed all the review data - we do it with Google/Uptake/Vast.com/Nileguide and a bunch other.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.

Ah - I see - just have it spawn a pop-up. Obviously any website can code it that way themselves - do you think it would make sense for us to have that be the default vs. the default being in-line? I really don't care either way - typically best practice is keep it in-line, but if the feedback is that folks would rather spawn a pop-up window, and we can code it that way - it will be done next week.

 

[swirt]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?

On who's site?
.

On whoever's site has the widget.
.

On whoever's site has the widget.

If it spawns a pop-up though, and it is on someone else's site - they would have to build it. Believe me - I'm more than happy to feed all the review data - we do it with Google/Uptake/Vast.com/Nileguide and a bunch other.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.

Ah - I see - just have it spawn a pop-up. Obviously any website can code it that way themselves - do you think it would make sense for us to have that be the default vs. the default being in-line? I really don't care either way - typically best practice is keep it in-line, but if the feedback is that folks would rather spawn a pop-up window, and we can code it that way - it will be done next week.
.

I should probably see an example before I go shooting my mouth off suggesting a change to something I've never seen. Do you have one in place that I can look at?

 

[NW BB]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?

On who's site?
.

On whoever's site has the widget.
.

On whoever's site has the widget.

If it spawns a pop-up though, and it is on someone else's site - they would have to build it. Believe me - I'm more than happy to feed all the review data - we do it with Google/Uptake/Vast.com/Nileguide and a bunch other.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.

Ah - I see - just have it spawn a pop-up. Obviously any website can code it that way themselves - do you think it would make sense for us to have that be the default vs. the default being in-line? I really don't care either way - typically best practice is keep it in-line, but if the feedback is that folks would rather spawn a pop-up window, and we can code it that way - it will be done next week.
.

I should probably see an example before I go shooting my mouth off suggesting a change to something I've never seen. Do you have one in place that I can look at?
.

Swirt,
You can see it on my site. I moved it to my reviews page. I felt that if the prospective guest got as far as my reviews page I could probably keep them even they were redirected to bandb.com. Even so, I would love to have the problem fixed with it going to a pop up window. www.sandlakecountryinn.com/reviews.htm

 

[JBanczak]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?

On who's site?
.

On whoever's site has the widget.
.

On whoever's site has the widget.

If it spawns a pop-up though, and it is on someone else's site - they would have to build it. Believe me - I'm more than happy to feed all the review data - we do it with Google/Uptake/Vast.com/Nileguide and a bunch other.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.

Ah - I see - just have it spawn a pop-up. Obviously any website can code it that way themselves - do you think it would make sense for us to have that be the default vs. the default being in-line? I really don't care either way - typically best practice is keep it in-line, but if the feedback is that folks would rather spawn a pop-up window, and we can code it that way - it will be done next week.
.

I should probably see an example before I go shooting my mouth off suggesting a change to something I've never seen. Do you have one in place that I can look at?
.

I should probably see an example before I go shooting my mouth off suggesting a change to something I've never seen. Do you have one in place that I can look at?

You can see a bunch of examples on our demo property site here. http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/.
On the rooms rate page there is the large horizontal which seems to be the most common. At last check, there were 120 properties live already, but I don't have access to the list from home.

 

[EmptyNest]

I have already put this on one clients site.

 

[swirt]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?

On who's site?
.

On whoever's site has the widget.
.

On whoever's site has the widget.

If it spawns a pop-up though, and it is on someone else's site - they would have to build it. Believe me - I'm more than happy to feed all the review data - we do it with Google/Uptake/Vast.com/Nileguide and a bunch other.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.

Ah - I see - just have it spawn a pop-up. Obviously any website can code it that way themselves - do you think it would make sense for us to have that be the default vs. the default being in-line? I really don't care either way - typically best practice is keep it in-line, but if the feedback is that folks would rather spawn a pop-up window, and we can code it that way - it will be done next week.
.

I should probably see an example before I go shooting my mouth off suggesting a change to something I've never seen. Do you have one in place that I can look at?
.

I should probably see an example before I go shooting my mouth off suggesting a change to something I've never seen. Do you have one in place that I can look at?

You can see a bunch of examples on our demo property site here. http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/.
On the rooms rate page there is the large horizontal which seems to be the most common. At last check, there were 120 properties live already, but I don't have access to the list from home.
.

Yes after looking at the sample and NW BB's I would suggest that at least all links within the widget contain a target destination like target="bandb" so that it opens in a new window but doesn't spawn multiple windows like target="_blank" would do. A better approach would be a nice javascript controlled popup window. There is no risk of it not working due to people having javascript turned off, because the widget already requires javascript.

 

[JBanczak]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?

On who's site?
.

On whoever's site has the widget.
.

On whoever's site has the widget.

If it spawns a pop-up though, and it is on someone else's site - they would have to build it. Believe me - I'm more than happy to feed all the review data - we do it with Google/Uptake/Vast.com/Nileguide and a bunch other.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.

Ah - I see - just have it spawn a pop-up. Obviously any website can code it that way themselves - do you think it would make sense for us to have that be the default vs. the default being in-line? I really don't care either way - typically best practice is keep it in-line, but if the feedback is that folks would rather spawn a pop-up window, and we can code it that way - it will be done next week.
.

I should probably see an example before I go shooting my mouth off suggesting a change to something I've never seen. Do you have one in place that I can look at?
.

I should probably see an example before I go shooting my mouth off suggesting a change to something I've never seen. Do you have one in place that I can look at?

You can see a bunch of examples on our demo property site here. http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/.
On the rooms rate page there is the large horizontal which seems to be the most common. At last check, there were 120 properties live already, but I don't have access to the list from home.
.

Yes after looking at the sample and NW BB's I would suggest that at least all links within the widget contain a target destination like target="bandb" so that it opens in a new window but doesn't spawn multiple windows like target="_blank" would do. A better approach would be a nice javascript controlled popup window. There is no risk of it not working due to people having javascript turned off, because the widget already requires javascript.
.

Yes after looking at the sample and NW BB's I would suggest that at least all links within the widget contain a target destination like target="bandb" so that it opens in a new window but doesn't spawn multiple windows like target="_blank" would do. A better approach would be a nice javascript controlled popup window. There is no risk of it not working due to people having javascript turned off, because the widget already requires javascript.

I don't think that will be a problem - just talked to Eric and Sandy and they agree. We'll do it this week and get new code out there providing the tech guys don't find something we miss, which I doubt. Thanks for the feedback everyone!

 

[NW BB]

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!.

John,
I placed your widget on my homepage thinking "oh, this is great". Then I acted like a prospective guest and clicked on "more" to read the rest of the review. Here's where the problem comes in. It take the prospective guest AWAY from my website because there is no option to have it open on a new window or target page. There is no way I want to display it when it will take away prospective guests that I've worked hard to get onto my website and bring them directly to bandb.com.
How can I get it to open onto a new page and not leave my homepage sometimes to never find me again?!?!?!

That would be incredibly difficult to do actually. We would need to feed you the entire content feed, then you would need to have either a page, or pages setup to handle it, and then you would need to go in and write your own html to point the links to whatever page you were hosting them on.
The large version has a lot more info on it - you could do a full-page. There are still links though. Right now only about 1 in 100 people who see the widget click on it. I get the sense that folks see the rating, see a few words of the review, and think "they get unbiased reviews on a major website - good enough for me..." without needing to click through.
Part of having them click through to BB.com is that folks can then verify that indeed the reviews are for real and came from the website.
If you really didn't want to do this, you could just cut and paste the entire text of the review and put it on your website - nothing wrong with that as long as somewhere you say it came from bb.com. Probably be easier than building out a complicated link structure in any case.
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?
.

Maybe I'm missing something as I haven't played with the feeds yet, but couldn't the "read more" link just have target="somename" specified so it opens in a new window?

On who's site?
.

On whoever's site has the widget.
.

On whoever's site has the widget.

If it spawns a pop-up though, and it is on someone else's site - they would have to build it. Believe me - I'm more than happy to feed all the review data - we do it with Google/Uptake/Vast.com/Nileguide and a bunch other.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.
.

No I mean the new window would still go to your site to see the entire review, but when they close the window, they would still be at the original B&B's website.

Ah - I see - just have it spawn a pop-up. Obviously any website can code it that way themselves - do you think it would make sense for us to have that be the default vs. the default being in-line? I really don't care either way - typically best practice is keep it in-line, but if the feedback is that folks would rather spawn a pop-up window, and we can code it that way - it will be done next week.
.

I should probably see an example before I go shooting my mouth off suggesting a change to something I've never seen. Do you have one in place that I can look at?
.

I should probably see an example before I go shooting my mouth off suggesting a change to something I've never seen. Do you have one in place that I can look at?

You can see a bunch of examples on our demo property site here. http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/.
On the rooms rate page there is the large horizontal which seems to be the most common. At last check, there were 120 properties live already, but I don't have access to the list from home.
.

Yes after looking at the sample and NW BB's I would suggest that at least all links within the widget contain a target destination like target="bandb" so that it opens in a new window but doesn't spawn multiple windows like target="_blank" would do. A better approach would be a nice javascript controlled popup window. There is no risk of it not working due to people having javascript turned off, because the widget already requires javascript.
.

Yes after looking at the sample and NW BB's I would suggest that at least all links within the widget contain a target destination like target="bandb" so that it opens in a new window but doesn't spawn multiple windows like target="_blank" would do. A better approach would be a nice javascript controlled popup window. There is no risk of it not working due to people having javascript turned off, because the widget already requires javascript.

I don't think that will be a problem - just talked to Eric and Sandy and they agree. We'll do it this week and get new code out there providing the tech guys don't find something we miss, which I doubt. Thanks for the feedback everyone!
.

Thanks John for fixing this. And thank you Swirt for being able to translate for us! What a great resource you are!