Help your users with well-sorted results (Sorting 2.0)
Visitors to your website expect to find what they are looking for straight away. The most relevant content should therefore be the first to appear on the page. As an editor, you have great influence on which content you put on the page first. But how do you deal with automatically generated overviews, e.g. all the restaurants in your city? With the new "Sorting 2.0″ we organise all overviews in a logical way AND offer editors the possibility to influence the sorting of these items.
How the old situation worked
There are two possible scenarios imaginable within Plaece. There are sites with and sites without the "Promotions" module.
Scenario 1: Website with locations and "Promotions" module
Example of sorting with Promotions module
With the "Promotions" module, Points Of Interest (POI) could be placed more prominently in the listings by means of a paid listing (read: POIs with a promotion are shown first in the listings). All other POIs were displayed "randomly" on the page. This random sorting was fixed per day. All visitors to the website were shown the same order of POIs per day. If the visitor returned the next day, a new "random" order took effect. This sorting was offered on the website as the option: "Default".
Scenario 2: Website with locations and without "Promotions" module
Example of sorting without promotions module
If a website did not have the "Promotions" module, all POIs were displayed in alphabetical order. This sorting was offered on the website as the "Name A/Z" option. In practice, it thus occurred that POIs with an A or a punctuation mark in the name were almost always shown first on the page. This is most likely an undesirable scenario.
Improved results through sorting by popularity
Example of the arrangement of POIs in an overview based on the new sortings
In a previous blog article we wrote about all the improvements in the plaece.base, in which we also discussed the migration of the search technology SOLR to Elasticsearch. By deploying Elasticsearch, we have more opportunities to influence search results and sorting.
To offer website visitors better results in the overviews, we introduce a new standard sorting: "Popularity".
New standard sorting: Popularity
This "Popularity" sort is structured as follows:
- Promotion
In plaece.base, POIs can be assigned a specific promotion score via the ‘Promotions’ module. The higher this score, the higher these POIs will appear in the overviews. POIs with a promotion will always be displayed first in the overviews under the ‘Popularity’ sort order. If there are several items with the same promotion score, these items will be displayed at random (on a daily basis) (or an editorial order can be determined using the ‘Score’ field). - Score (new feature!)
Editors can now assign a score to a POI in plaece.base using the new ‘Score’ field. The higher the score, the higher the POI will appear in the lists under the ‘Popularity’ sort order. (The score can also be a negative value, meaning that the POI may be displayed at the bottom of the lists.) By default, a POI has a score of “0”. If there are several items with the same “Score”, these items are displayed randomly (on a daily basis). - Random
All items that do not have a promotion or score are displayed at random (on a daily basis).
Example of the new Score field in plaece.base
The difference between promotions and scores
Future enhancements to "Popularity" sorting
In the future, we see some opportunities to further improve sorting and make it more relevant.
- Added to favourites
The favourites module allows us to see how often the POI has been added to a bucket list. - Number of (positive) reviews
Are visitors positive and do they leave positive reviews? If so, the POI also deserves better positioning. - User-generated content tips about this location
If visitors leave a lot of tips, this is an indication of the location’s popularity. - Completeness of profile
How complete is all the information for the POI? Businesses that keep their listing up to date and provide complete information are rewarded for doing so. - Views from Google Analytics
If a POI is frequently viewed on the website, it is very likely to be of interest to other visitors as well.
How to sort your events
Events have an additional difficulty: a date. On the one hand, this is a complicating factor, but it can also provide opportunities for logical sorting. Read the blog article about the new sorting in the out-of-date calendar.
Coming soon!
In the next major update, the new sorting will be available automatically. Ask your contact person when the next update is scheduled.
What do you think of these improvements? Or do you have any questions or suggestions? Let us know via info@plaece.nl/en