garagehound

Guust,

Thanks for the reply –

Lets do an example step by step of what users are using our site for and then do a comparison with tripadvisor and yelp.

So – as you know by now our site is a platform for our users to find a garage/autoshop in the UAE that best fits their needs.

Example – My friend drives an Audi and reverses into a lamp post. He goes on http://www.garagehound.me to try and find a garage that can repair the damage.

So he can either choose to type in to the search; “audi” or “dent repair” and “Al Quoz”(Area of Dubai). He searches “audi” and “al Quoz” – This search returns 35 “places”. To scroll through 6 pages of listings that are relevant to his search will take a long time and he notices that some of the garages have been rated by other users, – so he wants to see the “highest rated” garages on the front page, but he cant FILTER THE RESULTS OF THE SEARCH.

He can then try a different approach, he goes back to the page ‘garage search’ and presses “customize my search” – He picks “audi” from the car brand drop down and “dent repair” Services drop down and types “al Quoz ” again in to the location search. This search returns 19 results but again – he cant filter to see these 19 results in alphabetical order, or which of 19 results are rated highly by other users.

Lets compare this to trip advisor –

I go on to trip advisor and click “Hotels” I then search ‘Dubai’ and enter a date – this search returns 525 hotels – I then have the option to filter the results by ‘Ranking’ seeing the best at the top, ‘price high to low’ or ‘price low to high’ or the type of vacation I am having- business, romantic – etc – or the brand of hotels, how many stars it is- (essentially I can sort the results by an endless list of variables and decrease the search results so I find a few that are perfect for me).

Yelp also allows you to filter any search – For example – ‘Pizza Restaurant’ in ‘San Francisco’ – returns 2212 places – yelp users can then filter results by “Best Match” “Highest Rating” “Most reviewed” along with all the other sorting options of “Price” “Distance from” “Features” and “Category”.

In any listings business, tripadvisor and yelp included, it is essential that the end user can sort the results of a search…

Hope this example helps.

Many Thanks,
Craig

So, in a nutshell, what you are saying is that,

1) If one of our users searches using the ‘text’ or ‘area’ search, the results can’t be sorted.

2) If one of our users searches using the advanced search to search for example; “audi” from the ‘car manufacturer’ custom field and “body repair” from the ‘services’ custom field – the results ( 7 listings in total [so far] that relate to both of these custom field tags ) – cannot be sorted either.

Why then can the ‘related listings’ widget tab be sorted by ‘Rating” and relate to “tags” – is this not a similar function that can be added to search results.

Thanks,
Craig

attached is the second screen shot for search “karama”

Thanks Guust,

We will contact our theme developer in that case.

We have now launched and have users giving us feedback on the website, a couple of early problems are as follows and we would greatly appreciate your help to solve them;

1) One of our users was searching for an auto shop in an area of Dubai popularly called ‘Karama’ and it returned no results. However, a search for “Al Karama” its official name, but rarely called that returned results within 6 or 7 kms. The query is whether there is a way to add some flexibility into the search function to increase the likely hood of users finding auto shops in their area? Is there a way around this problem?

2) When people were searching for ‘Volkswagen’ in our search bar the search didn’t return any results, but when they used the advanced search and selected ‘Volkswagen’ in our ‘car manufacturer’ tab, results were returned – Why is this, and can this be changed so if someone types, for example; ‘Volkswagen’ into the search bar the results are also returned.

3) Is their a way that a user can filter or view the search results by different variables? ‘Best rated’ or ‘Price low to high’ for example. An auto shop on our website has recently been reviewed by a number of people as a 5 star garage, but gets lost in the search results page amongst a huge amount of garages with similar specialities but no ratings.

I hope you can help on these issues.

Many Thanks in advance,

Craig

Hi Guust,

As always, Thanks for your help, I was experimenting with layouts and forgot to change it back!

Craig

Okay, Thanks Guust, so there is no way to change this problem i’m having (see attached screenshot). As you can see the ‘change location’ element has been cut off and the rest of the options cannot be seen in the window. Obviously this is no good…

Thanks,

Also is there a way to change where the “change location” from the multi location add-on button that comes up on the Navigation Menu, I can’t see it on the menu in the appearance dashboard.

Thanks Guust,

I has it set to only allow in Region of Dubai. I think I have sorted the problem now.

Is there any way we can do this that you know of, maybe with a plugin? This really is a key feature for any listings website.

I have also just tried to enable the google analytics for the listing owners. I followed the steps and retrieved my client id and client secret however when I press authorise in Geodirectory>General>Google Analytics I get an error saying “Error 400. The redirect URI in the request: http://www.garagehound.me/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=geodir_ga_callback did not match a registered redirect URI”

Any help troubleshooting this problem?

Cheers in advance. Craig