For users of the TourCMS tour operator ecommerce platform
Widgets - Implementation questions.
Hi Guys.
I've been having a play with the widget wizard after creating 10 of our tours in the Marketplace. I have to say, this is going to be a seriously good piece of kit. The potential for this is enormous.
I went ahead and copied just 3 short snippets of code from the wizard - you can see the result on my test/play website here The links all work correctly now (thanks Paul).
I have a few questions and observations:
Would it be possible to maybe just bold certain words in the 600 char description? This would help things like destinations or or other places of interest stand out, as I guess these listings are skim read.
I can't understand how the hierarchy is established - I have used geocodes (all these tours start and finish at the same point), but is there any other order sequence ie. Tours>Setup>display order or sorted by price?
I altered the Ticker JS script 'per_page' variable from 5 to 10, but haven't seen any difference in the output. Did I miss something else here?
Any thoughts how I can add the Ticker to our wordpress blog, it would be a great right-hand sidebar item. Apparently WP suppress all scripts.
Similarly, any thoughts how to add the ticker onto a Facebook 'fan page'? I had a quick play with FBML - but again, I have a feeling that Facebook supress any idea of running a script.
Of course - I'll now get busy distributing these widgets and tours to more than just our social network sites!
Cheers!
Warren
I've been having a play with the widget wizard after creating 10 of our tours in the Marketplace. I have to say, this is going to be a seriously good piece of kit. The potential for this is enormous.
I went ahead and copied just 3 short snippets of code from the wizard - you can see the result on my test/play website here The links all work correctly now (thanks Paul).
I have a few questions and observations:
Would it be possible to maybe just bold certain words in the 600 char description? This would help things like destinations or or other places of interest stand out, as I guess these listings are skim read.
I can't understand how the hierarchy is established - I have used geocodes (all these tours start and finish at the same point), but is there any other order sequence ie. Tours>Setup>display order or sorted by price?
I altered the Ticker JS script 'per_page' variable from 5 to 10, but haven't seen any difference in the output. Did I miss something else here?
Any thoughts how I can add the Ticker to our wordpress blog, it would be a great right-hand sidebar item. Apparently WP suppress all scripts.
Similarly, any thoughts how to add the ticker onto a Facebook 'fan page'? I had a quick play with FBML - but again, I have a feeling that Facebook supress any idea of running a script.
Of course - I'll now get busy distributing these widgets and tours to more than just our social network sites!
Cheers!
Warren
Views: 12
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Paul on -
Hi Warren,
Glad you found the Widgets useful and hopefully nice and easy to generate.
Bold some words
We will need to give this some more thought, we specifically have no HTML on that field in the CMS as it needs to display neatly in a lot of situations.
Ordering / Sorting
All of the Widgets are based on the TourCMS Marketplace API, specifically the three Widget types you have there use the Tour Search API. Currently that API call returns results sorted by commercial priority, or alternatively if you search for Tours near a specific geographical point (called "Location search" in the Widget Wizard I think) you can optionally sort by proximity to that point.
Ticker limit
This is currently limited to 5 "slides" due to the places it is intended to be used - i.e. on the side of another page full of content, rather than forming the main content of a page. When you configure a Ticker Widget via the Widget Wizard you will notice you can only select a maximum of 5.
Do let us know if this is an issue, perhaps we can allow more per page when the URL is tweaked (or perhaps in the Widget Wizard with a warning / cautionary message).
WordPress
WordPress works great with the Widgets, they can be added to posts, pages, templates or the sidebar.
Unfortunately, it looks like you have a Wordpress.com hosted blog, unless they have changed recently Wordpress.com does not allow custom JavaScript so our Widgets cannot be added to them.
Facebook
This isn't something we have investigated....yet!
Our focus for their launch was to ensure Widgets are likely to work on your partners sites, we know they work great on most custom websites plus Moveable Type, Blogger, Google Sites, TypePad, Squarespace, Wordpress (not Wordpress.com).
Thanks for the feedback, it's much appreciated, this is a new feature for us which we can continue to refine.
Paul
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Permalink Reply by Warren Garber on -
Thanks Paul.
Wordpress and Facebook aren't a priority at all.
Ticker limit increase would be handy, if possible.
Order / Sort - I already set this by location (these particular tours all start from the same geocode). I was kind of hoping that the 'points order 'in Tours>Setup would drive the display order.
Bold (or similar) would be useful. The 600 char output without any formatting is not pretty to look at.
But as I said previously - a tool with great potential.
Warren
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Permalink Reply by Warren Garber on
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Paul, a couple of more questions...
Can I configure only certain tours to a specific MP partner?
How do I analyse their performance - ie Tracking clicks or through to booking etc.?
Cheers
Warren
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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on -
Hi Warren
1) You can't configure certain tours to a specific partner unless you want to get a bit more complex about it. If you really do want to do this, you can setup a 2nd website booking engine and a 2nd marketplace channel - and use that to connect to a partner with a different set of products.
Most useful where you have tours of one destination in one channel and tours of another destination in another.
2) When you create a marketplace partner you assign them to an agent ID inside TourCMS. From agent manager (and reports) you can see clicks, conversions by agent - just like you would for Google PPC advertising etc.
The key point is that the marketplace partner has to have their own marketplace account (each) (free) and then you link up to them from your account.
Coming soon, they will be able to see their own clicks / bookings etc in the marketplace partner login
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Permalink Reply by Paul on
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Also just to add on #1, if it was just a geographic region / destination that you wanted to give to that particular partner you could rely on the fact that the Tour Search API method which powers the widgets link above can be configured to only show Tours from a specific Country or up to a specific number of miles/km from a geographical point.
So, in that instance either you or your partner could build a widget featuring just a subset of Tours, as per Alex though you need to get a bit more complex if you want to pick and choose in more detail.
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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on
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Ah yes well added :)
If the concern is about a partner featuring just tours that are local to them for example - then the widgets can be set to be keyword or geographic based (and so can tour search API)
e.g. if you have a photography partner - and you just want to feature photography tours - they could create a widget with photography keyword - and out just they would come (as long as you used the photography word in only some of your tours!)
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Permalink Reply by Warren Garber on
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Okay chaps, I have all that. I (and everyone else) may well have differing requirements, and I understand that it's almost impossible to cover all eventualities in the widget wizard.
Maybe for future development there could be a tour / MP partner table with a check/uncheck for tour against partner?
As a workaround, I've seen the difference in the script that calls all tours - and the script that calls a single tour (by tour ID). Is it possible for me to string say n number of tours if I modify the script?
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Permalink Reply by Paul on
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Just to give some background:
The general ethos behind the Widgets is that they should be "Set and forget", so the Tours that appear on the list Widgets are displayed based on whether they match the particular search criteria used to build the Widget (location, language, keywords etc). As Tours are added and removed by Tour Operators (remember Widgets can feature Tours from more than one Operator) this list is automatically updated without either party having to make any changes.
As per Alex your particular request could be solved by creating a second Website in your account which you could filter the products on, this would give you a different channel in the Marketplace for your partner to connect to. Feel free to drop us an email if you decide to do this and need a hand.
Alternatively you could build something bespoke against the API.
Paul
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Permalink Reply by Actief in Tsjechie on -
Hi Paul,
I tried Google sites but with no succes. Google removes the code when page is saved.
Regards, Luit
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Permalink Reply by Paul on
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Hi Luit,
The process for Google Sites is a touch different.
What you will need to do is copy the URL from the "Google Gadget XML" box in the "Get Widget code" window, you will need to add a new Gadget to your site and paste the URL in there You will probably need to edit the gadget once it has been added to the page to tweak the height and width.
If you get stuck please do feel free to email support.
Paul
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Permalink Reply by Paul on
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The exact steps in Google Sites are:
Insert > More Gadgets > Add gadget by URL
Paul
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Permalink Reply by Actief in Tsjechie on
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it works! thanks Paul, regards Luit
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