Open forum day …. any suggestions for tweaking the site?

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• Fenny says:

  1 Jan1 January 10:20

  I only discovered HfP last March, when laid up with a back injury. It’s been a revelation in terms of what “extras” I can find and collecting extra Avios.

  I much prefer the articles posted early doors. I can either read them before I go to work, or when I get home, but at the weekend, it’s nice to read them over breakfast.

  No problem with the number of ads I can see. With respect to the sidebars, my only comment might be that the number of recent comments is a little low. Trawling through an article to see if there have been any additional comments can get complicated. I only subscribe to a few comments to see follow ups, or else my inbox gets swamped with notifications.

  The mix of content is fine. Although not all the articles are of interest to me, they cover a wide range of options, including taxis etc, which I may have need of at some point.

  One suggestion might be for a series of items on airport transport. Frequent and business travellers may know what the best way of getting from central Munich to the airport, but if I’d known how easy it was via a range of options, I could have planned things differently. Some airport journeys can be horrendous, whilst others seem to be very simple (I include getting to LHR/LGW from anywhere outside London in the horrendous list!).

• phreegreens says:

  1 Jan1 January 10:30

  I think the formula is about right. I like the “expired deal” idea but would be against a forum, plenty of those about. I’m busy, so the blog covering the airline and hotel promos plus stuff like Tesco, Shell Drivers Club and other programs really works for me. I don’t have time to trawl forums like FT, the big value I get from HfP is knowing Raffles has done good due diligence on the stuff he posts.

• Sebastian says:

  1 Jan1 January 10:45

  I personally think it’s a great site and one of the reasons for that, in my opinion is that:

  The way in which you post – three a day with an additional post if something interesting pops up.

  Not having ads jump at me from left right and centre.

  Not including social media (I’m 29 and use social media for friends and family, but I hate the notion of having to use it to promote).

  The menu layout of your site, which makes it’s quick and easy to get to certain areas of the site.

  Content for me is great as in my opinion you cover most of the bases.

  However, if you wanted suggestions about what could make it better, I would say:

  Have a more viable link to the Current Promotions page, I say this as I think it is sometime easy to forget some of these and if there was a more visible link, I would be more inclined to check them more often.

• Jono Stuatt says:

  1 Jan1 January 10:52

  Been a HFP reader for @ 4 months and managed to collect @40,000 avios in that time through sporadic short haul business travel/credit card expenses etc. Really enjoy all the content even if 50% doesn’t apply to me. Would be great to have a forum in order for inexperienced collectors such as myself (and small fry in the world of points) can ask questions to others readers ie: looking at taking wife on business class flight for treat holiday next year to Middle East/South Africa etc. Have 100000 points, and a free upgrade voucher, what’s best starting point?

  Otherwise, keep up the good work

• John says:

  1 Jan1 January 10:54

  Firstly congratulations on such a great site that has greatly enhanced my Avios earning capabilities over the last 15 months .
  I choose to access head for points first thing every morning straight to the Hfp website through my iPad. This suits me well as I prefer not to boot up my emails till I start work and I , like many , have enough coming through to my email inbox already. What this does mean is though that when the very occasional flash post such as the recent flybe flash sale comes through later in the day I will miss it. Of course I can just chose to have all posts delivered to my inbox which would resolve this but as I said I try to get as little email in my inbox as possible. If when you one clicked join my email list it then showed an option of all email or just flash ” exceptional ” emails it would be great for me personally.
  The extension of other travel related topics I personally find very useful. Some are of no interest whatsoever so I just skip but then I come across something very useful I would never have come across of immense use such as UBER taxis. You can’t pleae everyone all of the time so I would say keeping the ideas coming.
  Regarding competitions whilst it is not my prime motive for reading HFp everyday however , because you make it so easy to enter , I enter anyway and it certainly is not a turn off for me.
  All the best for 2015. I am certainly looking forward to 2015 in particular to my BA. Trip in the summer school holidays in club world for 3 of us. LBA-LHR -BKK and then HKG-LHR- LBA all thanks to tips I have picked up in HFP. Thank you.

  • Richie says:

    1 Jan1 January 12:48

    Totally second that! I read on the ipad every morning at 7am, but I wouldn’t want the emails of each post. An exceptional email sign up would be great

    • Ryan says:

      1 Jan1 January 13:21

      Agree with this also. I read on the way too/just in the office and have way too many e-mails as it is…however, have been late to the party for a couple of flash deals…

      • Rob says:

        1 Jan1 January 21:16

        This should be possible with the new email system, let me work on it

• Robert says:

  1 Jan1 January 10:56

  Great site “Raffles”. I used to be a regular reader of Flyertalk but now mainly stick to my daily dose of HFP. For me, your blog is simple, succinct & focuses on the topics that I’m interested in. I’m mainly an Avios collector but through this site I’ve pursued IHG mileage runs, various credit card promos, drank champagne at the top of the Shard & even signed up for Uber (but still to use!!).
  My recommendation would be to remain as is & not to become a site for all people. I might not be interested in 1k Tesco points on a case of 100 baked beans but I can skip that article. If I want to ask a question on a topic, I can use the comments section where you or more likely your friendly readers provide a response (usually in same day). If I want to debate or research the ins/out of a BA tier points run to Hawaii, I know there will be 100 pages on Flyertalk- please don’t turn this site into FT!! If I want to look for other opinions, I can use Google (or use your links) + some of the USA travel blog sites.I appreciate why you want to run competitions & I have the choice whether to enter or not.

  One suggestion: is there an easier way to search for historic blogs/info? For example, when I was researching IHG’s Into the Nights promo or voucher codes, I had to trawl back through several pages.

  In summary, I regard this site as your domain & therefore you should be left to run it as you see fit & include what content suits you. However, I appreciate you soliciting feedback. Thanks again for sharing what you do!!

  • Rob says:

    1 Jan1 January 11:19

    The search system on the site is not bad (box in top right) and of course you can just click ‘IHG Rewards Club’ in the categories menu for all IHG posts by date.

    Google has now given me a dedicated search box as well! Search ‘Head for Points’ on Google on desktop and it brings up a secondary search box which ONLY searches HFP! This allows for more creative searching than the search system on here allows.

    • Robert says:

      1 Jan1 January 12:03

      Thanks – should have known you had it covered already!!

  • Matthew says:

    1 Jan1 January 18:42

    Here here…I couldn’t agree more. I enjoy the articles in the morning, I pop by in the afternoon to read comments and if an article isn’t for me and will just pass it by.

    I also agree with the search. I recently searched for the Amex Plat 50000 MR deal for adding supp cards and it didn’t come up…because I had 50000 instead of 50,000 in my search query. So I searched it via Google instead. There are some pretty good auto suggest search plugins for WP that might help improve this.

    Thanks again for your articles and help.
    Happy New Year!

• Dan says:

  1 Jan1 January 10:58

  Hi Raffles,
  I love the site, it’s the first thing I look at each morning and I really appreciate the timing of the posts because I know there will be something interesting to read which helps me wake up. Also, the current system is great because it means I (almost) never miss a post (although I do think it’s good that you will add the occasional extra post when something amazing comes along).

  I also value the UK focus and the general quality of the drafting which both add value compared to sites such as loyalty lobby and the points guy. However, while I really value the advice on collecting avios, sometimes I think the other alliances could get a bit more of a look in. I often travel *alliance and earned *G thanks to Aegean this year…it would be good to have your advice on what to do now their programme has changed though – I bet there are quite a few readers in that position.

  Also, it would be great to have advice on getting BA/oneworld status cheaply for when our Amex Platinum Cathay Gold cards expire in July.

  I really value the advice on earning points via credit cards and have confidence that the site will tell me when there is a good deal or new option that comes along. Also, I like the big Clubcard deals which you highlight; I got thousands of points thanks to the video game pre-order you posted about.

  The increased number of competitions is nice (even though I haven’t won yet) but I do agree with some others that it is a little disappointing when they take the place of another good quality post. Perhaps competitions could generally be run as 4th posts? That way we get the best of both worlds (although I appreciate you may not have the time to do a competition and 3rd ‘normal’ post).

  Overall, this site has had a huge impact on the quality of my travel, right at a time when I have been traveling more with work. I’m looking forward to even more in 2015… including my first business class trip thanks to the bargain AF/KLM tickets to Japan you highlighted. So in general…keep up the good work!

  Happy new year 🙂

  • Polly says:

    1 Jan1 January 23:56

    Hi Dan, we covered this a few weeks ago, whereby you apply for a status match to Gulf air Gold, they will give you a two year card. Once you have that, you can then scan it to air Berlin top bonus, who will then offer you a one year status match at gold, equals ba silver, so bobs your uncle, you stay at one world sapphire .hope that helps. Also CX have been extending their gold cards, we all seem to have been sent a new card with an extra six months on it, useful.

• Jules Main says:

  1 Jan1 January 11:03

  Hi Raffles – Just to say, the site works really, really well so think hard before making any changes!

  As others have said, the three posts per day in the morning is an excellent format and should stay.

  The favourite posts and Avios promos pages were welcome additions last year.

  The only change I’d suggest is a place for all the sponsored links we can use to send you money – too often I forget to use a HFP link when making a booking!
  Thanks.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.