My feedback on your feedback on HfP

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• Trevor says:

  9 Jan9 January 12:29

  Sorry I never commented previously, but off the top of my head, couldn’t think of any improvements. some others have come up with good ideas though and I certainly agree with the new tweaks and denials. I do like the calendar idea, showing all final dates for all offers covered (and perhaps those not covered). Since I make a note of those I am interested in myself (and no doubt some others do), it would be good to provide and administer this view centrally. I see it as a monthly calendar that can be clicked through, with each day containing any offers due to expire, and the listings should be links to the articles if covered on HfP or native website of the offer if not. Maybe I’m missing something, but see no need for anything more complex than that, except maybe the ability for readers to submit expiry dates with a moderated inclusion. That way other more obscure offers could be shared by the many readers which don’t necessarily deserve an article of full direct coverage here – many pairs of eyes are better than 1. This would also help with the fact that while this site is primarily Avios-centric, we all have personal goal and earn/burn targets with varying programs, so less dramatic and non-local news that could be important to some other readers can still be shared in the background.

  • Rob says:

    9 Jan9 January 13:12

    You may be pushing the boundaries of WordPress here since I would want it integrated into the site. I need to have a dig around. A boring old article with a list of dates is where it will start off!

• Charlie says:

  9 Jan9 January 13:28

  Perfect site as it is, the only thing missing is Raffles flying VA upper class from LHR! Try it this year with the 787?!

  • Rob says:

    9 Jan9 January 14:36

    I kid you not, yesterday I was looking at a couple of dates for Boston in VS UC. The issue is finding a window – I don’t like doing more than one long-haul every six weeks or so as it takes me away from the family and the diary is pretty busy until September.

    • Charlie says:

      9 Jan9 January 14:42

      Awesome, I Recommend you fly out in UC and return in PE to cover as many Virgin angles as possible!

      • Rob says:

        9 Jan9 January 16:29

        I have never actually flown PE, on any airline, ever!

• Singing Dwarf says:

  9 Jan9 January 15:52

  On the issue of keeping comments open for longer – and I’m not one who advocates this actually – but those people who have already commented on the article would be notified of new comments on old articles, if they had ticked the “Notify me of new posts by email option” – which I am sure a lot of people do do.

  NB Do we have the ability to automatically set this to ‘true’ in our user profile somewhere?

  • Alan says:

    9 Jan9 January 17:29

    There is at present but it will be going with the new email system that it due to come in, Raffles mentioned it will hopefully return…

• Rory says:

  10 Jan10 January 00:59

  Something else that I think would be really useful is an airline, hotels, cars partner chart or search function. It would be extremely useful if there was somewhere I could type in ‘British Airways’ or ‘Executive Club’ and see which other schemes I could transfer points into, or use points for redemptions. Is anyone aware of somewhere else this is being done? If not it could be a USP for HFP.

• mister.c. says:

  11 Jan11 January 17:48

  Relatively new to HfP and to the serious redemption skills of many on here! Generally I have dabbled in a few of the hotel rewards programmes but not with a huge stash of points.

  The success stories will be very interesting, for me anyway. There will be a temptation for the largest, most amazing value redemptions to be conveyed. Which will be fine but a balance of stories would be better. So not just AVIOS or huge redemptions, or massive points redemptions, or certain airlines or certain parts of the world. Somebody spending a small amount of points might actually be more relevant for some folk. Or be more innovative.
  I find I learn all sorts weekly by visiting the site and that can only continue as folks share their views.

  • Rob says:

    11 Jan11 January 21:01

    This is part of the reason, to be honest, that I don’t discuss my own redemptions some of the time. My hotel redemption in Abu Dhabi in 2 weeks time, for example, was done via an Amex International Currency Card MR redemption as Jumeirah is not a partner with the UK MR scheme. Not many HFP readers have an ICC Amex.

• Trevor says:

  15 Jan15 January 09:45

  Feedback on new email system: I like the slightly updated look and header of the emails – nice work. The advertising is also unobtrusive right at the end, so not an issue. however, there are some things missing at the end. Previously there was a direct link to comment, or direct link to visit comments, where now the only link takes you to the start of an article that you’ve just read, so could be improved. Also, there were previously links to related categories which are no longer there. To be honest I haven’t used these, but using tracking links could of course tell you if others do and therefore if they are worth keeping, which I don’t see could cause an issue.

  • Rob says:

    15 Jan15 January 10:03

    Thanks Trevor. Unfortunately, because these emails are no longer sent by WordPress, there is no way – at least none I know of! – of having a link directly to the comments as opposed to the top of the article.

    I don’t think many long term readers – who tend to be the email people – use Related Categories so that is not a major worry for me. It is handy on the main site as it encourages visitors from Google to stick around and read something else.

    • Trevor says:

      15 Jan15 January 10:49

      With regards to the “Comment” and “See All Comments” links, I can understand that WP might auto-generate these for you, but you just need to append the generic bookmarks “/#respond” and “/#comments” respectively to the end of the article URL to create these links. These can then also be tracked separately so you can see how much people use them. Personally, I very seldom used to click the article title (which I see is no longer even a hyperlink – perhaps this should be added) to open the sight, but always the “See all comments” link having already read the article already. If you are wanting to drive traffic via your emails, then you need to make access as quick and simple as possible, taking people to exactly where they want to be. Since you obviously already have the article URL and a generated tracking link (hidden only at the end of the email – this should change), it can’t be too much extra to append the two bookmarks and generate 2 more tracking URLs for inclusion at the end under the required “Comment” and “See All Comments” labels. Good luck, I hope you get it right, as I think in the current format you’ll be losing traffic as ease-of-use has been removed.

      • Rob says:

        15 Jan15 January 14:27

        That tracking link at the bottom is actually a plug-in which automatically adds the code to the RSS feed. Need to see how easy it is to get it to drop down to comments.

        In truth, the emails are a poisoned chalice for me because I am very limited in advertising opportunities. If I thought 100% of the readers would start using the desktop site instead if I scrapped them I would do it tomorrow! The same goes for the mobile site!

        • Trevor says:

          15 Jan15 January 15:08

          I’m aware of your wish to have less email viewers and more online viewers, which is also why I hope this will work for you – it makes it easier to drive traffic to the website. Otherwise it’s a more-or-less static email with no interaction opportunities. But as you’re well aware, you have a lot of old followers who eat your emails for brekkie, so reducing interaction or removing emails altogether wouldn’t be great. I know I’d have to set a reminder to open the website daily if I didn’t get the daily emails, otherwise I’d just become a sporadic reader.

          Generating tracking URLs automatically from an RSS feed will make it harder to achieve though. I understand why you’d like the tracking, but maybe just append the bookmarks to the end of the original URL with a simply javascript command for now. Either way I’d still add the tracking link to the article heading as before for quick access to the website from the top.

• Andi Hawes says:

  28 Jan28 January 15:16

  Not sure if your still taking feedback Raffles but i thought of one, and its based on a question i asked yourself about how you earn miles. I see that you are now explaining how you pay for items on various trips. I thought it might be interesting to see other users strategy on how they are acquiring, planning to acquire points, flights, which classes, using which cards, accounts, etc??

  I’m currently bouncing all over the place from card to card and considering my own strategy as per points, vouchers various card providers offer, 2 for 1 vouchers, and if they are worth it, etc

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