Category: News

Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Edit any listing on BView

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

Yesterday evening we set loose the latest features on BView. It’s taken about a month of development work, but we’re finally there and we hope you’ll all like the new changes.

The main change I’ve been waiting to tell you about is pretty cool. We know there’s more of you than there is of us, so we’ve opened up our directory to the community to help keep it up to date. Getting into specifics, you can:

Edit business details for almost any BView listing. If you find some out of date details for a business, use the “Edit” links on their listing to update name, address, telephone number and website.
Add new businesses to the BView directory. It’s only take a couple of minutes, just click the “Add business” link displayed at the bottom of every page and follow the instructions.
Add pictures and YouTube videos to business profiles. To add them, use the buttons found on the “About” view of the business profile. It will only take a few seconds and will help make our listings even more useful for the community.
Add business descriptions that we’ll display on the “About” tab of a business. Have a look at the “About” tab of any business and follow the instructions, it doesn’t take long.

We only released it last night, and we’ve already had loads of businesses added and a few listings customised too.

If you’re need some help with any of these new features, just get in touch with me and I’ll help you out.

Tags: community, directory, user data editing, wiki
Posted in Announcements, News, Product Updates | 3 Comments »

The Best UK Football Grounds

Friday, August 15th, 2008

(and a BView challenge)

Love it or hate it, there’s no avoiding it. The football season is underway again. The Premier league kicks off tomorrow afternoon, and then it’s the beautiful game, non-stop for nine months (at last).

From Arsenal to Yeovil, we’ve got all 92 English league teams, and the twelve members of the Scottish Premier listed on BView, so lets have your feedback. Which ground is most accommodating, which has the best atmosphere, and which will leave you feeling ripped off?

The current standings see FA Cup winners Portsmouth topping the BView ratings, Joel P reckons Fratton Park has a great atmosphere and excellent fans (if you can get a ticket). Close behind are Hartlepool United , Yeovil Town , and the mighty Arsenal. Manchester United and Chelsea just about sneak into the top 10.

Let’s hear what you’ve got to say, find the clubs you’ve visited and leave your review.

At BView we’ve got three Arsenal fans (myself included), a Spurs fan (there’s no hope for some people), and even a Manchester United fan. As we quite like our football we’ve setup a BView fantasy football league on the official Barclays Premier League site. We’re always looking for healthy competition, so we’re inviting you to setup a team and join our league. Just register on the site, choose a team name, and select your winning eleven (or let the site pick a random team for you). Once your team’s created, all you need to do is click on the “Join League” option and enter our league code (1029829-183770). We’ll come up with a prize for the overall league winner at the end of the season (unless you’re a Spurs fan). Bring it on.

If football really isn’t your thing, don’t forget that BView still wants to give you cake, or if Amazon vouchers are more your thing, check out the August rewards scheme.

Get in touch if you’ve got any questions.

Tags: amazon, BView, cake, fantasy football, free
Posted in Competitions, Events, News | 1 Comment »

BView’s Most Unpopular Business: Gwent Fleet Management

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

Customer reviews started appearing for Gwent Fleet Management in July and have been pouring in ever since. The two listings (NP7 & NP4) for this company were the most highly viewed on BView the past 30 days and have more negative reviews than any other company on BView. While we can’t comment on the situation, we are happy that the site has been useful to the many people who have used BView to engage in an active discussion about this company. This has highlighted to us the need to allow members to write comments on other members’ reviews. Expect to see this feature debuting in the next couple of weeks.

BView was asked by Gwent Fleet Management to remove the reviews from our directory. Naturally, we declined this request (as we do all such requests from actively trading businesses). Check out what our members are saying about Gwent Fleet Management at:

Gwent Fleet Management in NP7

Gwent Fleet Management in NP4

A quick addition to this post: just found this site linked from one of our reviews: Victims of Gwent Fleet Management

UPDATE: According to The Mirror, the owner of Gwent Fleet Management was arrested on the 24th of September.

Tags: BView, gwent fleet management, worst
Posted in General, News | Comments Off

A (Less than) Happy Meal

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

Today McDonald’s joined the roster of large corporations who clearly don’t understand Web 2.0. They emailed me today asking us to take down all of the 1,000+ listings we have for McDonald’s UK restaurants on BView.

We frequently get phone calls from businesses and threatening letters from solicitors asking us to remove a listing or customer review from BView – typically because they don’t like the review one of their customers has written. We always politely (but firmly) say “no”. We do not remove listings of companies that are trading, nor will we remove a customer review just because it is negative. But this is the first large corporate who has asked to be removed.

One has to wonder about the type of company would not want free advertising on the UK’s fastest growing, local search engine for 1000+ of their locations? Perhaps they do not like the reviews our members are writing about their McDonald’s?

Last month over 160 of our members reviewed their local McDonalds. Comments ranged from…

“I really enjoy going to McDonald’s because the majority of staff really nice and they always put their customers before themselves.” — contributed by Marina Rose in Cardiff

to comments like…

“Dirty staff who look like they need work on their presentation. Food is always cold and the tables are never clean.” — contributed by a member about a McDonald’s in Basildon

The overall BView league table for UK fast food restaurants is interesting. Overall, our members liked their local McDonald’s somewhat better than their local Burger King. Ironically our members seem to prefer Burger King’s burgers, but Burger King loses points based on their restaurants’ lack of cleanliness compared to McDonalds, where members frequently comment that “there is often a cleaner wandering around the restaurant tidying up after people, wiping floors, refilling straws and tissues etc.”

	Average BView Score
Domino’s Pizza	76.0
Pret A Manger	75.2
Yo Sushi	67.3
McDonald’s	63.1
KFC	62.8
Burger King	60.2

However neither burger chain seems able to compete with the fast, highly reliable delivery of “piping hot…tasty” pizzas that Domino’s delivers to BView members. Members at uni also like the student discounts that Domino’s offers. Both Pret A Manger and Yo Sushi also garner high marks, but are consistently marked down by members based upon ratings for value.

So what should McDonald’s (or any large corporation) do?

Engage. Stop ignoring and start responding to customer reviews. Companies who respond to negative reviews show that they care about their customers and build credibility with their online audience. Companies need to understand that each review (and their response) will be read by thousands of people over time.
Pro-actively manage your online reputation. Find places to interact online with customers and potential customers. Michael Dell recognised very early how powerful the Internet is for building (or harming) a corporate reputation. Not only does Dell actively respond to online feedback. Dell seeks out new ways to interact with customers and potential customers across the Web. Such actions have significantly enhanced Dell’s reputation.
Take action. If a restaurant in Basildon is dirty, clean it up! Talk to restaurant mangers who have staff that are rude and praise those whose staff are polite. There is nothing that builds’ credibility or loyalty more than acting on customer’s concerns.

The Head of eCommerce for big UK retailer yesterday told me “I don’t need to engage with my customers online. Our customers know where our stores are and we get hundreds of letters every month from our customers.” Another retailer (who employs thousands and spends millions on television advertising) told me “we don’t have the resource to respond to customers online.” Such companies are ignoring the power of the Web at their peril.

BView and Web 2.0 are about empowering people. In recent elections in the UK and US we saw how power is shifting from traditional journalists to bloggers. In a similar way, big advertising budgets will become less effective and sites that aggregate customer reviews will become more powerful in influencing and forming corporate reputations.

Tags: burgerking, BView, dominos, kfc, mcdonalds, pretamanger, reputation, web20, yosushi
Posted in General, News | 1 Comment »

BView and Trusted Places Announce Local Sales Partnership

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

We’re delighted to announce today (July 1) a new local sales partnership with Trusted Places, the social network focussed on local reviews.

The combined offering is the first collaboration of its kind in the UK and places the two companies in a unique position to benefit from the growing local, online advertising market. It presents a viable and cost-effective alternative to traditional directory players, at a much lower cost.

The joint offer is a combination of free and premium access to BView and Trusted Places company profiles that allows business owners to:

Manage their online reputation via their business profile on both www.TrustedPlaces.com and www.BView.co.uk gaining access to both sites’ growing audiences
Add information including business description, key contacts, menus & photos to their profile
Promote special offers exclusively to the TrustedPlaces and BView user community
Increase their footfall through advertising around targeted postcodes on both sites

We think this partnership adds real value to businesses on BView and are excited to be working with the passionate guys at Trusted Places.

Tags: partnership, trusted places
Posted in Announcements, News | 1 Comment »

Free Amazon Vouchers

Monday, June 9th, 2008

Amazon_gift_2
Here’s the crack: since our launch we’ve seen an increasing amount of quality reviews about businesses come in from our users. Your reviews have been funny, well written, and massively helpful to people looking to make informed choices on who they do business with.

We want this culture of quality reviews to continue. So from today we will be offering £10 Amazon vouchers for every 20 reviews you make on BView. Its just a little gift from the makers of BView to give you rewards for your reviews.

So what’s the catch? There is none!Just remember your reviews should focus on the quality, reliability and value of any business. Its all about QRV!

To find out more go to here.

Posted in Competitions, News | Comments Off

Release 2.0

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

We’re always working on ways to make BView.co.uk better, and this week we’ve released a load of great new stuff for you (as the eagle-eyed will have already noticed!)

The main new features in this release include an onsite inbox for privately messaging other users and a Post board for public messages. The post board has replaced the blog function (a decision made thanks to your feedback!) Both the inbox and post board can be found on users profiles.

We’ve also given the profile pages a makeover and added an all new “I Work at” section allowing you to link yourself to your employer and tell people what you do. This will eventually help you build your networks with other users. Check out my profile to see it all in action, and while you’re there, why not leave a message on my post board or contact me and say hello?

Feedback also suggested there wasn’t a lot of love for compliments, so we’ve simplified them to Votes – don’t worry, compliments for your review have still been counted.

From these recent changes you can see that your feedback helps us to get the right changes made to BView, so keep in touch.

Posted in News, Product Updates | Comments Off

Managing Your Online Reputation

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

Gartner recently covered an event where the OASIS Open Reputation Management Systems (ORMS) was created by it’s parent OASIS (Advancement of Structured Information Standards). Phew!

While Gartner concluded that this area may take up to 2 years before it is critical to corporations those with foresight have already started. Most of us have a profile on Linkedin or at least have heard of it. While Linkedin is billed as a networking tool it is fast becoming a personal reputation management tool:

employers are looking at potential employee profiles
before meetings with potential partners research is done via Linkedin profiles
connections are accepted or rejected based upon how impressive your profile appear

Facebook (while less formal than Linkedin) is again being used to manage your personal reputation. Applications allow you to compete over who has been most places, who has most friends and how interesting you friends are.

One of the great features of BView is the ability for business owners to manage their reputation and engage with the community:

reply to reviews
message members
add photos and videos
edit & add descriptions
post updates
add subscribers

With recent new business members including Lloyds TSB maybe our reputation is spreading?

Posted in General, News | 1 Comment »

The BView Empire

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

After a successful launch last Monday, BView is now in flight! Every day new people, businesses, customers are discovering the benefits of using BView. At the moment the community is growing slowly but surely: like all great empires, Rome wasn’t built in a day!

As you may have noticed, one of the significant changes in the latest release was the removal of age/sex from users profiles. This decision was based on your feedback and the realisation that this information is not necessarily important to people in our community. Age maybe important for those hanging out in Myspace or Facebook but for professional and business networks we think this is not important for now.

As the web evolves privacy of information becomes an increasingly hot topic, especially in the world of social networking. Readers won’t need to be reminded of the threats that giving out too much personal information can have (data theft etc) and people often don’t like organisations owning this data. BView members can rest-assured we do not pass personal info onto third parties.

It goes without saying that ambitions at BView are high and we have lots of great plans for future development.

Posted in News, Product Updates | Comments Off

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