Ballyhoo Refresh version 1.7 is by far the most important release of our content management system to date. It includes a host of major new features and content management modules to help you manage your website and provide visitors with the best possible platform to interact with your organisation.
We’ve really pushed the boat out here and have developed several exciting new features that you can use to measure your website’s success and interact with your users. Read on to find out more…
Google Analytics Event Tracking
For those who don’t sell online one of the most effective measures of a successful website is knowing how many people contact you through it.
Keeping track of how many visitors actually get in touch with you (your conversion rate) is a big deal. Knowing where these rewarding visits have come from and being able to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategies is powerful, allowing you to focus your efforts and bring in even more customers.
Ballyhoo Refresh will automatically track events in Google Analytics allowing you to accurately measure your conversion rate. Whenever someone submits your enquiry form or clicks on your email address in the header or footer of your website an event will be tracked in Analytics showing you how that new customer reached your website, including the keyword they found you with in Google or the campaign that caught their attention.
Facebook Commenting
You can easily create a community around your website and give visitors a voice by enabling new Facebook commenting on Ballyhoo Refresh.
This is a direct integration that allows logged in Facebookers to comment on your content and start a conversation. While you’re sure to learn a lot from your customers in this way the main bonus is each user’s comments will be shared across their Facebook network of friends, family and colleagues, giving your brand a new audience whenever someone posts on your website.
You can turn on Facebook commenting on any page type (gallery, content page, etc.) and comments will be stored even if you disable and re-enable commenting at a later date.
Find Your Nearest
Our new Find Your Nearest module is perhaps the most impressive feature we’ve built for Ballyhoo Refresh so far. Hotels, restaurants, shops and other locations can now be easily and accurately located with just a few clicks!
Find Your Nearest cleverly uses Ordnance Survey postcode data (which is free!) to pinpoint locations and calculate distances. If you operate at several locations users will be able to enter their postcode on your website to find the branches closest to them. Results are handily displayed on an interactive Google map that even has a link to get step-by-step directions to the selected location.
Shopping Basket Module
Do you sell a single product or a small range of merchandise but don’t yet require the features of a full-blown e-commerce system? If this sounds like you you’ll love our new Shopping Basket module with basic e-commerce functions powered by PayPal.
This is e-commerce at its most simple level – allowing you to quickly list products with a single image, description and a price for delivery or collection. If you’ve never sold online and want to test the water or you’re only selling a single item with no variations then this is for you.
Testimonials Module
For any business it’s really satisfying to get positive feedback on the quality of your products and services, not to mention all the hard work you put into each project.
Show off these comments with our new Testimonials module which allows you to create a page on your website dedicated to the feedback you’ve received from happy customers.
Each testimonial (with the name of the customer and the date you received the feedback) is displayed in a digestible format matching the design of your website and there’s even an online form so customers can send you new testimonials by email.
Text-Editing Upgrade
Ballyhoo Refresh uses a comprehensive third-party application to power the text-editing features you use to add copy and format pages. In this version we have upgraded Refresh to use the latest available version, providing a more richly-featured text editing suite with everything you need to ensure your website looks great.
With many of the features you’d expect with a modern word processor, you can format text, add images and add links to make your copy as engaging as possible. More advanced users can even edit the html of the page.
Contact Forms
A further improvement in Version 1.7 is the ability to specify where the enquiry form appears within Contact Form pages, allowing you to place content around the form wherever you want.
