Membee’s Directory Gets Powerful New Advanced Search, Mapping Features & Mobile-Friendly Design
We’ve been hard at work here in the Hive adding some great new features to your directory. We are very excited about these new features and are pleased to announce in our upcoming release of Membee, the directory will include: Stronger Google Map Integration Redesigned Advanced Search New Advanced Search capabilities Mobile Friendly Design Google …
We’ve been hard at work here in the Hive adding some great new features to your directory. We are very excited about these new features and are pleased to announce in our upcoming release of Membee, the directory will include:
- Stronger Google Map Integration
- Redesigned Advanced Search
- New Advanced Search capabilities
- Mobile Friendly Design
Google Map Integration Comes to Search Results
Ever get lost or need a bit of help getting somewhere? Does “Google it” come to mind? Guess what… Membee’s directory now has Google Map integration built into the search results. Not only can visitors search for members and get a list of results, the results will also show on a map making it easier to see exactly where that member is located. What better way to promote your members than showing your visitors exactly where the member can be found when they look for them on your site.
If you don’t want your members showing on a map, no problem! As with all of Membee’s features, it’s easy to configure by clicking in a checkbox in your directory widget settings.
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You can configure the pin color that is displayed on the map to make your sponsored and featured members stand out on the map. In the example above, the pin color of green is for sponsored listings and the color orange is for any featured listings. All other listings have a pin color of red. You can control which color to use for the pins as part of the widget settings.
The Google Map integration makes it easy for visitors to find information about your members and see where they are located. Giving the visitors the ability to view and find your members helps keep the visitor on your website and also promote your members.
Redesigned Advanced Search
The redesign of the advanced search includes a more user friendly interface. You can set what categorized search options to include as part of the Advanced Search, and also what order they will be displayed in.
Member Categorization Extended to Directory’s Advanced Search
You can offer your visitors a way to do a refined search of your members using categorization fields that you have already defined in the member record. For example, if a visitor is looking for members that are in a particular chapter, the Advanced Search gives them the ability to do so.
For example, if you track something such as chapter as one of your user defined fields (UDFs), you can simply add that to your directory to have it appear as part of the advanced search. Then when a visitor to your directory would like to search for chapters within a given city, they have the ability to do so.
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You can choose to add one or more of the following to your advanced search for your directory:
- Category
- Cities
- States/Provinces
- Country
- Directory Parameters
- User Defined Fields (UDFs) from member records
By extending Membee’s powerful member’s categorization features (UDFs) to your member directory, you extend the same powerful filtered capabilities, you enjoy in Membee to site visitors searching your directory. This makes it very easy for site visitors to find a specific group of members that meet a more refined search criteria.
Mobile-Friendly Design
The directory is now responsive! This means that if the directory is set up on a website, that also uses a responsive design, any visitor that is accessing your directory can use their PC, tablet or smartphone to do so. The directory simply adjusts to the size of the screen the visitor is using. The great thing about responsive design is that it you to maintain everything in one spot – you don’t need to develop or maintain a mobile site or app. Having a single website that works everywhere offers significant savings over creating multiple native mobile apps and provides your visitor with a great experience.
What is Responsive Design?
Responsive design means that your website/features works on your pc, tablet and mobile device by adjusting the content to fit the screen that it is being viewed in.
The benefits of having this are:
- No added cost; all the widgets are already included as part of your subscription cost
- No need for an App to be designed
- You can maintain on the website
To enhance the visitor experience, your entire website should use a responsive design. If you would like to learn more about responsive design, here’s a link that contains some great information:
When Will This Be Available and What’s Next?
The Directory is the first widget to become mobile friendly. We are working on having the other widgets responsive as well, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled on the Release Notes when this new and exciting enhancement is released into Membee. Membee widgets slated to receive mobile friendly redesign include (not in any particular order):
- Profile
- New Member Sign Up
- EBilling
- Events
Not yet subscribed to the Release Notes?
It's really easy to subscribe, and let Membee email you when new features are released. Here are the steps (remember to have your Membee login handy):
1. Go to http://membee.zendesk.com/forums/217757-Release-Notes
2. Click on the "Subscribe" link in the top right corner
Regarding the responsive design…we find that when links (to Membee pages) clicked on through a mobile device, often one is not redirected to the correct page. For example, on our front page of our website, we have a list of upcoming events. If you click on one of the events, it seems to try to direct me to the event registration page but then I am redirected to the entire event calendar! For others, when they click on the event link, their phone just keeps looping – never actually landing on a page. All this to ask: when responsive design… Read more »