Give Your Audience What They Crave!
Custom category verticals provide targeted user experience
When our media partner at Columbus Dispatch was preparing to launch a new dining magazine entitled Crave, they wanted to ensure there was a complementary Website for the magazine. The Dispatch turned to Planet Discover to create and launch the online companion when the first issue was released in May 2011.
The Crave site is a completely custom hyper-local restaurant vertical developed and hosted by Planet Discover. While the Crave site is built on Planet Discover Local Directory, it incorporates a number of custom features that allow users to identify unique local dining experiences:
- Hyper-local restaurant guides using Planet Discover Neighborhood Manager to define local geographic areas
- Daily Crave editorial content created by Crave editorial staff
- Custom categories and restaurant attributes created in Search Publisher, the Planet Discover proprietary software platform
The Crave home page demonstrates design consistency with the magazine as well as the varied editorial content provided by Crave editorial staff.
To create continuity for the local audience, Local Directory has been customized to match the look and feel of Crave magazine. In addition to a custom design, Search Publisher provides the functionality for custom features such as neighborhoods, cuisine types, specialties and price range which allow users to refine their restaurant search criteria. In addition to editorial reviews created by Crave editors, user-submitted reviews– a critical factor in helping people choose local businesses – from Local Directory are included on the Crave site as well.
Crave business profile pages include business information, a photo, user-submitted and editorial reviews and restaurant attributes.
The ability to display editorial content created by Columbus Dispatch demonstrates the flexibility of the Search Publisher software. The Daily Crave, City Guides and restaurant reviews content is prepared by Crave editorial staff and delivered to Planet Discover in the form of data feeds. Search Publisher processes these feeds and a Planet Discover Web developer styles the HTML tags in the feeds for display on the Crave site. In the case of restaurant reviews, Search Publisher provides the ability to associate Crave editorial reviews for display on the corresponding business profile page.
Daily Crave content is provided to Planet Discover in a data feed.