Earlier this week, BestPlaces added a small new feature, which drastically increases the usefulness of the site. Internally, we call it the zoomer, and it allows our visitors to view a greater area around places they are researching.
Essentially, when viewing a city (Portland, for example), you can zoom in on zip codes and zoom out to the county, metro area, or state. Similarly, you can zoom back in, perhaps locating places you didn’t know existed.
We’ve always had data on tens of thousands of places. We did pretty good at showing cities, an okay job of profiling neighborhoods, but now we’re showing everything.
Two weeks ago, we launched a new design. For a number of reasons, the previous one had degraded. I’m quite pleased with what came out of the work done by Encrich Media, which gave us a clean slate to work with in adding on this new feature. And I’m proud of what our small team did to get the zoomer out, especially Al, who was very patient with my many nit-picks. Also, thanks to Tom and John for providing me with their expert advice.
There’s a lot more coming from BestPlaces, some of which I’ll probably share here. It’s fun to be involved with a company doing some big things, and I’m happy to be part of it.
Finally got around to checking out the new BestPlaces design—looks great, much easier to read!
Loved the zoomer, made it much more useful to get around a city. Not a lot of positive things said about my new home though… 😀
“All your data is wrong, how can I trust your site?”
zoomer means fewer people mixing up the zip code with the city. You rock!