WhatClinic.com Blog » Philip Boyle

How To Add A Facebook Like Button (The Basic Version)

Philip Boyle — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:43:06 +0000

I decided a couple of days ago to add Facebook’s like button to this blog and then to our website’s homepage. Seeing as how it’s part of Facebook’s vision of the future of the web I thought it’d be really straightforward to do. It turns out it is, but the documentation on Facebook itself is really unclear so I made a lot of mistakes along the way. Read on and learn from mine so you don’t waste your own time too.

Here are the steps you need to take to get ready to add a Facebook like button to one of your pages, be it a web application, a blog, or something else.

1. Decide who is going to administrate your page

You need a Facebook ID to get this working. Since Facebook’s terms and conditions mean you can only have one account yourself, you either need to use your existing account, or set up a new one for someone in your office who doesn’t have one already. Otherwise you run the risk of having the account with administrator privileges deleted unexpectedly.

Bear in mind that the person who administrates your page may not work for you forever, so be careful who you choose, and ideally you should have more than one administrator.

To get your Facebook ID go to your own profile and click on your Facebook profile picture. Your ID will be at the end of the URL in your browser’s address box.

2. Add Open Graph meta tags

If you want people to like a webpage that isn’t a Facebook page itself then you’ll need to add Open Graph meta tags to its section. The tags you need can be found on the like button page on Facebook. Here are the tags for our blog’s homepage:

Go back to the like button page and use their widget to generate the code you need to add the button to your page. There are a few basic choices for font, colour scheme, size and so on, but you’re probably best off sticking with the defaults (except for width, which you should adjust for the width of the page you’re adding the button to).

The iframe version of the code for our blog homepage looks like this:

There is also what is called the XFBML version of the code which is much simpler but requires you to use the Javascript SDK. The XFBML version would look like this:

Once you’ve added the meta tags (including the Facebook ID of your administrator), and added the iframe or XFBML code to your page you should be ready to go.

Adding like buttons to a WordPress blog

Getting the Facebook like button onto every page of your WordPress blog is easy – you could just paste the code you’ve created above into one of your template files or a sidebar widget. There are potential problems with this though, in that you need to specify the URL of the page to be liked, and if you include the like buttons for posts on the homepage that gets a little complicated.

What I’ve done is put the overall like button for the blog in a widget on the right hand side of the page and used a WordPress plugin called WP Facebook Like to add the like button to the bottom of the content on individual posts’ pages.

The only problem with this is that the plugin (and the other one I tested) only added two of the Open Graph meta tags needed. I added the missing (generic) meta tags using the All in One SEO plugin.

Problems

When I set about doing this I found a lot of the Facebook pages were unclear about what was needed to get started. I kept seeing references to having a Facebook App ID. This isn’t necessary to get started with Facebook like buttons. You just need your Facebook user ID as described above.

As an aside, if you are building an app go to the Facebook app setup page on developers.facebook.com and fill in your details. Every time I used it I ended up getting an error page, so I thought it hadn’t worked. By accident I ended up on another developers page at www.facebook.com/developers/ and it turned out that even though I’d received an error message each time I used the previous page, it had actually setup the apps and given them IDs and so on.

I had also just set up a Facebook page for WhatClinic.com just before I started looking into the like buttons. This added a certain amount of confusion to the process too. I added a like button to the website’s homepage, including adding the required meta tags, and without telling me anything Facebook created a new WhatClinic.com Homepage page, which I was the administrator of. I thought this would be confusing for people who had already liked WhatClinic.com, so I deleted this new page and pointed the like button at the original Facebook page for WhatClinic.com instead.

Nothing too difficult in that, but it leaves me with one unanswered question: seeing as I setup the like button for blog.whatclinic.com I should be the admin for it too, but I’m not. This might have something to do with trying to set it up with a Facebook app ID the first time I tried, but now I have no idea who is the administrator of that page (or even if a page exists for it!). I’ll be contacting Facebook support about this and asking them but I’m not holding out much hope for a fast response…

Have your say

Have you added Facebook like buttons to your own app or site? Did it all go smoothly or did you run into some of the same problems? Let us know in the comments below.

New Prices And Reviews Pages

Philip Boyle — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:02:22 +0000

We’ve just added a new set of navigation tabs to our search results pages after A/B testing them for a week. They didn’t improve conversion by any significant amount but by adding them we give ourselves the flexibility to add new ways of slicing our data, and hopefully capturing more traffic.

First of all, we’ve moved the map link which was on the top right hand side of the page into one of the tabs. This has already increased usage of the maps pages on the site. Secondly, we added two new types of pages, one which pulls together all the reviews for the clinics in the search results, the other all the prices.

These two tabs are brand new pages with their own URLs and are SEO’d to capture traffic relating to reviews and ratings of clinics and treatment prices. This is an SEO experiment in itself. All of the data on these pages exists on other pages. For instance, all the reviews of each clinic exist in their own profile, but these new pages pull together what we think are a useful set of reviews so they can be compared in one place. The same goes for the prices.

Here’s what a normal search results page looks like: Dentists in Dublin

Here’s the reviews page: Reviews of Dentists in Dublin

And here’s the prices page: Prices of Dentists in Dublin

Time will tell whether or not the search engines think these pages are useful, but we’ll be keeping a close eye on how their traffic and usage grows in the coming months.

Have you any experience with re-slicing your own data? How did it work out for you? Leave us a comment below.

Linking To Our Search Results

Philip Boyle — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:33:15 +0000

We’ve had quite a lot of interest in the last couple of days about our name change. If you’re thinking of writing a blog post or tweeting or sharing on Facebook, why not give an example of why the site might be useful?

For instance, my friends are always asking me about finding a good dentist in Dublin so I point them at:

http://www.whatclinic.com/dentists/ireland/county-dublin/dublin

No one I know admits to using Botox, but if they did they might like to see the list of Botox Clinics in the UK:

http://www.whatclinic.com/beauty-clinics/uk/botox

Just do a search on our homepage for any treatment in your location and copy the resutling URL to get your link.

Introducing WhatClinic.com

Philip Boyle — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:27:04 +0000

On August 10^th we are changing our name from RevaHealth.com to WhatClinic.com.

The reasons behind the change are very straightforward. WhatClinic.com is easier to remember, easier to spell, and it does a much better job of explaining what the website does.

These reasons are important because each of them helps increase the traffic to our website, which now stands at over 500,000 people per month, up from 190,000 at the start of the year.

We really want these visitors to remember the name of “that really useful website with all the clinics on it” so they can come back and use us again in the future, helping us to cement a solid user base over time.

Once our visitors can remember our name then they can also recommend us to their friends, and that means even more traffic. With such a simple name there should also be no confusion over the spelling, maximising the effect of any word of mouth recommendations.

For new visitors the name gives a really good indication that the website provides a choice of clinics, which will lead to even higher organic click through from search engine users and help us continue to grow our traffic in yet another way.

In the three years since RevaHealth.com launched we have made fantastic progress towards providing comprehensive information about English speaking health clinics in the UK, Ireland and further afield. As WhatClinic.com we will be taking on that challenge on a global scale.

Apple iPad In Surprisingly Popular Shocker!

Philip Boyle — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:24:12 +0000

Well, I guess it was bound to happen. We announced we’d give away an iPad to one lucky RevaHealth.com user who filled in our survey and announce the winner in June. With June about to end, and Apple selling over 3 million iPads in their existing markets, the iPad’s Irish release date has been pushed back here until July.

So, to keep things fair to the people who have entered already we’re going to close the competition at midnight tomorrow, and announce the winner on July 1st. Then as soon as the iPad goes on sale here we’ll order it and get it to the winner asap.

Thanks to everyone who has filled out the survey so far. To the rest of you, you’ve got just over 24 hours to add your name to the hat.

Irish Online Health Enquiries – May 2010

Philip Boyle — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:13:05 +0000

It’s time to look at what treatments Irish patients contacting clinics through RevaHealth.com were interesting in during May. There’s good news for dental implant specialists both sides of the border, and further afield. Denture clinics in the Republic have something to smile about too, at the expensive of their colleagues in the North. Breast reductions in both women and men are on the rise in cosmetic surgery, and Botox remains the king of cosmetic beauty treatments.

The trend towards lower cost and maitanence dentistry continues as the economy continues to contract, with dentures, teeth cleaning and fillings enquiries all seeing substantial increases against the last year’s averages. Bucking that trend though are dental implants, one of the most costly treatments around, which saw a 20.7% increase in market share, up to 17% compared to the yearly average of 14.1%.

Irish patients continue to enquire about treatment in Northern Ireland in large numbers, with root canals and dental implants seeing the biggest shifts from the norms, but it’s bad news for denture clinics for this month at least as patients in the Republic seek more intent on staying put than making the journey across the border.

Figures for Irish enquiries about dental tourism treatments reveal a shift away from the slightly cheaper treatments of teeth whitening and veneers back towards implants, crowns and bridges. There were also more surprising increases for root canals, dentures and even fillings. This might be because of the run up to people’s summer holidays, so people are already travelling to foreign destinations.

The trend more for breast reduction operations for women continues, as does the increased interest in liposuction. Male breast reduction, also known as treatment for gynecomastia, mirrors the increase in popularity noted in the UK by growing its market share from an average of 1.5% of enquiries to 3% of enquiries in May.

Botox is the undisputed king of the hill in the cosmetic beauty treatment world, accounting for 27.9% of Irish enquiries in May. Laser hair removal is a distant but growing second at 14% of the market.

Finally the overview of medical tourism from Ireland shows very small falls in market share for dental and cosmetic surgery enquiries, with fertility clinics being the biggest winners. In an average month fertility clinics abroad account for 1.5% of Irish medical tourism enquiries, whereas last month they managed to take 3.6% of the market.

More data about the UK market will follow on Monday. If you’d like to see some other statistics about Irish private health patients or have any questions about the above please leave a comment in the box below.

Maps Of Clinics Accepting NHS Patients

Philip Boyle — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:50:19 +0000

We’re always looking for ways to get our information out in front of more people, and one of the ways we’ve been doing that recently is by letting other sites add maps of our clinics to their own websites. In the UK some websites didn’t want to show private clinics, so we’ve developed new maps that only show NHS. Here are some examples.

NHS Dentists in Manchester

NHS Dentists in Manchester data provided by RevaHealth.com

NHS Doctors in Liverpool

NHS Dentists in Manchester data provided by RevaHealth.com

If you want to use these maps on your own website you just need to paste the following html into the content source code of one of your pages.

NHS Dentists in Manchester data provided by RevaHealth.com

Obviously the code needs to be adapted to which map on RevaHealth.com you want to use. The code above points at the NHS dentists in Manachester page, but every search result on our site has a corresponding map that you can use on your site. If you have any trouble making it work just leave a comment below and I’ll help you get it up and running on your site.

BizCamp Dublin 2010

Philip Boyle — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 09:32:01 +0000

Caelen and Owen attended BizCamp Dublin 2010 in the Guinness Storehouse on Saturday and got a chance to take in a few of the talks as well as deliver a presentation. I’ve included Caelen’s slides at the end of this post and Owen gave me a quick rundown of the talks he attended:

Speaker: Des Traynor (Contrast)
Title: Product Strategy for the Business of Web Applications
Comments: good tips on optimising web applications by being disciplined about only building the key required features and constantly examining whether there is a market for your product.

Speaker: Paul McAvinchey (Yaboya Media)
Title: Service before content. Creating online experiences that people will pay for. For anyone wondering how to make money with online content.
Comments: Innovative web business models based on selling premium services to the visitors of your media website such as1) aggregating niche content that is extremely valuable 2) Providing live support /tutorial services 3) Selling products and services relevant to your target market.

Speaker: Paddy Cosgrave (Dublin Web Summit)
Title: I’m not good at much – but I keep trying. I started and exited, have since spoken in a few places like Facebook’s HQ in Palo Alto, and have been appointed to UN committees at a global level for ICT
Comments: Successfully engaged the audience into a group discussion ranging from the value of business coaching services, to the dangers of the Irish service industry model of only serving one or two large suppliers.

Speaker: Alan O’Rourke (Toddle)
Title: Double your online sales & cut your marketing costs by optimising your landing pages.
Comments: great tips on increasing the performance of the call to action on a website.

Overcoming friction in web based sales

Update: 01/06/2010

The next installment of BizCamp happens on June 12th at BizCamp South in the Arclabs Research & Innovation Centre in Waterford. You can register online for free tickets at www.bizcamp.ie/southeast

An iPad For Your Thoughts…

Philip Boyle — Wed, 05 May 2010 10:39:54 +0000

You all know the saying “A penny for your thoughts?”. Well it was coined a long time ago and inflation hasn’t really been taken into account so we decide to do something about it. How about “An iPad for your thoughts?”.

We’d really like to know what you think about our main website RevaHealth.com, so we’ve set up a short survey about the site. If you take a look at the top right hand corner of your screen you should see a small banner that says “Take Our Survey“. Just click on it and away you go.

One lucky respondent will become the proud owner of a brand new Apple iPad!

Win one of these!

We’ll announce the winner here in June and please feel free to pass on a link to this post to anyone else you know who has used RevaHealth.com in the past. There is one important thing to remember though:

If you want to win the iPad, you have to fill in your email address in the last question of the survey.

You need to give us permission to email you or else we can’t tell you that you’ve won!

Best of luck, and thanks in advance for the feedback.

RevaHealth.com Monthly Health Check – May 2010

Philip Boyle — Tue, 04 May 2010 08:00:01 +0000

Following on from my post last month about what treatments Irish dental patients were interested in, here is a more comprehensive look at what dental and cosmetic patients in the UK, Ireland, and the US & Canada are enquiring about on RevaHealth.com. This time I’ve included the data for the past 12 months as well as the month just gone. This gives a good indication of what treatments are growing in popularity over time.

As ever, your comments and feedback both about the figures we’ve published and other figures you might like to see are more than welcome. You can leave a comment at the end of this post or contact us via email or Twitter – full details on the contact us page.

British Patients

Top 10 Dental Treatments Requested by UK Patients - May 2010

First up we take a look at what UK dental patients are interested in. The classic cosmetic treatments of teeth whitening and veneers lead the way. This month I’ve broken out Invisalign from traditional braces as they account for such a big share of the market by themselves, 11.05% in the last month, a 55% increase over their yearly average.

Looking at the other differences between last month’s and last year’s figures you can see a shift towards more basic treatments like teeth cleaning, extractions and dentures to the expensive of some of the more expensive cosmetic treatments. Veneers in particular are 37% behind their yearly average despite still being the second most popular individual treatment. It will be interesting to see if the cosmetic treatments make a comeback as the UK economy turns around.

British Dental Tourism Patients - May 2010

Patients from the UK heading abroad for their dental work are still interested primarily in the top end treatments like veneers and dental implants, but the number one treatment enquired about last month was teeth whitening, traditionally one of the cheaper cosmetic dental treatments. Last month it accounted for 26% of enquiries for dental treatment abroad.

Patients thinking of having teeth whitening abroad are more than likely going to be travelling to their chosen clinic’s location already, as it would be hard to save the travel and accommodation costs on the reduced treatment cost alone.

British Cosmetic Surgery Patients - May 2010

For this month’s figures I’ve rolled a lot of treatments up into their category, and one surprising result is shown here in the UK’s cosmetic surgery figures. Genital reshaping is and has been for the last year the most enquired about area of treatment in the UK. I didn’t really believe this when I saw it myself, so I looked into it a bit further and it turns out that in the past this was largely down to circumcision being included in genital reshaping. However, last month it accounted for only 35% of genital reshaping enquiries. Other treatments enquired about in the last month include vaginoplasty, labiaplasty, hymenoplasty and penis enlargement.

Seeing as genital reshaping accounts for so much of the market we will probably start breaking it out into its individual treatments in next month’s figures.

Top 10 British Cosmetic Beauty Treatments - May 2010

The cosmetic beauty sector has one of the most dependable treatment breakdowns around, being solidly dominated by Botox again and again. Judging by last month’s figures it shows no signs of declining in popularity.

Breakdown of British Medical Tourism - May 2010

Looking at what treatment areas British people are looking for when travelling abroad, you can see that plastic surgery, cosmetic beauty and fertility enquiries are all increasing. We haven’t seen any decrease in the number of enquiries for treatment abroad so although it accounts for less of the market overall, that is just down to the increasing popularity of the other areas mentioned.

Top 10 Medical Tourism Treatments for British Patients - May 2010

As reflected in the breakdown by treatment area, cosmetic surgery treatments are growing in popularity relative to their market share over the past 12 months.

Irish Patients

Top 10 Dental Treatments in Ireland - May 2010

There is an interesting spike in last month’s figures for dental implants compared to their yearly average market share, this despite being among the most expensive treatments available. Similarly there is an increase in interest in Invisalign treatment too, again one of the more modern and expensive treatments available. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues into next month.

Top 10 Dental Treatments for Irish Patients in Northern Ireland - May 2010

Northern Ireland remains a very popular alternative for dental treatment for Irish patients, accounting for 26% of all Irish dental enquiries last month. Again the expensive treatments dominate the enquiries, with braces leading the way. There is evidence of prices falling somewhat in the Republic recently and the Euro is getting weaker at the moment, so it looks like Northern dentists will be in for some competition over the coming months.

Top 10 Dental Treatments for Irish Patients Travelling Abroad - May 2010

The increase in interest in dental implants at home in Ireland seems to be mirrored by a decrease in their popularity last month among patients intending to travel abroad, while the other traditional favourite veneers remains just as popular. Dental crowns, invisalign and dentures all experienced a relative boost in popularity this month too.

Irish Plastic Surgery Patients - May 2010

There has been a fairly steady interest in the cosmetic surgery treatments that are popular among Irish patients for the last year, and it continues this month. The biggest change in the last month has been an increase in popluarity for breast implants, which are 18% ahead of their yearly average.

Irish Beauty Patients - May 2010

As with the UK, the cosmetic beauty sector is dominated by Botox enquiries, here accounting for just under 30% of the market. Frequent television ads for a laser hair removal company seem to have increased the popularity of that treatment also, with enquiries running 23% ahead of their yearly average.

Breakdown of Medical Tourism in Ireland - May 2010

Again, following the trend in the UK, Irish patients looking for treatment abroad are increasingly interested in cosmetic surgery and beauty procedures, as well as fertility and bariatric surgery. The relative decrease does not represent a drop in enquiries numbers for dental treatment abroad, rather it reflects in the increase in numbers for the other treatment areas.

Top 10 Medical Tourism Treatments for Irish Patients - May 2010

The top ten individual treatments for Irish medical tourists are dominated by dental treatments but interestingly botox makes an appearance along with breast implants.

US & Canadian Patients

Medical Tourism Breakdown - USA & Canada - May 2010

Much more so than in the UK or Ireland, US & Canadian patients are looking for dental treatment aborad, and the increases in popularity of other treatment areas is much smaller. Mexico remains by far the most popular destination, followed by the Philippines and Costa Rica.

Top 10 Medical Tourism Treatments for American and Canadian Patients - May 2010

As with dental tourism in Europe, the most popular treatments are the expensive cosmetic treatments of dental implants and dental veneers.

Next Month

As ever we are interested in providing information that is not only useful to us here in RevaHealth.com, but also is of use to you, our readers. Whether you are a journalist, a business owner or a patient, we’d love to hear your feedback and any requests for additional information you might have.