What they wanted

• The ability for members to add points of interest, updates, and reviews
• Route map integration with Google Maps
• Trip recommendations based on member ratings
• Dynamic lists showing the best routes and monthly top contributors
• SEO-friendly category and route description pages

How we helped

Planning a road trip is all about details - where to stay, what to see, where to eat, and how to get there. For that reason we essentially created 3 different types of "reviews" for each trip listing: trip rating, attractions/points of interest, and updates/additions. Each review type is presented separately on the page, keeping route listings both detailed and organized.

It's difficult to talk about a road trip route without a proper map so we integrated Best Road Trip Planner's existing set of Google Map scripts into the site. Route map thumbnails are shown on state category pages and each listing features an interactive route map.

In the old days road trippers may have closed their eyes and pointed at the map to pick a route but today's users expect a more refined experience. We revved up the Review App recommendation engine to point viewers to similar routes and even included a list of the best road trip routes in the US. To encourage user contributions we created a dynamic "Top Monthly Contributors" list based on a custom point system.

These days search engine optimization (SEO) is more important than ever so we enabled SEO-friendly URLs for category and route listing pages. Review App also features an XML sitemap feed out of the box to ensure category and listing page URLs are indexed by the major search engines.