Chinabites

Posted: Jun. 23, 2008

Cityweekend.com.cn has a relatively up-to-date look and heavy focus on user-generated content.  Site organization tells us a bit about their scope and ambition.  The City Weekend brand is, of course, ready to go international (seeing as everywhere has cities and weekends) and the URL is at least good for all Chinese cities.  Bet they wish cityweekend.com wasn’t squatted on, I wonder what kind of ransom the owner of that has asked for?

Like thebeijinger.com the editorial focus of the site is “anything and everything that could interest an expatriate living in Beijing”.

The front page lets you set your local city which is then saved for the rest of your browsing session (and beyond if you don’t delete cookies).  The landing page for the city highlights browsing and searching in a horizontal bar at the top of the content area and splits the bottom of the content area (above the fold) into recent site events / upcoming events on the left and recent blog posts on the right.

Also noteworthy is the sitewide “buzz” ranking system for pushing content upwards, the filtering system which can narrow content down based on several criteria, and the event system where users can publish events at any of the locations listed on the site.  The events system in particular is a savvy win-win-win play where they simultaneously promote a venue (business owner wins), promote an event (event planner wins), and City Weekend gets the latest scoop on what’s happening in Beijing for free (City Weekend, its readers, and advertisers win).  Well played.

The contrast between The Beijinger and City Weekend websites is stark.  City Weekend feels considerably more up-to-date than thebeijinger.com.  Of course, I’m biased because I know it was made with django by a local expat owned web-shop.

Here is another one of those little bullet-pointed subjective breakdowns:

Size of directory:

• restaurants 1366 (best Chinese local food site had 20471 listings)

Site URL:

• Main site: 11 chars + .com +.cn, ugh…has anyone ever typed this whole URL?
• Brand is potentially international

Restaurant URL:

• Restaurant branch url: http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/listings/dining/pizza/has/kros-nest1/
• Relatively human readable
• Cuisine listing is hierarchical, not as flexible as a tag system

Directory Browsing URL:

• http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/listings/dining/?browse=family&loc=beijing_haidian_0
• GET string based 4 EZ filtering

Navigation:

• 1 click to find your desired city on the first visit
• Restaurant search on front page
• 1 click to get the restaurants-only directory
• 1 clicks to get to partial cuisine directory, 2 for ful
• 1 click to sub-locales (Wudaokou, Sanlitun, etc.)

Interactivity:

• Built from the ground up for community input

Information covered:

• Phone
• Address (en cn)
• Price range per couple
• International credit cards

Maps:

• Flash based map from mapabc.com. The slick shiny interface is nice for people who like shiny objects, but completely fails to make the map readable.