Improvement

To increase the performance of our websites offering and their security, we released an improved version of our "Vela service". This service stands in front of all the websites hosted on CentralApp and provides the necessary SSL certificate functionality for thousands of domains. The recent improvements were also necessary to cope with the ever increasing traffic to websites hosted on CentralApp.

Why do you need an SSL certificate?

Simply explained, SSL has two main benefits:

1. It keeps communication between your website & its visitors private: only you and the visitor can read the information exchanged while they are on your website.
2. It proves the legitimacy & identity of your website: this means a visitor to your website can rest assured they are on your website.

A secure website is represented in most browsers with a green lock next to it, indicating security. It also helps your website rank better on search engines, which is our end goal: growing your business.

Fix

Improvement

Based on the feedback received, the following changes are now live.

Websites

• Improved galleries : they are now more dynamic and have a better aspect ratio on all screen size.
• Added the possibility to add an introduction message in the appointements request form (in the same way it was possible to do it for the table bookings).
• Fixed issues in font sizes and spacing in many cases. This mostly affects Lists (with or without pictures)
• Made some corrections in the Dutch and Italian translations.

CentralApp

• Made technical changes to reach 100% of the accessibility score when possible. Accessibility refers here to the experience of users who might have difficulties to use our platform and websites (disabilities, physical or non physical impairments, etc).
• Fixed an issue related to language fallbacks. If a translation is not available (for example a menu item that was not translated), the website now correctly displays the item in the default language of the company.
• Fixed an issue regarding the evaluation of the DNS configuration.
• Fixed an issue for Google and Instagram local AUTH. Any user that has access to a company can now more easily act & debug potential issues related to expired credentials.

Infrastructure

• Performance improvements (caching distributors in-memory) in additional services.
• Improved toolings for developers.
• Fixed a bug where you couldn't unset some fields on companies.

New

In order to ensure all of our CentralApp websites comply with the EU Cookie Law, we have introduced cookie consent on all of our websites.

What is cookie consent?

In the EU under Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy directive, a website must inform users of any tracking or use of cookies. The user must give consent to the website to use any cookies, and cannot keep this data until consent is given.

On your website, there will automatically be a popup stating:

There is also a updated version of the Data Protection page to reflect this change, viewable from the footer of any CentralApp website.

New

Do you have a perfect Spotify playlist to share with your customers? You can now link your CentralApp website with your Spotify or Soundcloud to allow your guests to check out your playlists from your website.

Show off the music that streams in your location, give your guests a taste for what to expect, and share your favourite tracks.

Go to your Information & Settings tab, click Listings & Social Networks, scroll down and input your account links. You can also use this as an opportunity to also double check any other social media accounts you have are inputted with the correct URLs.

New

A franchise is a very hot topic right now and probably one of the best ways to roll out quickly a concept in multiple cities/countries.

With this update, we wanted to give our clients an easy way to showcase that they are open to franchisees by presenting some of the key information about their concept but also receiving qualified leads directly from their website.

Get in touch with a specialist at support@centralapp.com to enable this feature on your website

New

Many of our clients are active on Instagram today, sometimes posting daily about their business. With this new feature, we wanted to offer them a great way to showcase their Instagram images or videos without manually adding them to the gallery. As you add content to a connected Instagram account, it will automatically sync to show your latest posts on your website.

The number of posts visible on the website will vary based on the screen size and the branding settings of your business.

A minimum of 4 Instagram posts is needed to start using this feature.

Fix

Improvement

Based on the feedback received, the following changes are now live

Websites

• Improved the legal page of the website & fix an issue where legal files were not showing up.
• Improved styling of menus in the following cases: Only one element per section, hide price
• The gallery has been slightly reworked to better correspond with the branding of the website and only display an appropriate number of pictures based on the screen size.
• Better order the social links in the footer of websites.
• Optimisation on picture resize to further reduce the loading time of websites.
• Fix an issue where the Event venue page could not be loaded.
• Fix multiple edge cases where a website could not be loaded with the event venue & hiring objective.
• Fix an issue where previews could start to show up in search results.
• Fix an issue for multi-location companies where inexistent sub-location pages could become indexed.

CentralApp

• Various improvements in the profile score
• Fixed an issue related to uploading PDF Menus in multiple-languages
• Fixed multiple issues related to company & user attribution for our partner accounts.
• Improved layout of the analytics page & added direct links from the dashboard
• Improved layout & explanation for the branding page.

Improvement

As part of our transition to the new version of CentralApp for our Belgian & Dutch clients, we have now re-enabled the Dutch language on CentralApp. If your plan allows multi-language, you can enable it today in the settings of your company.

If you need to change the primary language of your company to Dutch, please get in touch with your support at support@centralapp.com team so we can do it for you.

Improvement

As part of our transition to the new version of CentralApp, you will now also see the billing information, invoices & payment methods in the new version of CentralApp.

In our previous version, some billing-related information was only available by contacting us or checking your activation email. With this release we have taken the opportunity to increase the details you can view at any time on the billing page:

• Contract details ( Contract duration, notice period and renewal scheme).
• Active addons.
• Number of locations purchased & Active.
• Billing info ( Name, address, VAT number).

For most of our clients, we have made it possible to view the invoices from our previous version. However, in some rare cases, you will still need to get in touch with us to get a copy of the invoices issued before the transfer.

New

One of the critical elements we measure on our website is conversion. And one of the key elements which will help increase the conversion rate is reducing the number of clicks a potential lead has to make a booking, schedule an appointment, order for delivery or simply get in touch with your business.

This update includes various small improvements to reduce the number of clicks your visitor could make on your website which can be classified into two main categories.

1. Multi-level navigation

Some of our pages could now have multi-level navigation. In this first release, it means that individual menus or individual locations within a chain can now be accessed directly from the main navigation.

This update takes into account our branding system, so the look & feel may be very different on your website.

2. One-click access

We have made multiple updates to make it possible to access specific pages or third party integration directly when there was no need to redirect a visitor to a detailed page in between.

Here are some of the use-cases:

• Websites that are only using one third party integration for a given service
• Website that is only using the phone for a given service
• Website that only has one menu.