Cineworld where are your 301′s!
Cineworld have 74 cinemas around the UK. They are doing pretty well considering the company was only formed in 1996. Their site recently had a bit of a re-vamp but the developers didn’t bother with any re-directs from the old URL’s to the new URL’s. It means my bookmark to my local cinema doesn’t work and they must be losing a big chunk of traffic.
So I thought I’d should sent them an e-mail.
Dear Sir / Madam
I go to the Cineworld Didsbury cinema about three to four times a month. Before the visit I check times by going to the Didsbury cinema page on your site.
Last week I checked cinema times to see a film but when clicking my bookmark the page returned a 404 error. (A 404 error means the page isn’t there). It was at this point I noticed the site has been redesigned and after a quick check released that the inner page URL’s had also changed. For example
The old Didsbury cinema page URL was :
http://www.cineworld.co.uk/reservation/ChoixResa.jgi?REGION=4&CINEMA=84
The new Didsbury cinema page URL is now:
http://www.cineworld.co.uk/cinemas/18
I know a little about websites and Internet marketing, so I’ll give a little bit of free advice. Add 301 re-directs from the old URL’s to the new ones. This way when clicking on my bookmark I’ll get automatically re-directed to the new URL. Best of all the search engines will also get re-directed. Your site must be loosing a lot of traffic indeed which can have the knock on in less people visiting the cinema.
The re-directs can be done by adding rules to your htaccess file. It’s pretty simple, any problems do e-mail back.
Kind Regards
Lets see if we get a reply.
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I agree with what you’re saying; the new site, although an improvement in my eyes, should have 301 redirects.
I’m not so keen on the way you get your message across. Bearing in mind you have written this to be read by a web developer, they will not need to be told how to create redirects — it’ll come across as patronising, which will detract from the good point you’re making.
Furthermore, about .htaccess files — this technology is purely for Apache webservers. Unless you know for sure, they could be using IIS.
Thanks for the comment Graham. I think it’s a real problem with big companies in the UK to ignoring the SEO implications of making changes to their sites. I’ve read a lot about big companies making SEO suicide and it seems that Cineworld have done that.
It’s really a dig at these “big digital agencies” who don’t really know what they are doing but can create good designs.
Regarding the server you can use server spy plug in for firefox to check the type of server – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2036.