Valpak, the coupons site which rank keeps falling in my monthly list, is all ready for an upgrade scheduled for August 5. The new look features improved navigation (some using AJAX) and integrated Google maps displaying merchants offering coupons in your area. The coupons in the list are sorted by distance to your location and you can browse them all or filter by category using tabs at the top.
As of today, Valpak.com still links to the old website but you can preview the new one using this link. I have given it a test drive today. There are certainly some bugs to work around, for example directions link didn’t always work and when it did it didn’t show starting location correctly. Overall however the new look is certainly an improvement.
One question I have to the Valpak people is why hide the merchant phone number behind a click? Is this some sort of spam protection? Also, a suggestion. It would be nice to add a progress bar when the list of merchants is updated after I click on the category tab. Without any indication of what is happening, it is very easy to decide that the tabs are broken.
Old design
New design
I love Valpak. Looking forward to the changes