Hello! New here & looking for ideas for my website!

[Melanie]

Good Morning!

I've had my site up for a while now & am constantly tweaking to get better results...I would love some constructive criticism from this group, I've heard you are all extremely helpful! Thanks!

Melanie
www.AtHomeInSteamboat.com

[marcus]

I can't imagine who has been spreading such rumours about people here but I will offer a couple of quick comments.

I would add a heading! The page looks as if I need to scroll up to see the heading and introduction, because I am in the middle of detail, but there is nowhere to scroll.

I can't work out if I think the yellow and green background is too distracting, but I think it probably is.

I think things like the availability schedule and map can be relegated away from the top of the first page, since they are adding to the slight 'cluttered' feel, without being critical in the first glance at your site. I think the cluttered feeling is also in part due to the number of font colours and sizes, and the pictures being out of line with each other.

I think the pictures are very good, especially those of the location. I personally would stick a location picture on page 1 instead of the interior picture but others may well disagree.

And the sentence 'Let our home in Steamboat be YOUR home in Steamboat!' - brilliant sentence, I'd get it up the top near the, errr, heading.

Hope that doesn't all sound too critical, your place looks lovely.
Marcus

[enid]

The photos looked great and loaded very quickly on my very slow connection. I was able to find all the information I needed very easily. My negative is the colour - very hard for me to read I'm afraid.

[Alan Knighting]

Melanie,

I agree with Marcus, you really need a heading telling people in a few words what the site is about. When I read the name of the site I immediately imagined a holiday on a steamboat not at a place called Steamboat.

I am not fond of background colours unless they are very discrete.

Alan

[Melanie]

thanks everyone! I actually had "let our home in steamboat..." as our heading. I moved it when I added the special for ski season. The yellow & blue worked for summer in steamboat, am now working on something blue & white for ski season. I get so many opinions...I moved the heading based on some advice, I added the 2nd picture (which actually was the exterior photo) at other advice...i'm not in love with that exterior shot. the "let our home in steamboat..." line seemed to make more sense when it was just the lliving room/fireplace shot. thoughts? i know the 1st page seems cluttered, but based on all of teh questions i get from people looking at the site, i thought i should answer as many as possible right up front. has definitely cut down on "how many does it sleep? do you have internet? " etc, etc. i appreciate any ideas/opinions thanks again! Melanie

[A-two]

I actually had "let our home in steamboat..." as our heading.

Hi Melanie,
Quick notes. I like the catchphrase "Let our home in Steamboat be YOUR home in Steamboat!" and would use this as a sub-heading, but not as the main title, which could be as simple as "Colorado Vacation Rental" (although I'm sure someone else here can think of something better.)

I'm going to stick my neck out and say I love the gradated background color and that's very rare for me to like any colored backgrounds at all.

The reason the site design doesn't work as well as it could do is because you have ignored certain conventions that people expect to see. One example is the lack of extra margin space at the top of the home page, neither a big title, nor a banner heading, which is why people will inevitably try to scroll up to see where the top of the page has gone. Another example is your dancing availability calendar and menu bar, which appear in different places on different pages. These elements are distracting.

If you think of your website as a TV movie, with the home page as the beginning, then what you are doing is setting the scene and giving the reader a taste of the world they are about to imagine themselves enjoying. You are putting the TV remote in their hands, and telling them to click on any scene in whatever order they like. The problem is, you keep moving the TV remote, and there is nothing more annoying than losing that in the middle of a movie when you want to skip a scene or rewind! That's why you do need to settle on a consistent place for your menu bar, also the availability calendar link and so on. Introduce the world to your conventions on the home page, then stick to them throughout the site, or you will lose people.

Overall, I think this website could be stunning with quite a simple tidy up, but you would need to be brave enough to throw out the centered page layout, which is extremely hard even for professional designers to make work successfully, and is basically the root of all your worst problems.

Ranged left type is much easier on the eye to read, and as a practical matter, square blocks of type are easier to line up with square blocks of photos and you can lead people through your site in an orderly fashion. When faced with a page of ragged little blocks of centered type, it's hard to make it look neat and the eye doesn't know which way to look first, and easily misses something.

The answer for me is not to try and cram as much stuff as possible on the home page, but rather to make it a page turner, so that anyone viewing wants to know more and you make is very easy for them to keep that mouse in the same place on the page and keep clicking to the next page and the next page and the next page.....and the only things jumping out at them are the new things you want them to see, not the menu bar, which they have already seen and know where to find when needed .....


Hope this helps,

[Melanie]

hi joanna! thanks for your advice. i will go take a look & see what i can tidy up. honestly, i have had much better response since i started putting more info up front. does anyone else notice that people don't like to click through to additional pages? when i 1st had the site up, the front page was rather clean & neat and...void of info. now that i've added the info, while i don't think it's esthetically the best option, it's definitely been a business boost! so i'll see how i can tidy up a bit & still leave the info. i actually just moved the menu bar on the home page the other day. doing a little experimenting thanks, will go play now. melanie

[Melanie]

ok! i've gone in & cleaned up a few things - are there any more suggestions? thanks for al of your help! melanie