Hello all & new website!

Get some feedback on your site or ad from other rental owners and techies. Also a library of online resources so you can make DIY improvements to your web presence.
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Waterfall
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Aug 10, 2009 8:37 pm
Location: Dordogne, France
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Hello all & new website!

Post by Waterfall »

Hi everybody!

I just wanted to introduce myself and also to get some opinions on our new website!

I've been a reader of the Lay My Hat forum for well over a year now and learnt a great deal from it, so I'd like to thank you all!

My parents have a holiday home in Dordogne, France that they want to rent out to holiday makers and I've become involved in the "web marketing" side of things being a web designer by profession! We've only had a couple of bookings in the past year, but now we realised it's really time to bump it up a notch and get the property booked out as much of next year as possible. So that's our plan!

So, our website is: Holiday Home in Dordogne, France and I'd love to hear your views and opinions on it as you guys know the holiday market better than anyone!

Thanks again to everyone on here and I look forward to getting involved on this forum in the future!

Michael
la vache!
Posts: 11065
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:22 pm

Post by la vache! »

Welcome to the forum Michael!
I've had a quick look and the gites look lovely. Good interior photos although the lawn looks a bit burnt and patchy in places, but at least that proves that you have sunshine there.
The thing that confuses me from the outset is that there are two properties that can be rented out individually or together, the barn and the gîte, but you say the pool, garden etc. are private. How can that be if both properties are being rented out to different families? For me that is shared.
Small point, but for me personally, a nearby English owned bar and restaurant would put me off rather than attract me, if I holiday in France I want to eat French food.
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Waterfall
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Joined: Mon Aug 10, 2009 8:37 pm
Location: Dordogne, France
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Post by Waterfall »

Hi La Vache!

Thanks for your input :)

Yes it's a tricky situation to explain and I did struggle to try and make it clear on the site. Basically there will only ever be one family/party in the property at one time. They can either be in the Gite, House or both, depending on their preference. So no matter which one they have, all the outside facilities will be private and exclusive to them.

We chose this so we could off private gardens, pool & play area as we believe this is much more attractive than communal facilities.

Thanks for mentioning that, perhaps I'll adjust the text to explain that only one party will be renting the property at a time. As for the English owned bar/restaurant, I'll have to bear that in mind, I do see your point!

Michael
la vache!
Posts: 11065
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:22 pm

Post by la vache! »

Waterfall wrote:Hi La Vache!

Thanks for your input :)

Yes it's a tricky situation to explain and I did struggle to try and make it clear on the site. Basically there will only ever be one family/party in the property at one time. They can either be in the Gite, House or both, depending on their preference. So no matter which one they have, all the outside facilities will be private and exclusive to them.
I see what you mean, that is a hard one to explain - and will people believe you when there are so many money grasping owners out there (present company excluded :wink: ).
Some people actually prefer shared accommodation and facilities - it keeps the kids occupied when there are other kids about, that's for sure.
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Windy
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Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2007 8:21 am
Location: Windermere UK

Post by Windy »

You have an interesting design angle here.

Everything on one page with the menu taking you to anchors in the page.

I'm not sure if I like it, but it might grow on me :lol:

I'm not MAD keen on the green or the wallpaper background but that may be just my bad taste :-) It kept making me think about that story of Napoleon being poisoned by the arsenic in his wallpaper on St Helena :? I think the reason I am not in love with it is that it doesn't set off those sunny photos with the amazing skies as well as it should. Maybe someone with better graphic skills than me can suggest something here.
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tree-peony
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Location: gozo
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Post by tree-peony »

You have an interesting design angle here.

Everything on one page with the menu taking you to anchors in the page.

I'm not sure if I like it, but it might grow on me
5 mins and counting to load on GPRS

sorry, but it doesn't work for me as a concept!
http://www.gozoluxury.co.uk
actually quite nice apartment in Gozo!
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LaVilleauTady
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Location: Southern Brittany (& Lancashire)
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Post by LaVilleauTady »

Hello Michael,

Your post reminds me of that quotation about opinions... I won't repeat it here lol.

Well I think the site is fantastic.
I love the colour scheme (mine is also green!).
The photos are fabulous.
I like the 1 page site and it loaded for me in 5 seconds (fairly slow broadband).

Perhaps you could get over the patchy grass issue by taking spring pictures, but the sky on the ones you have is just great.
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Waterfall
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Location: Dordogne, France
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Post by Waterfall »

Thank you all for taking the time to check it out!

Yes, with regard to the patchy grass I think I will retake some of the photos in the spring time. They were rather rushed as we desperately needed outside photos!

With regards to the single page layout, it is a little bit different, and I'd always wanted to make a site with this layout so I thought I'd go for it! It will increase the initial page loading times, however I have done my best to optimise the size of the page. From all my tests I've done it seems to load in an acceptable time. The majority of the site is just text and plain colors, and the thumbnails, bg, and logo are as small as I can make them.

The overall size of the page is 699KB which is on the upper bounds of the average website homepage nowadays (maybe ranging from 300KB to 700KB). But with internet speeds increasing I reckon it's not too bad. Some quick calculations are:

Average UK Broadband (3.6Mbps) = 1.5s
3G or Slow Broadband (say 1.0 Mbps) = 5.4s
GPRS (56-114 kbps) = 49.1s - 99.9s

I can't really spend the time to optimise, or create an alternate version for mobile devices but I think that on average the site shouldn't take too long to download. Tree-Peony, perhaps you didn't have a very good GPRS connection when you tried it? Otherwise I'm not too sure why it was taking so long to load.

I couldn't help myself doing some calculations and looking up average internet speeds! Not trying to show off or anything, it was more out of curiosity really!

Thanks again for all your opinions!

Michael
happybee
Posts: 79
Joined: Fri Jul 10, 2009 10:18 am

Post by happybee »

Hello Michael,

I really like everything on one page - very neat, easy to read and no jumping between pages. Very well done!

A couple of points, picking up on what others have said:
* Not sure about the green background - it is quite old-fashioned and really doesn't add any value to your site...could you perhaps do something in the background that is a mood-setter? Eg. background of some old french tapestry, flowers of the region or anything else that is evocative and conjures some positive thoughts?
* Similar to what A2 suggested for Vrooje, not sure there is much in the language or photos either that are mood-setters, and help one feel that they are 'living the French dream'...maybe add some fresh flowers to bedrooms in the photos, some drinks near the pool etc. If that is not possible, as you have already taken the photos, what about some text describing the 'lifestyle' as you click on the photos?

Just a few suggestions on what is otherwise a really good website!

Happybee
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Windy
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Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2007 8:21 am
Location: Windermere UK

Post by Windy »

Actually this site is growing on me a lot although I am still not a fan of that particular shade of green.

I think having it on one page with good navigation is quite elegant and your layout is very clean and well thought out

You have some nice touches there too -

I like the rounded corners in FF (Will IE be catching up with CS3 anytime soon? I see that IE8 is still not complying with the radius corner thing), and as a self taught CSS coder I am intrigued by the tabs for each property - is that reliant on any javascript or is it pure css that even idiots like me could do?

I took a look at your code and love the IE style sheet names - say what you mean eh? :lol:

There's quite a lot I can learn from this site in terms of design and layout, and whilst I'm not about to try to convert my 41 page site to a similar format there are certainly some layout ideas here I will mull over and play with, myself, if you wouldn't object Michael!

EDIT - At BIG SIS's suggestion I have added commas around the word "myself" in that last sentence :wink: You know what a stickler she is for correct grammar :lol: :lol: :lol:
ccazes
Posts: 578
Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2009 5:02 pm
Location: France

Post by ccazes »

On one hand I liked that everything is on one page. It is comprehensive and well done.
On the other hand, all that info is a bit overwhelming with one section of info feeding into the next. my little brain would appreciate a break of some sorts between sections even if you keep everything on the one scroll down page. Also your photos seem great but small - why not take the best ones and make them bigger, all the while separating the different info sections.
So whose website are you redoing next? Is there a queue?
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Gite Guru
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Location: Tignes
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Post by Gite Guru »

I like the site design and overall think it works well, but I'm also not so sure on the single page thing.

Experience has taught me that anything that veers from the 'norm' in terms of information architecture is usually enough to confuse your average website visitor.

Additionally, page load speed for visitors is one thing, page load speeds for search engine spiders another. I know that Google takes the issue pretty seriously (hence them releasing Page Speed: http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/)

hth,

GG2
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CSE
Posts: 4414
Joined: Mon Nov 06, 2006 3:34 pm
Location: Galicia

Post by CSE »

The link GG gives is not quite correct There is no bracket at teh end.
http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/
and the download page is here.
http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/download.html

All these add ons are going to slow down my FF :oops:
But thanks for that suggestion GG
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
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Tizfata
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Location: Tuscany
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Post by Tizfata »

la vache! wrote:you say the pool, garden etc. are private. How can that be if both properties are being rented out to different families? For me that is shared.
In my property the pool is obviously shared and I advertise that. The above reminds me of a property in Umbria:
They write on their ads that the pool is private (in Italy the apartments with private pools are very unusual) as they do not allow non-holiday complex guests in. :shock:
https://www.facebook.com/lascuoladifurio

There's no second chance to make a first impression
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