A much tinkered with first website, is it enough?

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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kendalcottages
Posts: 2474
Joined: Fri Nov 27, 2009 11:08 am
Location: Kendal, between the Lake District and the Dales
Contact:

Post by kendalcottages »

Thanks, Garri... some great links there, most of which I hadn't come across before.
Kendal Holiday Cottages Ltd., Kendal, Cumbria - between the Lake District & the Yorkshire Dales.
gone-fishin
Posts: 33
Joined: Fri Jan 01, 2010 6:32 pm
Location: Lot et Garonne

Post by gone-fishin »

Hello Pen, thanks for having a peak at mine and appologies to all because I did not read the sticky about first post's.

Penn, on page 6 there is a whacking big gap(after, do ask for further details) then an advert to French.... Connections. When the link is clicked it says page not found error.
Why the link, is it recipricol.?

With this link surely you are giving a customer chance to move off and find somewhere else ...well, if French...C... was working,that is!Just tried it again (4th test) =page not found error

Gone fishin
Measure twice and cut once!
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Pen
Posts: 92
Joined: Mon May 11, 2009 1:02 pm
Location: Brittany, France

Post by Pen »

I have now done a quick fix resize, which hopefully will make most users happy - would appreciate confirmation from anyone who had problems yesterday.

Thanks for the masses of info, I will check out font issue sometime, but at the moment a woodburner and glass of red is calling!
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kendalcottages
Posts: 2474
Joined: Fri Nov 27, 2009 11:08 am
Location: Kendal, between the Lake District and the Dales
Contact:

Post by kendalcottages »

This is much better from a size point of view although I would make it a fraction smaller still. On my 1024x768 monitor, although I can see everything, it still 'activates' the lateral scroll bar and I can scroll ever so slightly across and see a small bit of the right hand pic that is at first out of view.
Kendal Holiday Cottages Ltd., Kendal, Cumbria - between the Lake District & the Yorkshire Dales.
gone-fishin
Posts: 33
Joined: Fri Jan 01, 2010 6:32 pm
Location: Lot et Garonne

Post by gone-fishin »

End of page 6 French...c is still dead!

Gone Fishin
Measure twice and cut once!
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Pen
Posts: 92
Joined: Mon May 11, 2009 1:02 pm
Location: Brittany, France

Post by Pen »

I know the FC link doesn't work - I have repeatedly told them and asked for another one to paste in but they claim it functions!
If I take it off they will remove the reciprocal link to our website from our listing with them, and since they have always done well for us I can live with it, just try & keep it out of sight - hence the big space before it appears!
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Rocket Rab
Posts: 2248
Joined: Mon Sep 18, 2006 5:37 pm
Contact:

Post by Rocket Rab »

I know I'm being boring, or silly, or both, but I still can't get the dropdown dates to work on your enquiry form?
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Pen
Posts: 92
Joined: Mon May 11, 2009 1:02 pm
Location: Brittany, France

Post by Pen »

Have you ticked the little box called particular dates just above the drop downs? Until you do they won't become selectable!
I uploaded the enquiry form from rentability, if you know of a better free one do tell me please.
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Windy
Posts: 3219
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2007 8:21 am
Location: Windermere UK

Post by Windy »

Generally pretty damn good

(BTW thanks Garri for those interesting links)

A minor point - on

http://www.lfrgites.com/page3.html

the text in the middle line sup a bit close to the left with the dots used as bulletsalmost touching the photos.
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vrooje
Posts: 3202
Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 2:48 am
Location: Burgundy, France

Post by vrooje »

Hi Pen,

Apologies for being late to the party! :)

Overall, I like this site and feel it gives a lot of information and has plenty of photos. But of course, I do have some comments. I hope they don't sound too negative.
  • - Like a few others, I am not a huge fan of the green on green. I like green (my website makes liberal use of green), I just don't like the background shade you've selected. I wish it were a bit lighter and a bit less olive green. The latter is just a personal preference, but the former would make the whole site easier to read. In fact, I think I'd prefer a background that was more like a sage-greenish cream color. Something with a higher contrast.

    - I couldn't find any mention of the fact that your cottage is in France on front page. Not just for SEO purposes, but for general information purposes, it's good to mention that within the first few lines of your homepage. People who already know where Brittany is won't be put off by it, and people who don't know or aren't sure (not all Americans will know, for example) will be glad to know.

    - I did find basic pricing information on the front (and other) pages, which is great.

    - Your photos are a good size on the page (and the page isn't too wide for me, but I have a fairly high-resolution screen). However, the file sizes are too large - some are over 300 KB, way too big for the sizes you're displaying. One on your special offers page is 727 KB and it's more decorative than informative. That takes a long time to load. None of these photos should be larger than around 50-75K, and even the bigger photos here and there shouldn't be more than 100K or so. I suggest working on compressing them a bit more; you may need to play with the compression level so that you get the minimum file size without losing quality (which may mean switching to jpeg for some photos). The first photo on your contact page is a good example of what you should be shooting for with all your photo sizes.

    - Also, while I am glad you're using the TITLE tag, the majority of your photos don't have captions. The TITLE tag gives some information about each photo, but only if you mouseover the photo, which not everyone knows to do. I suggest you put text captions below each photo so that potential guests know exactly what they're looking at.

    - Your photos also don't appear to have ALT text in the code. They really ought to. This is the text that appears if the photo doesn't load for some reason, and it's an SEO goldmine. Leaving it empty is shooting yourself in the foot from an SEO perspective.

    - Speaking of SEO, your page titles are not helping you in the SEO department. Your home page title is just "Welcome" when it could be something like "Welcome to La Fontaine Rouilée Gîtes, Self-Catering Holiday Rental Cottage and House in Brittany, France", which would include a lot more keywords that Google et al. would lap up. Likewise with all your other page titles -- use keywords that both inform the viewer and help the search engines give you a higher ranking for searches you want to come up in.
On the inquiry form:
  • I agree with RR that the selection of dates is a bit confusing. Since you explained it, I understand that you're making it so that people only need to choose dates if they have dates to choose. However, you can't always be there to explain that and not everyone will get that right away (I didn't). My suggestion would be that, at the very least, you change the text "particular dates" to "I have fixed dates" or something else that's more direct.

    I actually like the idea of directly asking for the information about whether or not people have fixed dates on the inquiry form. That's quite useful information. But it seems a bit off-putting for people to initially not be able to enter dates. I think it would be better to instead have a tickbox that says "My dates are flexible," independent of the dropdown boxes for the dates, which I think should always be open/editable. But that's a bit more coding than just changing the wording of the tickbox, so I understand that may not be an option if you didn't write that code.

    Incidentally, the inquiry form links back to Rentability. Is that a requirement for being able to use their form? Could you at least link it back to your specific page on Rentability instead of just Rentability.com? I don't recommend putting a link to a listing site filled with other Brittany properties right next to the submit button on your own inquiry form. (I also think the link text is a little bit too close to the background text for Google & others to be pleased. You could get penalized for having a hidden link.)

    I like how the form defaults to the current date, though I'd sort of prefer it to default to a few months later than today. But, again, I understand if that's not possible because you don't have access to the source code that figures out the date and makes the proper selections.

    You don't have to pay Rentability for inquiries through this form, do you?
Overall, I'd say that this is a very good site that could be even better with a few tweaks. As it is right now I don't think it's going to turn anyone away, but websites can always be improved. :)

Cheers!
Brooke
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Pen
Posts: 92
Joined: Mon May 11, 2009 1:02 pm
Location: Brittany, France

Post by Pen »

Thanks everyone for all the feedback. I have now done quite a lot of resizing, of pages and photos, added html page titles and alternative tags to photos and used a web friendly font.

Can't find a paler green shade that looks warm for the background - anyone got any recommended RGB mixes - I don't want a bluey-green. Creamy-sage would be fine - but need the mix to apply it. I have the deepened the colour of the text to aid contrast.

Enquiry form - have added instructions above it, I can't see how to change it as it's a free download from rentability - I'm not concerned about losing potential guests to them as their link is so small I think it's unlikely to be noticed much, so I'll stick with it for now. I do want an enquiry form on the page, so if anyone can recommend a better option please let me know.

so how's it looking now - what to do next?!?
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Garri
Posts: 1689
Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2005 7:26 pm

Post by Garri »

Pen wrote: Can't find a paler green shade that looks warm for the background - anyone got any recommended RGB mixes
Try hunting around the excellent Colour Lovers site for ideas and inspiration.
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Windy
Posts: 3219
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2007 8:21 am
Location: Windermere UK

Post by Windy »

This site is quite useful for colour selection too

http://colorschemedesigner.com/
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vrooje
Posts: 3202
Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 2:48 am
Location: Burgundy, France

Post by vrooje »

My recommendation as a place to start from:

Code: Select all

<body
 bgcolor="#EEFFDD"
 text="#004400"
 link="#008800"
 vlink="#004400"
 alink="#880000">
I actually prefer #EEFFEE for the bgcolor, but EEFFDD is a little more like a lighter version of the original color.

Who is your website host? If your package supports a scripting language like ASP or PHP, you can write your own inquiry form script (and we'll help, I'm sure).

If you prefer to keep the Rentability script, I agree, there's not much you can do except change the link back to Rentability so that it links to your personal page. At the very least, I would do that.
Brooke
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Windy
Posts: 3219
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2007 8:21 am
Location: Windermere UK

Post by Windy »

If your web site support PHP there's a great PHP script at

http://www.dbmasters.net/node/18

As Brooke says we can probably hack something together with you if you don't "get it" straight away.
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