Website revamp comments welcome

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.
gardennorm
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Location: Skopelos island, Greece
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Website revamp comments welcome

Post by gardennorm »

Hi, Ive just had my web site redone and am interested in what your thoughts are
The site is in Joomla and the automated booking system is in resmania.
Please let me know what you think of the design and useability :)
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Windy
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Post by Windy »

It looks clean and professional - maybe a tiny bit clinical?

I quite like the chat idea, but I am a bit worried it may be distracting - what do others think? (I have "borrowed" it anyway so thank you! :-) )

I think you need a map somewhere visible - I know where Skopelos is but only because I have been to Skiathos. I struggled to find a map - apologies if there is one.

I like the sort selection, but it would be more useful if you could select by number of bedrooms for example.
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CarolineH
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Post by CarolineH »

Just had a quick look, but it is INCREDIBLY slow on my connection (I'm sorry, I'm out in the sticks - 1.3MB connection, but so might be your potential guests)

When I click on the first villa Green on Blue - it opens up in a new tab.

I find the bold words in the text a bit off-putting - one or two bolds to draw your attention to those words are ok, but here it's a bit of a turnoff.

Apart from that, I like it - the scrolling header is very smart :)
gardennorm
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Location: Skopelos island, Greece
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Post by gardennorm »

Thank you for taking the time to look at my site and leave feed back, your comments are very helpful and I will make the necessary alterations. :D
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gam
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Post by gam »

CarolineH wrote:the scrolling header is very smart :)
I think so too. It's cu3er isn't it gardennorm? If so then you might want to try it on your Wordpress site Caroline - it's available as a free plugin.

Agree with Windy that the site looks clean and professional (but not clinical to me), and the chat thing is intriguing.

Also agree with Caroline about the overuse of bold text plus rather a lot of italic. Doesn't help with readability.

I'm lucky enough to have a very fast broadband connection and also found the site a little slow. Running it through Google Page Speed Online, there are a few issues that need sorting.

Nice site :)
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gardennorm
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Location: Skopelos island, Greece
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Post by gardennorm »

Hi Gam, the image scroller in cu3er, its a free joomla extension and works well. there's plenty of options in the back end to personalize the settings and you can link the images to pages on your site.
Ive not had many people use the chat up to now but you can instigate chat from the control panel, as you can see visitors when they are on the site and see which page they are on. I got it from zopim.com, the basic package is free, thats what I use and is perfectly adequate for a small site like mine :)
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la vache!
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Post by la vache! »

Can only agree with all the previous comments really. I am on nearly 2Mo here and the screen was black for too long. Same as Windy for the searches - if you are doing search options, you need many more criteria to search on. I hate any different police on a page, and lots of mixes of bold, italic and normal as it looks unprofessional. I didn't find the text very easy to read either, but that is probably my problem not yours.
The site was quite commercial to me, maybe that is why it seems a little clinical, but then it is a listing site and not a personal website.
Intrigued too, but the chat thing - do you ever get any weirdos who want to chat with you??
gardennorm
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Post by gardennorm »

No wierdos yet la vache, you can ban them in the admin area so if you did get someone like that you could deal with them quite easily :wink:
Thank you for your feed back, the text will be tackled tomorrow, not sure how to speed up the page down load time :?
I do have a mod to refine searches so ill add this, hopefully it will make life easier for visitors :)
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964kevin
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Post by 964kevin »

Love the banner, but the photo's section timed out, far too long to load.

Overall, I realy quite like it,


Kevin
http://www.encantada-vacation.com

Our little piece of Florida, never get tired of being there. Love it and the people to bits.
Paul G
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Post by Paul G »

If you check the image sizes [pictures down the side and the two along the bottom] they are much bigger than they need to be.

The sunrise one is 70KB whilst the one Cypress Vila is over 200 to achieve the same size image. Having them all at 70KB or less will help the loading speed which took 45 secs here on a 4mb connection. To be honest most people only wait 10- 20 secs before they go elsewhere.

Good luck.
gardennorm
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Post by gardennorm »

Thanks Paul, I'll reduce the image sizes, im guessing reducing the ones in the rotator will also help :)
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CarolineH
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Post by CarolineH »

Little problem with the photo galleries ... I get an error with Firefox 8 saying that it may be because I have cookies disabled, but I haven't :?
gardennorm
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Post by gardennorm »

Thank you CarolineH,
Just tried it my self and cant get in, it may be to do with the sef program, ill look at it and see if I can work it out :?
Again thankyou very much for the help full feed back its invaluable, just got to work out how to put things right!!
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gam
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Post by gam »

gardennorm wrote:not sure how to speed up the page down load time :?
Google Page Speed Online will show you what the issues are. As Paul G says, the first problem is that the images are huge and are then having to be be scaled. Reducing those to the size displayed will reduce the amount of data being downloaded each time by a huge amount.
The following images are resized in HTML or CSS. Serving scaled images could save 951.5KiB (78% reduction).

* http://www.aegeanescapes.com/.../kayake ... t-time.jpg is resized in HTML or CSS from 1,000x800 to 252x202. Serving a scaled image could save 332.4KiB (93% reduction).
* http://www.aegeanescapes.com/.../holida ... opelos.jpg is resized in HTML or CSS from 500x334 to 252x180. Serving a scaled image could save 152KiB (72% reduction).
* http://www.aegeanescapes.com/.../skopelos-villas.jpg is resized in HTML or CSS from 500x331 to 252x180. Serving a scaled image could save 148.9KiB (72% reduction).
* http://www.aegeanescapes.com/.../holida ... greece.jpg is resized in HTML or CSS from 500x320 to 252x172. Serving a scaled image could save 148.1KiB (72% reduction).
* http://www.aegeanescapes.com/.../skopel ... lidays.jpg is resized in HTML or CSS from 500x357 to 252x179. Serving a scaled image could save 126.4KiB (74% reduction).
* http://www.aegeanescapes.com/.../villas-in-greece.jpg is resized in HTML or CSS from 414x276 to 252x169. Serving a scaled image could save 43.7KiB (62% reduction).
When you've dealt with the images have a look for a Joomla cache plugin. That will handle most of the other issues for you.
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Escape to the Country - the story of a lifestyle change and other cheesy clichés
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gardennorm
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Post by gardennorm »

fantastic, many thanks Gam :)
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