hi, would anyone like to review our site in Orlando?

[paultwell]

Hello,

We have been working on our site for a few months now with a large degree of help. We have tweaked a changed it around and wondered what people thought of it and how we may be able to improve it.

kind regards
paul twell
www.orlandoqualityvillas.com
info@orlandoqualityvillas.com

[paolo]

Hello Paul,

I was looking down the list of website reviews and saw that you had zero reviews, so here I am, better late than never!

I think you have done a lot of good things on your site. Best of all is your choice of a white background, and extremely legible text - black san-serif, with red for sub-heads, and bold for key points - that's bang on.

Some of the pictures are squashed, for instance the top one on your villa page.

I find the columns of links on both sides of your homepage quite distracting. At a glance they look like ads, but on closer inspection they are actually links to useful bits of information. I would try to make them look more a part of your site. You've gone to a good deal of effort to provide this information and it's all useful stuff, so you want to get people stuck into it.

Villa page: in your descriptions, sometimes there is a question left hanging in the air, and the question is 'so what?' For instance your dining room is "with a Door Way leading to The Pool Area." That's an opportunity to express a benefit and place the reader in the property. In other places you do this very well, e.g. the Master Bedroom is described as having "a door leading to the pool area for those midnight swims".

Questions page: excellent, and very easy to read.

Out and about page: those pics of area attractions are nice but I really, really want to be able to click on them!

Google search box at the top of every page: why? Do you want to lose your visitor? I don't think this is a good idea, and it's extra visual clutter you can do without.

I don't know why the site is called Orlando Quality Villas in the plural. Well I probably know why, but a punter may be confused to see the branding is about 'villas' when there is only one. That's not a major problem though.

All in all, good stuff!

[vrooje]

Hi Paul,

First, I agree 100% with Paolo. This is a very nice site which is very easy to navigate and has a lot of great details to it that really make the overall picture satisfying. That's great!

Things I love (aside from what Paolo already mentioned):

• The babelfish function -- allows a basic translation into many languages. And potential clients who use this know they're not getting a perfect translation. Though I do wonder -- what if you got a booking inquiry from someone who speaks no English? How would that work?
  
  The Disney fonts and images are great (The Mickey in particular). But, Disney is such a big company that it begs the question: are you legally allowed to use these? I love the environment it creates on your site and I doubt Disney would ever care, but you never know... that could be worth looking into.
  
  Love your FAQ!

I do have some suggestions, in no particular order and mostly small stuff:

• fussball = foosball, I think. I googled "fussball" and I got a bunch of German links, and I googled "foosball" and got links in English. I'm not totally sure, though.
  
  On baby equipment -- there's been some discussion on this forum as to the legalities of providing e.g. baby cots. I'd look into that, too -- whether you have to buy a new mattress for each baby because of sterilization and germ issues, for example. I know nothing about this, just what I've read here.
  
  I love your picture of the bathroom with the bubble bath and wine. It really draws me in to the property. It's fantastic -- it makes the potential client think, "ooh, I could be relaxing in that nice, hot bubble bath and sipping a nice wine." Love it! So my question is, why aren't all your pictures like that?
  
  On the out and about pages -- I want to click those links too! I think that's because the site invited me to "take a look." That makes me think "click these," and I would like to read a little more about each of those attractions.
  
  Minor technical point: there's a broken link to the "bookings" link image on the bookings page -- maybe an "active link" image?
  
  On your links page -- in general you should try to get as many links back to your site from these people as possible. This might not be possible, though, because all the links seem to be to big companies. Either way, I don't like all the animated gifs -- it makes me want to click away. Consider replacing those links with a bulleted, organized list, and maybe a still image for each.
  
  On the "contact" pages -- what are the pictures at the left for? Are those you? I'm tired so I might have missed it, but in any case I want to see some captions there.
  
  If there's one critique I have about the overall site, it's the same as Paolo's -- the site feels so commercial. The number of links you have on your homepage probably rivals that of Amazon.com. Is that the feeling you want potential clients to have? There can be comfort in the feeling that you're working with a big company, but there can also be suspicion. Plus, throughout the copy of your site you have a personal touch that's nice -- putting your first and last names on, for example. It just doesn't match, for me, your homepage. I'd try to bring those links together onto one page (the links page?) that you could link to very simply from the homepage to keep it uncluttered.

Overall, I'm impressed -- you have a lot of information on this site and it comes across generally well!

Cheers,

[paolo]

Disney is such a big company that it begs the question: are you legally allowed to use these?

I don't know the answer to that but I do know that thousands of personal websites in Orlando use Disney images, because I have seen them! So I doubt there is going to be a lawsuit hitting anyone's doormat, if indeed that is what lawsuits do.

[vrooje]

Yeah, I figured that too! But... I also thought I would be remiss if I didn't point it out. Just ignore me!

[paultwell]

Thankyou so much Paulo and Brooke for your intuitive and thorough suggestions for my website. I have had a bit of an update using most of your suggestions.

I have to finish off updating the links page and tidy that up removing the banner ads and making it more user friendly.

Im trying to find the broken link on the booking page... not sure at the moment where it is.

The pictures i cannot improve on as i havent actually been there and have relied on others to take the pics for me. Its frustrating but hopefully later on this year ill have some more personal shots.

Thanks again and hopefully things are a little better now.

kind regards
paul twell

[vrooje]

Hi Paul,

I don't have much time right now to do another look-through, but the broken images were in the top navigation menu on the booking page. The white "booking" image isn't there, and actually for some reason the "home" image link isn't there either. That latter part has to be a typo, because it shows up on other pages.

I am using Firefox from Linux, which is fairly unique, but I don't see how that would matter with displaying images.

I did notice that the Out and About links are now clickable and contain a lot more information on the new pages -- great!

Cheers!