Please Review Site: 2 BR house in Burgundy, France

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vrooje
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Please Review Site: 2 BR house in Burgundy, France

Post by vrooje »

This site has been up and running for a while now, but does not get a lot of hits on its own. We advertise on a British site that links to us, so we do get a lot of business through them. We'd love to bring in our own clients, though.

Here are the answers to the questions Paolo wrote in his topic:
1. Which are your target markets in order of importance?
Couples both traveling together (i.e. 2 couples) and solo, families with kids, francophiles

2. What would you say is the single biggest selling point of your rental property?
Our location -- on a quiet street inside a historic town, right on a beautiful river.

3. What are the other reasons why someone should want to stay in your place instead of another in the same area?
Our prices are very competitive compared to what's available in the area, and most of what is also available is out in the country or doesn't have the views we do.

I designed the site (my parents own the house) and it's written in PHP using a relatively simple text editor.

From this site I also contracted with someone to design a partner site to ours for an apartment in Paris. I'll list that URL too, since they're similar but do have some important differences.

Thank you in advance!

http://www.experienceburgundy.com
http://www.experienceparis.com
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BungleBob
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It's not often I love a site...

Post by BungleBob »

Hi vrooje!

Being from the cynical school of web development and as someone who hates most websites (including our own! ahhh - the quest for perfection...) your site has completely thrown me. From a professional standpoint, I'm finding it hard to fault anything.

Things I loved...
  • Crisp design and high contrast colours without clutter.

    The most important sales points are on the home page: a 4 second scan-read tells me what it is, where it is and how much it is.

    You have a print feature! Massive hoorays for you - it's something too many sites ignore. Your technique is a little special, although there's lots of ways to achieve printer-friendliness and more people should try it.

    Pictures and content are high quality, well optimised and tell me everything I need to know.

    The site is pretty accessible with nicely scaling fonts, etc. Not many sites bother to achieve this, despite the fact that web accessibility is technically law.
Gripes (not many!)...
  • The graphical text used in the navigation is very attractive but not particularly legible. Having gotten the accessibility done so well - it's a shame this isn't slightly clearer. A slight change of size/character spacing or font could fix it?

    The general site font is (I think!) Georgia? I know this font is in vogue right now with Blogger, etc - but I'm not sure it's the best for your page in terms of clarity. Lucida Sans Unicode is similar in "fanciness" but a little easier to read.
I LOVE THIS SITE! One of the hardest things in web design is achieving simplicity and clarity of message and you've done this brilliantly.

Top marks from me.

Rich
Richard Speigal, Editor, España Breaks
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livinginitaly
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Post by livinginitaly »

Hi Vrooje,

Just to echo many of Rich's statements, very nicely laid out site with excellent images (though with a property as nice as that you can't really go wrong ;) ).

You do say that you don't get many 'hits' from search engines though, so i'll try to offer advice in that area.

I'd say a big problem for you is the fact that you don't have any 'text links' from your homepage. Many search engines still can't or won't follow links from images therefore in this case, only your homepage would be listed on the search engines. The problem is if the search engine thinks your site only consists of 'one page' there is no way it's going to give it much importance and therefore a higher position.

To get round this all it takes is to place the 'text links' in or near the 'footer' of the page. This will also be of use to people browsing your site, as some of the pages are very long.

Also, maybe the page titles could be 'better used', repeating the same comment or statement should be avoided. Best way is to use a descriptive text (keywords).

Not much to 'pick on' really .... well done :)
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livinginitaly
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Post by livinginitaly »

Just a quick point about gaining a higher search engine position.

Vrooje's site http://www.experienceburgundy.com/ has been submitted and accepted by www.dmoz.org.

This is a 'human edited' site directory and having your listing in there will automatically give your site great 'credibility' with the likes of 'google' and other robot search engines.

Problem is, as it's edited by 'people', personal opinions will come into play and you may find your site is rejected for the simple reason that the editor of your selected category 'doesn't like it'. Not much you can do or say either.

In addition, you normally find that editors of each category have a 'vested interest' in that subject. So you could find your submission being reviewed by a 'competing' hotelier or a web designer who designed your neighbours website. I'm not saying they still wouldn't be independant ........ but stranger things have happend! :)

Still worth going through the process though.
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Thank you all so much for your comments!

I agonized with my parents (who own the house but are front end web users only) over the graphical menus and the font choice for them. On the one hand, text menus are definitely preferred from an SEO point of view and also from a simple page-load-time point of view... but we also felt that it was really important to give the site a relaxing and elegant feel, and very lack of professionality and efficiency of that font (Edwardian Script ITC -- certainly not available on all computers!) helps pull the viewer into our little electronic "escape." I still go back and forth about this.

I'd like to find a really readable script font that isn't also too casual. The font on e.g. the www.experienceparis.com site is good for a light, energetic feel, but not for a sit-back-in-your-chair-with-a-glass-of-chablis feel.

I love the idea of the text menu bar at the bottom of the site -- I will put that in right away. Does it matter where in the file that is? My first thought would be to embed it in the green background and use e.g. white or pale yellow text, but that would put it at almost the very end of the file. Though I suppose that if it's at the bottom of the page it will be near the end whether it's in the central table or not.

I used to review sites for dmoz.org, which is really the only reason I submitted to them at all -- that and the fact that I knew Yahoo would take ages to review the site! It's good to know that it was worth it -- and actually we do get a few click-throughs a month from dmoz.org.

I included the print feature after I asked my parents to review the first draft of the site and my Mom nearly used up all the ink in her printer trying to print it out! I find that older generations like to print out content from the web so that they can peruse it, whereas younger generations don't even think of web as printable content much of the time. Since most of our clients are from the former group, it seemed appropriate. I spent a while trying to make sure the print page wouldn't be cut off by most printers. Since this site was my first time using PHP (or in fact any web scripting language), there may have been an easier way to do it, but this was the one that a) seemed natural to me and, more importantly, b) I could code pretty easily.

With my next update of the site what I want to do is provide the ability to turn pictures on and off in the printable version. Not quite sure how to optimize doing that.

Again, thank you all so much!
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livinginitaly
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Post by livinginitaly »

Hi again Vrooje,
I love the idea of the text menu bar at the bottom of the site -- I will put that in right away. Does it matter where in the file that is?
No not at all, no one really knows 'exactly' how search engines work, but rumour has it that there are at least two types of 'spiders', one that takes a quick 'glance' at your site and others that check the site for 'deep linking'. Obviously, the second type spend longer on each site and 'scan' the full page and follow all links be they at the top or bottom of the page. Problem is, they spend longer on each site, so don't get to visit or return that often which means it may still take some time to get all pages listed.

Yes, DMOZ gets you into the Yahoo Directory (or least did last time i checked) which is the only 'Free' way in now for businesses. It costs around £200 to buy your way in!
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

That is one beautiful site, congratulations!

Here are my impressions from a whizz round it...

The homepage pic rotates between three pictures. Is this a good thing, or is it confusing? I'm not sure what the benefit is. In case you are wondering which one is the best, in my opinion it is without a doubt the one showing the village with the tower. And what would make it even better is a caption saying 'The view from the house along the Armancon river' or 'View of the medieval ramparts from the house's patio.'

Without a caption we are just looking at a lovely picture of the general area - with a caption we are wowed and want to find out more. (I know it explains the picture in the copy, but people much prefer to read captions than body copy while they are in 'shall I stay or shall I go' mode.)

Taking the quality and loveliness of the site as read, here are some negatives:

- I find your copy, although well written, hard to read because the paragraphs are too long. I think eyes on a computer screen prefer short, snappy paragraphs, one idea per para.

- Personally I would put a few more images on your homepage. I'd show the view, the external of the house, one internal and one of something local and beautiful that will appeal to your target market. You've done the hard part of getting someone to your homepage, now you need to give them your best reasons for renting your house, because it's not a given that they will do the work needed to find out for themselves.

- The FAQ page is really good, and between that and the page on Burgundy you cover what to see and do in the area. But I would put this information on its own page. As you are not on one of the most obvious year-round tourist routes, you need to sell the location to those who don't know it well. I would put this on the Burgundy page and re-title it 'Why Burgundy?' What I am thinking here is that with a beautiful house, beautiful location and two bedrooms you can tap into the year-round rentals market of couples who avoid travelling during the school holidays.

If you are only using one listing site to advertise on, I would use more. I'd start with at least 4 - two US and two UK. These will deliver more enquiries than your own website.

Well done on your first site, there's a lot there for people to copy/emulate!
Paolo
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Paolo,

Well, you posted this over a month ago... but I'm finally getting to it! :) I will try to make the paragraphs shorter and add another picture (with a caption), and also I like the "Why Burgundy?" title idea.

You've actually hit on the reason for the rotating image -- some people we've talked to agree with you on which of the three is the best picture, while others have raved about the picture that shows the side of the house and the weeping willow hanging just above the waterline. Still others like the idea of the bridge image because it looks sort of soft, like a Thomas Kinkade painting or something.

I did just see another site which animated a transition between the pictures so that you didn't have to re-load to see the different images. I liked that idea, though I don't want to use Flash as they did. I'll try and figure this one out along with the menu fonts. I still like the relaxed, elegant font, but agree that it's a bit hard to read and needs some playing with.

As an aside, I'm wondering if year-round rentals are worth it. We just had a friend visit the house in the winter, and the electricity bills were so high that it seemed like we should be charging *more* for the winter if we want to make a profit. I think that's the subject of another board, though...

Thank you so much for all of your comments!
Brooke
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Hi All,

Well... the site has been updated a little... and I've started on a French section (though for now the translations probably aren't too good).

I suppose the largest change is the homepage, where I've added some more pictures. The rose picture on the side is meant to fall halfway on the page upon first load, so that people will have to scroll to see it all (and therefore will scroll to see the lower pictures). I don't expect that this will work on all computers, though.

Incidentally, I'm working on setting up a page to entice those winter lets... We haven't been there recently in the winter but the last time my parents visited in early spring there was a chance snowfall and they took some pictures. There are two winter pictures at http://www.experienceburgundy.com/photos.php -- what do people think? Are those good enough?

Cheers!
-Brooke
Brooke
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

what do people think? Are those good enough?

Brooke,

I would have ordered more snow! :D

They look quite good, and I would couple them with pics of bright sunny winter days too.

The rose pic doesn't do the business on my laptop by the way, it's below the fold.
Paolo
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Paolo,

Yes, these were taken in late, late winter -- we were lucky to get any snow at all!

This is one of the problems that comes with not living near your rental property. I'm sure there have been some great sunny winter days this season (though from what I hear, it has been raining a lot), but we haven't been there for them... perhaps the thing to do is ask a friend to take some pictures or even hire someone.

Interesting about the rose picture -- it's now immediately after the left menu, so hopefully the menu will prompt some to scroll down and the rose will work for others. I'm not even sure it's worth it as a tactic.
Brooke
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

I think if the page comes to a natural stop just at the bottom of the screen you want to avoid it giving the impression that there is nothing more to see by scrolling down. So the top part of a pic or graphic sticking up into the top screen will do that. (Brooke I know you know this, I'm just pointing it out for forum browsers)
Paolo
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livinginitaly
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Post by livinginitaly »

Have to say Brooke ..... you're site does get better every time i view it.

It really shows you have listened and responded to peoples views, but also added more of your own unique style. Very inspirational to us all.

To 'rock' the pedestal i just put you on though ;) ....... google will penalise sites that use text links the same colour as the background, your footer links will be classed by some as 'hidden text'.
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

your footer links will be classed by some as 'hidden text'
Well spotted! No flies on Tony.
Paolo
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Tony,

Thank you for pointing that out! That's actually a mistake -- I have no idea why that text got switched from white... but I'll fix it right away.

Cheers! And thanks for the compliment. :oops:
Brooke
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