CAN YOU TAKE A LOOK AT MY SITE PLEASE?

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.
barmaidfromhell
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:13 pm
Location: calis beach turkey
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CAN YOU TAKE A LOOK AT MY SITE PLEASE?

Post by barmaidfromhell »

New to both web pages and renting :?
All feedback is most welcome :)

www.violet-apartment-calis-turkey.co.uk

Thanks
barmaidfromhell 8)
MadDogWoman
Posts: 63
Joined: Sat Dec 11, 2004 2:39 pm

Feedback

Post by MadDogWoman »

A comment and a question.
I started to have a look then Mr MDW started to hassle me to prepare veggies for dinner!
Your pictures seem to take and age to download (I'm on an old fashioned dial up though).
Why the Scottish flags?
Nic
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vrooje
Posts: 3202
Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 2:48 am
Location: Burgundy, France

Post by vrooje »

barmaidfromhell,

First, Nicola is right, your pictures are enormous. 1760 x 1168 is far too large for the vast majority of users. Start by re-sizing your images, and try making two copies of each image: One copy that is very small, say 200 or 250 pixels wide, to put on your main pages, and then one that is something like 35% of what your large image is now (i.e. 640 pixels wide), and use that for the image that people go to when they click on the smaller images on your page.

I do this on my page; for example I'll have bedroom1_sm.jpg that I display within the "about the house" page, and then I set it up so that when people click on that image, they are taken to the bedroom1_big.jpg image. That way, the initial page doesn't take very long to load because it only has to load small images, and if someone wants to wait an extra second or two they can choose to do that by clicking on the image. But you should optimize your pictures so that they take a maximum of a few seconds to load for a dial-up internet user.

Note: I'd actually like to see more pictures on the home page, so that makes this image optimization much more important. Most people won't wait around for a page to load, so try to make sure your smaller pictures are under 15K in file size.

Also, you've set up your pages like a presentation or a slideshow -- with "back" and "next" buttons, but without a menu that stays the same on every page. I've seen this idea used with good results in many applications, but I'm not sure the rental home market is one of those. If I wanted to go straight to your availability calendar, I wouldn't be able to do that easily, and I wouldn't know how long it would take for me to click-through to there. That type of thing could put off a lot of potential clients. You could solve this by just putting some text menus at the bottom of your buttons, that would look like:

Home | Apartment | Getting Around | Prices | Contact

and naturally the words between the | characters would be links to each page.

I think it's great that you put a summary of where the apartment is located on the homepage. I also suggest that you add one more sentence saying explicitly that this is a vacation rental apartment and how many bedrooms/bathrooms it has. Right now there's nothing on the front page that lets users know that the place is a rental apartment.

One last suggestion before others jump in: make your page titles more descriptive and put "vacation rental" in each one of them. Example: change the title of the home page to something like "Violet Apartments - a vacation rental on the beach in Calis, Turkey" and then add a phrase like " - Violet Apartments Turkish Vacation Rental" to each of your other page titles. This not only puts in keywords for search engines, but it's full of information.

Oh, sorry, one other thing -- I suggest running a spell check on your page text.

Looks like you've got a beautiful, sunny apartment. Good luck with your rental endeavours!
Brooke
barmaidfromhell
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:13 pm
Location: calis beach turkey
Contact:

Post by barmaidfromhell »

vrooje

Thanks for your advice.
Seems we have a lot to learn and your help is most appreciated :D


Nicola

Scottish flags are simpley because we're Scottish :D

Thanks again
Anne
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oskar
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Location: Lanzarote
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Post by oskar »

But might that not put off potential English renters? :wink: :wink:
MadDogWoman
Posts: 63
Joined: Sat Dec 11, 2004 2:39 pm

Post by MadDogWoman »

oskar wrote:But might that not put off potential English renters? :wink: :wink:
Anne
Just what I thought too! :lol: :wink:
Why not try a scottish and a turkish flag rather than really rubbing our english noses in it!!!!!
Nicola
:lol:
barmaidfromhell
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:13 pm
Location: calis beach turkey
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Post by barmaidfromhell »

Flags replaced with Turkish ones :D
Don't want to be accused of discrimination after all :wink:
Hubby has resized the pics and added a few other bits and pieces. He's put all the info he's gained so far on here to good use. Must say it looks much better now.
The help is very much appreciated :D :D
Still for a first attempt I think he's done really well :)
Thanks again for a great site
Anne
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oskar
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Location: Lanzarote
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Post by oskar »

Just to let you know, Anne, that your www box at the bottom of your posts isn't working.
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Thanks Oskar, it's fixed now.
Paolo
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eamonn
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Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2005 11:47 pm
Location: donegal, ireland
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Post by eamonn »

Hi BFH
I looked at your site, Lots of great photos and information.
However I prefer a more traditional surf through a web site i.e. a menu that allows me to see where I'm going before getting there. The bad thing about that is that you may lose potential clients before they get to see what they want from the product.
Also the flags are annoying as are the rotating headers.
Please take this strictly as constructive, you have all the tools and info, but personally I would redo the presentation and layout
eamonn
ps best of luck great property
i,ve been everywhere man!
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Eamonn,

Off-topic but nice to see you taking the time to give your views on other owners' sites. :D
Paolo
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