Hello all
Any opinions on our new website please? I'm a total novice to building websites so any comments greatly appreciated!
www.vilamourabreaks.co.uk
Cheers!
Sonia
New website
Looks good to me!
I was maybe expecting to see a picture of the inside of the apartment come up before the pool picture on the "apartment" page, but apart from that it does the job for me.
What a brilliant sun set picture as well!
Best wishes
John
PS I'd be tempted to make the dateblocker availability page more than two columns wide if you can (and I think you can) to avoid the need for scrolling.
I was maybe expecting to see a picture of the inside of the apartment come up before the pool picture on the "apartment" page, but apart from that it does the job for me.
What a brilliant sun set picture as well!
Best wishes
John
PS I'd be tempted to make the dateblocker availability page more than two columns wide if you can (and I think you can) to avoid the need for scrolling.
We also liked the web site.
However the weather link on the first page takes you away from your web site. Maybe it should be opened in a new window?
Maybe you could dress the babies cot and not show the bare mattress.
We have just made some comments on another site for a house in France and we have the same comments to make here: there is no link to your E-mail and are those mobile numbers?
It is hard to locate your villa on both of the maps on the web site.
Maybe some more links to things of interest around the area.
We liked the form and have saved the link in our favs with thoughts about using the web service ourselves in the future. At present Ian is having a hell of a time trying to redesign the contact page.
However the weather link on the first page takes you away from your web site. Maybe it should be opened in a new window?
Maybe you could dress the babies cot and not show the bare mattress.
We have just made some comments on another site for a house in France and we have the same comments to make here: there is no link to your E-mail and are those mobile numbers?
It is hard to locate your villa on both of the maps on the web site.
Maybe some more links to things of interest around the area.
We liked the form and have saved the link in our favs with thoughts about using the web service ourselves in the future. At present Ian is having a hell of a time trying to redesign the contact page.
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
Hi Sonia,
It looks good. Nice photos, especially the ones of food on your "things to do" page - they are great!!
Some of the room photos are a bit yellow - if you have photo software you might want to play with the colour a bit.
I agree that the weather link should open a new page, esp as it's on your home page - you lose people before they've even got interested in your place.
You have to tell me how you managed to get your Google map on the site?!! I set one up like yours, with the placemarks, but couldn't work out how to get it onto my site. Any advice??
It looks good. Nice photos, especially the ones of food on your "things to do" page - they are great!!
Some of the room photos are a bit yellow - if you have photo software you might want to play with the colour a bit.
I agree that the weather link should open a new page, esp as it's on your home page - you lose people before they've even got interested in your place.
You have to tell me how you managed to get your Google map on the site?!! I set one up like yours, with the placemarks, but couldn't work out how to get it onto my site. Any advice??
Lounging on the lily pad...
Hello
Sorry for the delay in replying, this may sound a bit weird but when I checked the forum at the end of last week these new posts weren't showing?! Thanks again for your feedback.
Anyway, yes good point about the weather button. I wanted one because I thought a lot of people would be surprised by how warm and sunny it is even in late autumn in the Algarve and thought it might encourage people to book out of season. Also, I wasn't sure how many people would scroll down far enough to see it and click but I suppose you've helped answer that question! I'll see if I can get it to open in another page...been having a break from the website for a few days as the other half was sick of my tantrums.
I hadn't really thought about an email link to be honest. Will look into it although bit concerned it may be beyond me!
Re. it being difficult to locate the apartment on the maps, I'm a bit concerned about this because when I view the map on the 'getting here' page there is a big blue house pointing to the location - is that not visible when you view it Ian / Irene?
Mum didn't dress the cot when she was out there as apparently most families prefer to bring their own bed linen for babies.
As for the map, it was downloaded for free from dateblocker.com where I also got our request form and availability calendar, have been v. impressed so far, everything was really simple to do. Good luck!
Sonia
Sorry for the delay in replying, this may sound a bit weird but when I checked the forum at the end of last week these new posts weren't showing?! Thanks again for your feedback.
Anyway, yes good point about the weather button. I wanted one because I thought a lot of people would be surprised by how warm and sunny it is even in late autumn in the Algarve and thought it might encourage people to book out of season. Also, I wasn't sure how many people would scroll down far enough to see it and click but I suppose you've helped answer that question! I'll see if I can get it to open in another page...been having a break from the website for a few days as the other half was sick of my tantrums.
I hadn't really thought about an email link to be honest. Will look into it although bit concerned it may be beyond me!
Re. it being difficult to locate the apartment on the maps, I'm a bit concerned about this because when I view the map on the 'getting here' page there is a big blue house pointing to the location - is that not visible when you view it Ian / Irene?
Mum didn't dress the cot when she was out there as apparently most families prefer to bring their own bed linen for babies.
As for the map, it was downloaded for free from dateblocker.com where I also got our request form and availability calendar, have been v. impressed so far, everything was really simple to do. Good luck!
Sonia
-
Joanna
- Posts: 1091
- Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2007 3:12 pm
- Location: Chester, North West England & Sidmouth, East Devon
- Contact:
Looks great for a novice - well done!
Just had a quick look at your behind the scenes code (this may get a bit technical!) you may be reducing your chances of a good search engine ranking by doing something called 'keyword stuffing'.
In the code there are 'meta tags' which contain things like descriptions, keywords and authors name. They don't show up on the page but search engines do see them. They are supposed to describe the page, but yours are crammed with repeated words and phrases - e.g. "vilamoura apartment, vilamoura accommodation, vilamoura golf apartment, vilamoura golf accommodation, algarve apartment, ..." and on and on. Search engines like Google don't fall for this and you won't rank any higher for repeating the same words dozens of times and you may even get held back because of it.
My advice is to repeat each keyword no more than 2 or 3 times in the meta tags. Or, don't even use them - they have been abused so much that it's debatable whether Google even looks at them any more!
If you want some really sound advice on how to do well in search engines then check out the articles on this site and spend some time in their forum:
http://www.highrankings.com/
Just had a quick look at your behind the scenes code (this may get a bit technical!) you may be reducing your chances of a good search engine ranking by doing something called 'keyword stuffing'.
In the code there are 'meta tags' which contain things like descriptions, keywords and authors name. They don't show up on the page but search engines do see them. They are supposed to describe the page, but yours are crammed with repeated words and phrases - e.g. "vilamoura apartment, vilamoura accommodation, vilamoura golf apartment, vilamoura golf accommodation, algarve apartment, ..." and on and on. Search engines like Google don't fall for this and you won't rank any higher for repeating the same words dozens of times and you may even get held back because of it.
My advice is to repeat each keyword no more than 2 or 3 times in the meta tags. Or, don't even use them - they have been abused so much that it's debatable whether Google even looks at them any more!
If you want some really sound advice on how to do well in search engines then check out the articles on this site and spend some time in their forum:
http://www.highrankings.com/
Jo
Joint owner of Baker's Cottage in Chester & Chandler's Cottage in Sidmouth
Joint owner of Baker's Cottage in Chester & Chandler's Cottage in Sidmouth
Hi Joanna
Thanks for that.
I've been reading a book called 'How to get noticed by Google' and some of the advice was (I thought!) a little confusing re. the meta keywords tag, saying that:
'Google no longer places great weight on this tag as it has been much abused in the past but it is still worth having. This is because it is still likely that Google will look at the keywords here, and some of the other search engines with still use them' And it didn't say to limit the number of them!
However I did a check on the website the other day (forget on what now) and it did say I'd over-done the keywords so I'll defo do some chopping!
It seems to me that the whole search engine thing is a lot down to trial and error and that google certainly seems to move in mysterious ways! I will keep messing with it and track my place on the searches. Fingers crossed!
Cheers
Sonia
Thanks for that.
I've been reading a book called 'How to get noticed by Google' and some of the advice was (I thought!) a little confusing re. the meta keywords tag, saying that:
'Google no longer places great weight on this tag as it has been much abused in the past but it is still worth having. This is because it is still likely that Google will look at the keywords here, and some of the other search engines with still use them' And it didn't say to limit the number of them!
However I did a check on the website the other day (forget on what now) and it did say I'd over-done the keywords so I'll defo do some chopping!
It seems to me that the whole search engine thing is a lot down to trial and error and that google certainly seems to move in mysterious ways! I will keep messing with it and track my place on the searches. Fingers crossed!
Cheers
Sonia
Sorry we were not so clear on our first posting about your site.
The two maps we referred to are on the following links.
First one:
http://www.vilamourabreaks.co.uk/Vilamoura_Golf.html
Where is the village located?
Second one:
http://www.vilamourabreaks.co.uk/resour ... RA+MAP.jpg
Where is the villa located? BTW we can see that this map has been copied hopefully you have permission to use it. Some folks are getting tetchy about copyright issues these days.
The two maps we referred to are on the following links.
First one:
http://www.vilamourabreaks.co.uk/Vilamoura_Golf.html
Where is the village located?
Second one:
http://www.vilamourabreaks.co.uk/resour ... RA+MAP.jpg
Where is the villa located? BTW we can see that this map has been copied hopefully you have permission to use it. Some folks are getting tetchy about copyright issues these days.
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
Hi Ian/Irene
You're right that Vilamoura itself isn't marked on the embedded golf map but I thought that people would be able to work out from the map on the 'getting here' page where Vilamoura was - that's certainly where I would look if I was trying to find the location of somewhere!
It's really just to show how many golf courses are in the vicinity.
As for the other map, there's 'The apartment is marked by a pointing hand' next to the link. I thought it was quite clear, perhaps I will make it bigger.
My mum picked the map up from their office and they said it was fine.
Cheers
Sonia
You're right that Vilamoura itself isn't marked on the embedded golf map but I thought that people would be able to work out from the map on the 'getting here' page where Vilamoura was - that's certainly where I would look if I was trying to find the location of somewhere!
It's really just to show how many golf courses are in the vicinity.
As for the other map, there's 'The apartment is marked by a pointing hand' next to the link. I thought it was quite clear, perhaps I will make it bigger.
My mum picked the map up from their office and they said it was fine.
Cheers
Sonia