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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.
TTP mk2
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Post by TTP mk2 »

e-richard wrote:Mind you, there is a site I use that is a bit heavy handed and asks questions such as 29 + 37 -14 =

Never mind stripping GCSE students, they are only interested in MBAs :D
As it's a practical question, they can't be after people with a MBA.

I did see one a couple of days ago that asked the question 'Is Ice hot or cold ?'
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Gite Guru
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Post by Gite Guru »

frogslegs wrote:I do not have a clue what you are talking about :oops: :? :(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_meme
denisec
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frogslegs site review

Post by denisec »

Hello Frogslegs

I'm new to the forum and hope to put our own site up for review soon, as it too needs updating...
I had a look at your site and believe me I am no expert, but have had some photograpy experience professionally. You are right, your photgraphs will tell the story of your gites, your enviornment, and your climate. May I suggest you take photographs with the lifestyle in mind, that liestyle you are selling..for example in the dining room or patio shots with outside dining, set the table with breakfast stuff or a bottle of wine and some glasses. The local market shot is a good one, or cycling paths or the sea, whatever is your main selling point. The size of your photos are imporant too, and it great if when you click on them they enlarge.
One other comment about the salmon pink header, its a bit wishy washy if I may say so, and you might find that sky blue or sunflower yellow may be more "holiday" inspiring.
Hope this helps.
Regards
Denisec

Hope these suggestions
"tread softly; for you tread on my dreams"
wb Yates.
frogslegs
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Location: Les Adjots, Charente

Post by frogslegs »

Interesting remarks. However, as I am not able to update my site it cost money to change. The guy who said he was a 'website designer' is like many who because they own a computer.....think they are!! However he did not own a apple mac so was unable to do many of my requests. He did not know the difference between sans serif and serif? Justified type and range left? Palatino from Universe? He has now left France and I am very lucky to have a friend in U.K. who can update the text.
When I owned a SLR camera I could stage photos and zoom in but all I have is a digi camera. If I had any interest in computers I would not have given up my graphic design business in the first instance. Thanks for looking :wink:
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Gite Guru
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Post by Gite Guru »

get thee onto Wordpress and unchain yourself from the shackles of rubbish webmasters!
ccazes
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Post by ccazes »

Dear frogslegs,
I agree, I don't undersatnd the last few bloggers. Never mind.
Seriously they are surely experts but there should be a translation service somewhere on Lay my aHat.
I liked the colours, layout and font on your website.
either a gallery regrouping all your photos or being able to click and enlarge the photos on each page would be nice. Some photos on other pages than the main page are too dark.
I would like to see a larger outside photo of each gite on their detail page - give each gite their own identity.
Also the info about each gite isn't clearly defined visually. Either by doing a recap on capacity etc or by using bold or headers you can better define this info so the essential jumps out at the viewer.
Also you can use bold or headers in your info page like you have on other pages to highlight the pros visually.
Lovely website.
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HenryG
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Post by HenryG »

About 'captchas'

I personally think they are not needed at all. The burden of the extra bother should be on the website designer or owner.

It is v possible to code / design contact forms that filter out 99.9% of all automated bot-generated spam .. without resorting to captchas.
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HenryG
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Your website

Post by HenryG »

Hi Froglegs.

Apologies if any thing I mention now was mentioned before.

Also if I dwelve too deeply into this.

Please treat my suggestions and observations as personal and subjective, instead of de-facto standard.

Hope they all help at least some bit, so here it goes:

1. Employing Images instead of Normal Text

not ideal.

For a wide number of reasons including:

* search engine unfriendly
* accessibility problems
* users can't resize font size
* if not done well - looks v grainy

2. Employing Images with no ALT Text

ALT text, is 'alternative text'
expressed inside the web page code
it tells the browser what text to show - as a substitute for the image.

ALT Text makes the website:

* search engine friendlier
* more accessible / user-friendly

3. More 'SEO' needed

The code behind your website could be made more "search-engine friendly".

How this could be achieved?

Plenty of material can be found on this site, links to tutorials, etc .. that deals with the subject of 'SEO'

4. Logo tidying-up

Your logo "Le Tilleul" needs to be made less grainy and blend more seamlessly with the background.

How to achieve that? I don't know.

5. "Logo Phrase" - Make it into normal text

The text next to the logo "In the peaceful deux sevres region of .."

instead of an image, I would use text.

6. Functional Menu

When you hover over a menu item, it should highlight and/or change colour and/or turn bold / become underline.

That sort of thing.

Moreover. Some people also change the menu item, to indicate they are at a certain page.

Most websites have menus that behave like this. Makes it more 'user-friendly'

7. Click makes images larger

Your selling points are your photos. Very nice photos btw.

So much so the temptation is to click on them to see if they enlarge.

So if I were you - I would code to do exactly that.

8. Contrast

Very little contrast (between foreground text / background) could cause trouble for a percentage of visitors.

I think it's about 10% of the population (or more?) have some problem with eyesight: colourblinded, fuzzy sight, etc

Very little contrast can make the experience harder.

This colour contrast checker could help a bit then:

http://juicystudio.com/services/luminos ... tratio.php

Having said all that. There are some 'web accessibility' advocates that believe way too much contrast is also a bad thing (ie very very black vs very very white)

So a balance should be reached somewhere somehow.

There are probably other points to consider. But I will start with these 8 ..

Hope that helps.
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