Temporary website
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Hells Bells
- Posts: 13173
- Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2005 8:42 am
- Location: French Alps
- Contact:
Error here too!
Love your website!
Love your website!
If you always do what you've always done then you'll always get what you've always got.
Apartment Mil Palmeras
Apartment Mil Palmeras
I'm using Internet Explorer. Also tried Google Chrome. Both show "Sorry, an error has occurred. We're working on getting this fixed as soon as we can." when I click on your first Facebook link.
If you always do what you've always done then you'll always get what you've always got.
Apartment Mil Palmeras
Apartment Mil Palmeras
No errors here... but I do have some comments just based on my first impression. Hopefully they don't sound too harsh. 
I appreciate the look you're going for on the website, but I think it is initially a little too streamlined. Even after the homepage first loads, I have no clear idea of what the purpose of the website is. There is a house, apparently, which has a location. I can book something now and read reviews for it, but unless I think to move my mouse, I get no further information. What am I meant to be booking? Is it a holiday rental? A B&B? A wedding venue? Are the figures in the lacy pink graphic meant to explain? And where is it? Once I figure out that I have to mouseover both sides of the graphic to reveal more information, I can tell that the house is environmentally conscious, but I can't tell what continent it's on, nor can I tell whether it's a holiday rental, a B&B, or some kind of spa.
The copy is beautifully written, but there's no indication that anything is "hidden beneath" the graphic, so you're relying on visitors to figure out how to find it without any clues. That's fine in some applications, but in this case I would expect to lose some fraction of visitors because they never think to mouseover the graphic and thus never read enough to be tempted to click further.
The rest of the website is great -- although you should have page titles for SEO purposes -- I just think the first page needs to be a little less slick. There must be a way to add the basic information (self-catering rental house in Vittoriosa, Malta for two people) while still keeping the refined feeling the website conveys.
I appreciate the look you're going for on the website, but I think it is initially a little too streamlined. Even after the homepage first loads, I have no clear idea of what the purpose of the website is. There is a house, apparently, which has a location. I can book something now and read reviews for it, but unless I think to move my mouse, I get no further information. What am I meant to be booking? Is it a holiday rental? A B&B? A wedding venue? Are the figures in the lacy pink graphic meant to explain? And where is it? Once I figure out that I have to mouseover both sides of the graphic to reveal more information, I can tell that the house is environmentally conscious, but I can't tell what continent it's on, nor can I tell whether it's a holiday rental, a B&B, or some kind of spa.
The copy is beautifully written, but there's no indication that anything is "hidden beneath" the graphic, so you're relying on visitors to figure out how to find it without any clues. That's fine in some applications, but in this case I would expect to lose some fraction of visitors because they never think to mouseover the graphic and thus never read enough to be tempted to click further.
The rest of the website is great -- although you should have page titles for SEO purposes -- I just think the first page needs to be a little less slick. There must be a way to add the basic information (self-catering rental house in Vittoriosa, Malta for two people) while still keeping the refined feeling the website conveys.
Brooke
Hmmm - I'm not very keen on that front page - it kept closing over the text when I moved my mouse and I got a tad irritated and you have a couple of typos "pampared" & "it's location".
I would never have gone past that first page as a punter I'm afraid, which is a shame as the rest is wonderful. The apartment is stunning, the pictures are ace and the text does exactly what I think you are trying for.
I would never have gone past that first page as a punter I'm afraid, which is a shame as the rest is wonderful. The apartment is stunning, the pictures are ace and the text does exactly what I think you are trying for.
Maurmc, It's not those links we're referring to. It's this one. Sorry.
Aldo, totally agree with Brooke.
I love your style and the photos are top notch. The thing I'm really not keen on is the homepage. Although the illustration is gorgeous, and sorta has a narrative, I think the mouseover is a bit of a faff and it doesn't add anything to the user experience.
It would be better, I think, if you had a stylish slideshow of the house and locale.
For basic SEO purposes you need descriptive <title> and <description> tags, but looking at your source code it seems your site is framed, which makes me think the files are residing on a different server and you're simply redirecting the domain. This is not a good idea.
I love your style and the photos are top notch. The thing I'm really not keen on is the homepage. Although the illustration is gorgeous, and sorta has a narrative, I think the mouseover is a bit of a faff and it doesn't add anything to the user experience.
It would be better, I think, if you had a stylish slideshow of the house and locale.
For basic SEO purposes you need descriptive <title> and <description> tags, but looking at your source code it seems your site is framed, which makes me think the files are residing on a different server and you're simply redirecting the domain. This is not a good idea.
Last edited by Garri on Mon Sep 06, 2010 8:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
I think that's definitely an improvement. Is there any way to make the fact that there's text under the graphic more obvious? Perhaps making it a rotating graphic the way some of your other pages have slideshows? Fade to exposed left text, then to right text, then back to full graphic, with this being overridden by a mouseover at any time? (I'm assuming you want to keep the graphic.)
Given how elegant this site is, you'll probably come up with a far more elegant solution than this, but I still think it would be good to alert people to the fact that there's extended copy on the front page without them having to do anything to discover it. And I like Garri's suggestion to put some of your fabulous photos on the front page. There must be a way to offer some teaser images that entice people to click without throwing off your style.
Also, can I say how impressed I am that this is not a Flash site? I thought it was until I looked at the source code. Very nice!
You should still have a page title, though.
And your noframes text is also an SEO opportunity, so after the "sorry, you don't support frames, visit this site instead" text, you could add a very SEO-happy variation of your copy. Last time I checked, Google didn't like frames, but it will eat up anything between the noframes tags. So if you add some keyword-rich text to that -- maybe a text-only version of all your pages concatenated -- then Google will give you a better ranking so that actual people will find you and click and see the frame page; so it could be a win-win. (Or as close as you can get to it and still use frames.)
Given how elegant this site is, you'll probably come up with a far more elegant solution than this, but I still think it would be good to alert people to the fact that there's extended copy on the front page without them having to do anything to discover it. And I like Garri's suggestion to put some of your fabulous photos on the front page. There must be a way to offer some teaser images that entice people to click without throwing off your style.
Also, can I say how impressed I am that this is not a Flash site? I thought it was until I looked at the source code. Very nice!
You should still have a page title, though.
And your noframes text is also an SEO opportunity, so after the "sorry, you don't support frames, visit this site instead" text, you could add a very SEO-happy variation of your copy. Last time I checked, Google didn't like frames, but it will eat up anything between the noframes tags. So if you add some keyword-rich text to that -- maybe a text-only version of all your pages concatenated -- then Google will give you a better ranking so that actual people will find you and click and see the frame page; so it could be a win-win. (Or as close as you can get to it and still use frames.)Brooke