Be gentle! On second thoughts, give it all you've got!

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.
Paul Carmel
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Be gentle! On second thoughts, give it all you've got!

Post by Paul Carmel »

Hi all,

Well we've finally finished our new website (nearly), so would really value your thoughts, suggestions etc. Please click on the link below.

Two things that I'm particularly interested in are:
How does it look on non-ie browsers? And on a mac?
Download time (esp if you are on dial-up) as I'm concerned that the photos are way too large

And of course anything else you might think!
Please ignore the French part of the site as that's still work in progress . . .
Off to get a stiff drink now,
Cheers
PC
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marcus
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Post by marcus »

Only time for a quick look at the moment, - it's a very, very nice appearance / colour scheme / menu etc and the pictures are great.

But, extremely slow to load, especially the first page (we have ADSL) and it is necessary to scroll left to right which is a bad idea - but this seems to apply on the home page not the other pages I think.

The header picture on 'getting here' is 216kb and others also are very large - people on slow lines will take ages to get these - but as you know, reduce them to 20kb and they don't look half as good...you pays your money...

This was in Firefox at 1024*768. It looks like it doesn't shrink so well for those with smaller screen sizes (still a lot of people) - quite a lot of 'fixed elements' I think.

All of course just detail, and the overall implementation, clarity and design is really brilliant - I look forward to stealing your style/design in due course. I love it.
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Alan Knighting
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Post by Alan Knighting »

Paul,

It all displays very well with IE, Firefox and Netscape but it is slow even on broadband particularly loading the home page. The problem appears to lie with the pictures and the side bar menu. A turbo version is next?

Alan
Paul Carmel
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Post by Paul Carmel »

Thanks folks.

As I thought, as slow as a chav on the razz in sleeveless tee shirt when its minus 8.......I can reduce the size of the pictures but have to say I don't have a clue how to speed up the banner, nav bar and the navigation buttons.......any thoughts!!

Does bandwidth have anything to do with this?
Cheers
PC
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Chalky
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Post by Chalky »

Paul,

I agree with the others - the pics take a bit of time to load. Also, I find some of the text on the home page overlapping - could be something to do with my font size. It's not a problem on the other pages. Otherwise it's clean and crisp!
Chalky

Image
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marcus
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Post by marcus »

In the source it looks like the menu etc load after the pictures, which I think is what gives the impression that they are slow to load. So perhaps they wouldn't be a problem if the menu was moved up the code and loaded first ? - they seem to be little GIF files so shouldn't be a problem timewise.

I'm wondering quietly to myself if all those different layers and all that absolute positioning might be slowing things down but I don't know if that's the case, someone else will know I'm sure

Never heard of a 'chav' by the way.

Cheers
Marcus
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Ju
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Post by Ju »

Hi Paul

Nice site, but very slow to load and to scroll down (I'm on ADSL).

On Firefox, the front page has a scoll right, but this seems to be due to the menu on the bottom of the page, the other pages have the menu going over 2 lines and don't scroll.

The pictures are great, except for the one on the top of the accommodation page. As this is the page most people look at perhaps you could change it for one of your other, more entising ones.

Over all a very nice site.
Paul Carmel
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Post by Paul Carmel »

If I make all the photos JPEG's would this help the speed? or should they be GIF's??????
Cheers
PC
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Alan Knighting
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Post by Alan Knighting »

Paul Carmel wrote:If I make all the photos JPEG's would this help the speed? or should they be GIF's??????
There are many individual differences between GIF's and JPG's but, in general terms:-

Use GIF images for line drawings, images with only a few colours and animated images.

Use JPG images for photographs. JPG images are much smaller than GIF images and therefore download much more quickly.

To test the differences in quality and download speed, use your graphics program to save separate copies of your pictures in both formats. Then look at them for file size and incorporate them into your web pages locally and view them for comparative speed. I think you will find the JPG images are better on both counts.

If I were you, in the search for an improvement in download times, I would reduce the file size of the pictures until the quality starts to deteriorate and then go back a little bit.

Alan
Paul Carmel
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Post by Paul Carmel »

Well we've changed the photo sizes/formats, and a few other bits and pieces including the bottom nav bar on the home page, so it would be good to know if anyone who looked at it earlier thinks it now loads a lot faster - or not! Also, has anyone else had a problem like Chalky with text on the front page overlapping? Marcus, have you any idea how we would go about getting the banner and buttons to download ahead of the photos? So far we can't see any clue as to how we would do this (we're using NetObjects Fusion 8, in case that's of any help).
Thanks again for all your continuing input and help!
Cheers
PC
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marcus
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Post by marcus »

Paul,
I don't have a problem with overlapping text, but the menu not 'breaking' as mentioned above does cause an irritating need to scroll left to right - as said above, this doesn't seem to happen on other pages. I think your site is designed for large resolution screens though, and that could cause a problem for smaller resolution screens.

I thought your main picure on your home page was 60 ish kb before, now it seems to be 90ish kb...?But the picture on 'getting here' is much smaller now. Other pages seem to load faster now.

Re the menu, I was thinking along the lines of simply moving the table containing the navigation bar above the rest of the code to get it to load first - worth a try if you are the kind of person who likes fiddling with the code.

And my last suggestion which won't affect the speed at all - change the Alt text on the pictures to be more exciting for search engines eg 'beach view from our rental villa in Corsica' instead of 'beach' - although your home page has a higher google PR than mine so perhaps you'll tell me to keep my opinions to myself...

Cheers
Marcus
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roxytoo
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Post by roxytoo »

I really like the site too, loads quickly and colours are pleasing on the eye!

Hint for me though, for a new site how did you manage to get a PR of 4 so quickly?

spain rentals
Paul Carmel
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Post by Paul Carmel »

meishka,

The domain name is the same as I have had since 2003 and various up dates have given us the PR. last year it was 5 now 4 so I hope the new site will give us a boost again
Cheers
PC
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Good site, good pics - just one thing - the pictures are crying out for captions to tell me what I am looking at. In the house, which bedroom is which, is that an external of the house, is that terrace with the table sunny, overlooked, scented...?

These are the sorts of things you can tell people (the majority) who can't be bothered to read all your text but will definitely read your captions. I would fill the captions with selling points.

On the pics of the island, it would be good to know how near those beautiful beaches etc. are to the house, and this could be stated in the captions.

Floorplans: it would be really good to see the beds, furniture, kitchen worktops and bathroom units included in these.

Otherwise, well done, you've made a lovely site that makes it look like it is always sunny in Corsica (even though I heard it was snowing this week).
Paolo
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Alan Knighting
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Post by Alan Knighting »

Paul,

It is a lot quicker now and I don't have any sideways scrolling.

Alan
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