Riverside Cottage website review

[Riverside]

Hi, this is my first post here having just found this website. Loads of useful info that i'll have to read through.

Anyway, i would really appreciate any comments on my website www.riversidecottage.net - This is my first rental property so i'm kind of doing this blind, so all comments gratefully accepted!

Thanks in advance, Andrew.

[Nemo]

Welcome Andrew.

I've had a quick look at your site and the only thing I can say quickly is how impressed I am! I see you have a Google site and having got one myself, I cannot believe how good the site looks. It suggests you have some serious skills that I certainly don't possess. Sigh......

There's a lot of content, so if I have time I will have a longer look and report back any issues. I'm just very jealous at the moment!

[CSE]

I have not had time to delve into the site.
But on a technical note the following are missing:
Meta description
Meta keywords
Headings
XML Sitemap
Doctype
Google Analytics
The following errors showed up.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http: ... ottage.net
However this can be resolved or impact reduced if you gave the Doctype.

[Windy]

Lots of good stuff but are those slide shows supposed to extend outside the frame to the right on the Cottage and Accommodation pages?

[caroig]

Looks great! Especially given the battle you must have fought with Google Sites to achieve it

But on a technical note the following are missing:
Meta description
Meta keywords
Headings
XML Sitemap
Doctype
Google Analytics
The following errors showed up.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http: ... ottage.net
However this can be resolved or impact reduced if you gave the Doctype.

Most of these issues are not really a concern with a Google Sites page. You would think google of all people would be compliant, but their own product produces the majority of the xhtml errors, but google won't penalise you for these. The analytics is there, just not as it would look as a plugin in a non-google site.
I'd guess the missing keywords metatag is a reflection on the fact that google doesn't pay it any heed. The other tags are all there. Google 'knows' about the sitemap for its sites, so this doesn't need to be generated seperately.

I'd modify the title 'Site name' (your site's title tag) and put some of your keywords to the front of it -Period holiday cottage by river, Northumberland, Riverside Cottage. Something that promotes your most competitive keywords.

Google sites won't let you add h1 tags on your page which is very strange. You can hack it in the html but they haven't made it simple. If you can replace the title for each page by removing the google title and adding your own h1 heading tag, this gives you another opportunity add in those keywords for seo.

Hide your edit history!! I don't know why google makes it visible by default (link at page footer), but you can switch it off in your admin settings.

I'd recommend trying wordpress for your next project - I don't know whether google are going to persist with sites but they are not rolling out the changes for it and it's very inflexible, especially given that most of their products are just the opposite.

[CSE]

caroig
Thank you for the inside in how Google dictates how a website should be coded.
It has got me wondering if page rankings* are “adjusted” to reflect this as there are some issues which are at odds with the general trends.
* Adjusted in any search engine up or down; depending if it Google’s own search or not.

[Riverside]

Thanks for all your comments, they are all very useful and kind!

I'm so glad you posted all that info caroig, i'd been trying to work out how to get around all the technical stuff that casasantoestevo had posted and was scratching my head a little!
It's very interesting that most of these errors come from google itself.

I've fought with the damned slideshows to try and get them within the frames but they're just so inflexible i've decided to leave them as they are! It's either really small or this size using the picassa plug in. I've tried other slideshows but none of them worked quite how i wanted it to!

I'm hoping to add video of the Cottage and the area surrounding it as soon as the weather improves, is this generally a good idea? what do people think?

Thanks again everyone.

[caroig]

I've fought with the damned slideshows to try and get them within the frames but they're just so inflexible i've decided to leave them as they are! It's either really small or this size using the picassa plug in. I've tried other slideshows but none of them worked quite how i wanted it to!

If you go into picasaweb and click on the album you want to link to, click on 'Link to this album' then, Embed Slideshow - you get a clip of code for the slideshow widget. Just change the width to something that will fit 360, for example.
In your page, edit the hmtl for the page, overwrite the current plugin (you want to overwrite the <img> tag that google has inserted for the slideshow) and replace it with the <embed> tag you copied from picasaweb.

[Riverside]

Thanks a lot for that caroig, i tried doing what you said and got the slideshow to resize, but for some reason the pictures no longer filled the window!

Anyway, after a while i gave up and re-jigged the front page to make it all fit in properly at it's current size!

[miss mouse]

Responding as a potential visitor;

Very nice website, I want to pack my bags and visit now. Some things were not mentioned, is there outside space? This is not made clear -at least not to me- on the website so I would assume not which would be a negative, there is a brief mention of an outside seating area with BBQ, this puzzles me.

Another thing I do not understand is the 'booking fee', I cannot abide 'booking fees', either the ticket costs £10 or it does not, '£10 plus £3 booking fee and you can only book through us' means that the ticket costs £13 to me. Please explain someone.

[ccazes]

Welcome Andrew.

I've had a quick look at your site and the only thing I can say quickly is how impressed I am! ....... It suggests you have some serious skills that I certainly don't possess. Sigh......

Ok double sigh....
What a lovely website that I wanted to explore ASAP and makes me want to look it up on the map in case there's a chance I could ever go to that part of the world...

But.... I would say that there are too many tabs on the top. You could combine a few (eg availability/pricing and what's included?) and distinguish the upper row from the lower using bigger text for the upper (if that's possible technically speaking).

The photos are great but on the opening page I would like to see a few key non moving photos that show the property at it's best and then the scrolling photos either further down on the front page or on other pages.

Big brownie points for donating to a local trust - what a great idea!

[Riverside]

A big thank you for all your comments, I've tried to take everyone's views on board and think about any changes i need to make. I've redesigned the front page and the Accommodation page a little already.

I've always been big on conservation issues so thought it only fair that i should give back some of the profit i make to a charity that helps protect the regions wildlife and habitats. After all, this is the main draw for tourists to the area. My intention is to donate 10% of profit to a different charity each year.

I've already had some unexpected publicity from this - the Northumberland Wildlife Trust are going to do an article for local press about the Cottage and also put it in their members magazine.

[Riverside]

Have spent the weekend staging and taking some more pictures of the Cottage and re-designing some of the website pages a little.

The photos are great but on the opening page I would like to see a few key non moving photos that show the property at it's best and then the scrolling photos either further down on the front page or on other pages.

Thanks for this advice! I've added non-moving photos on the Accommodation page http://www.riversidecottage.net/accommodation

Some things were not mentioned, is there outside space? This is not made clear -at least not to me- on the website so I would assume not which would be a negative, there is a brief mention of an outside seating area with BBQ, this puzzles me.

Eek! well spotted. I've added a photo of the back yard (doesn't sound very appealing 'yard' does it?), I can't wait until the weather improves and i can get it looking nice with a load of flowers etc to take some better photos.

I'm really pleased with the new pics though:
Dining Room 1
Dining Room 2
Master Bedroom 1
Master Bedroom 2
Herb Planter

[Windy]

Looking much better balanced on the home page now.

It may just be me but I think that the left column would look better if it were centered.

Also if you could keep your menu within the header image (it extends below in IE9) and the the body text and left column below it (it is too high in Firefox) it would look better.

Sorry to bring a world of cross browser compatibility pain

The pictures are looking good - nicely staged - they'd work better if you used a lightbox type application to display the full sized images though.

[lorca]

It´s looking good. Just a small tip re the "backyard " - move the table to hide the drainpipe and dress the table with a small colourful cloth and or bowl of fruit and some wine and glasses.It´ll look a lot more inviting.