New Website...May I have reviews?

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.
User avatar
CSE
Posts: 4414
Joined: Mon Nov 06, 2006 3:34 pm
Location: Galicia

Post by CSE »

Not looking for reviews as such at this stage but
I have a point to raise before you go too far. The background is black and I cannot read the text.

Sorry but I had to bring this up. :oops:
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
User avatar
davhill
Posts: 74
Joined: Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:05 pm
Location: Kendal, Cumbria
Contact:

Post by davhill »

Thank you for pointing this out.

Is that in Opera? If so I just fixed it... the sky background gif was entered as local on all but the 'what is nearby' page.
Property owner in Burneside, Kendal, Cumbria
User avatar
CSE
Posts: 4414
Joined: Mon Nov 06, 2006 3:34 pm
Location: Galicia

Post by CSE »

Yep fixed..I use FF
See you in the morning! Image
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
BlueSkyBlueSea
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2011 11:36 am
Location: Portland, Dorset
Contact:

Post by BlueSkyBlueSea »

Sorry I have not been around for the last week, work got in the way! Glad to see you are now getting to grips with Dreamweaver. Give it some time and I promise it will reward you. I see you are having trouble with having to recreate your menu on each new page. Dreamweaver allows you to template a page so that all you would need to do to add a page in the future is drop in your new content. Look up templates - they make my life much easier after I have that first page up and running as I would want. This http://www.entheosweb.com/website_desig ... mplate.asp may help.
BlueSkyBlueSea
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2011 11:36 am
Location: Portland, Dorset
Contact:

Post by BlueSkyBlueSea »

Sorry, one other thing. Your images are quite large file size wise. You really need to reduce file sizes as much as you can. This will reduce page load speed (less likely your visitor will press the back button) as well as keep Google happy as they are now beginning to look at things like page speed in their ranking criteria. I use Photoshop but if you don't have something like that to hand there are quite a few online compressors that can help. Try http://www.jpegreducer.com or just google image compression if you are using a different format. I have just tried your header image which is 305k - the link I supplied compressed it to 134k with virtually no loss in image quality.

Hope that helps.
User avatar
davhill
Posts: 74
Joined: Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:05 pm
Location: Kendal, Cumbria
Contact:

Post by davhill »

Thank you for these tips.

I'll see to the image sizes later. I have Photoshop so I can reorganise them using it. Still sandboxing live at the moment, as it were, so the site is by no means finished. :D
Property owner in Burneside, Kendal, Cumbria
User avatar
CSE
Posts: 4414
Joined: Mon Nov 06, 2006 3:34 pm
Location: Galicia

Post by CSE »

davhill wrote:Still sandboxing live at the moment, as it were, so the site is by no means finished. :D
cum on we are still waiting Image (joke)
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
User avatar
davhill
Posts: 74
Joined: Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:05 pm
Location: Kendal, Cumbria
Contact:

Post by davhill »

Right, getting there :wink:

Bit more picture-rich now (all my own work, guvnor).

Traffic still a bit sparse but I'm working on that.

:D
Property owner in Burneside, Kendal, Cumbria
User avatar
CSE
Posts: 4414
Joined: Mon Nov 06, 2006 3:34 pm
Location: Galicia

Post by CSE »

Traffic still a bit sparse
Wait until a bank holiday then the lake district fills up..sorry do you mean for your website?? :lol: :lol: :lol:
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
User avatar
davhill
Posts: 74
Joined: Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:05 pm
Location: Kendal, Cumbria
Contact:

Post by davhill »

Both, really. However, it seems we've had a lot of views in a short time with H-L, who we've just joined.

For the site, I've added meta tags and can use Google Analytics to see the effect...visits slowly increasing thus far.

I've also done a few tweaks with other advertisers, so we'll see :roll:
Property owner in Burneside, Kendal, Cumbria
BlueSkyBlueSea
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2011 11:36 am
Location: Portland, Dorset
Contact:

Post by BlueSkyBlueSea »

Are we out of the sandbox now? Are you ready for some feedback? All constructive, naturally :lol: .
User avatar
davhill
Posts: 74
Joined: Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:05 pm
Location: Kendal, Cumbria
Contact:

Post by davhill »

BlueSkyBlueSea wrote:Are we out of the sandbox now? Are you ready for some feedback? All constructive, naturally :lol: .
Yes please, with one proviso. The aim is (obviously) to get bodies in the flat! One couple arriving Good Friday and leaving Easter Sunday is all we have 'til the end of April. That's disappointing.
Property owner in Burneside, Kendal, Cumbria
User avatar
Maurmc
Posts: 605
Joined: Sun Aug 02, 2009 7:12 pm
Location: Costa Blanca, Spain
Contact:

Post by Maurmc »

It looks lovely! Your "inside and out" page has a photo of Living room instead of bedroom
If you always do what you've always done then you'll always get what you've always got.

Apartment Mil Palmeras
User avatar
CSE
Posts: 4414
Joined: Mon Nov 06, 2006 3:34 pm
Location: Galicia

Post by CSE »

Like before I will highlight what I see as negative as I feel this helps to concentrate on improvements.
First page: On the side bar I click “inventory” opens a new browser. The others open in the same browser.
Talking about http://www.valleyviewkendal.co.uk/inventory.html I feel that the table is a bit messy and confusing. Could you not highlight or separate each room with the details?

It is hard to describe this but here is hopefully what I mean:
-----------------------
Living Room
---------------
· Iron
· Torch
· 40 cloths pegs
· etc
-------------------
Bedroom
----------------------------------
· bed
· more things
· yet more things
· etc

Note the lines are not all the way across and maybe shade the sub headers (rooms) to make them stand our from the list of items.
I cannot do it on this forum, but you can obviously still have several rooms along side each other if you distinguish them somehow.
When I view each page there is a large gap between the end of each page and the last item. I can see from the coding you have empty paragraphs. To save the view panning down too far you should perhaps cut out the empty bits.
There is now only one error on the first page;
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http: ... ndal.co.uk


To sum up:
On the whole it is a fantastic improvement. I like the booking feature/page. It knows I am in Spain and calculates the price in Euros for me. :D
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
User avatar
davhill
Posts: 74
Joined: Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:05 pm
Location: Kendal, Cumbria
Contact:

Post by davhill »

Fantastic improvement? That's encouraging, thank you.

I fixed the inventory opening a new browser...the link button was not set to _self on the homepage. Missed that :roll:

The inventory page is a bit of a problem. Visit Britain want it to be there. I appreciate your suggestion. However, the original version was like this and it was also confusing. I went for a table format instead but can't really do anything about the fact that the kitchen has the most items, which is why it has more headings. I get the feeling this layout will have to be a necessary evil :wink:

I've also fixed the overlong footer sections and added a copyright line, which also serves to indicate the end of each page.

I'm unsure over what to do about the alt tag that the validator has found. I suspect it is for the hidden page counter that I have on the page...as advised, I can go and look at hit counts but they aren't displayed. So, I'll investigate.

Meanwhile, we need an upturn in bookings. Not even an enquiry today...football, methinks.

Thanks again :D
Property owner in Burneside, Kendal, Cumbria
Post Reply