Please can you review my site vacvertes.com

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Chambo
Posts: 240
Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2005 10:43 am
Location: St Germain Les Belles, Limousin, France
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Please can you review my site vacvertes.com

Post by Chambo »

Hello, I would be so grateful for any advice on my new website www.vacvertes.com - I've just had our old one (of about 4 years) redesigned. This is the result, which I like a lot but would love to put it to the forum, as I know I have probably missed something glaringly obvious. I think my photos might be letting us down?
A huge thank you in advance,
Anna
Village holiday house, for large groups: Limousin, 30 minutes south of Limoges. http://www.vacvertes.com
https://www.facebook.com/VacancesVertes ... ef=tn_tnmn
www.chambers-maids-brecon.com
la vache!
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Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:22 pm

Post by la vache! »

Hi Anna,
I think it looks great - I can't remember what your other website looked like but as far as I'm concerned this has everything you need to know, and I didn't find the photos a turn off at all. And they all have the lightbox enlarge feature that I'm very jealous of. I can't comment on the SEO, but it looks clean, modern and very professional to me. The only thing is maybe I'd have a couple of the bedrooms made up as doubles (I know you state this in the text, but a couple of photos would perhaps be good.)
And if you could get a photo of the front of the house with some more flowers around? But those are minor things. Well done!
Chambo
Posts: 240
Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2005 10:43 am
Location: St Germain Les Belles, Limousin, France
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Post by Chambo »

Susan, thank you so much for taking the trouble to post on this and thank you for your lovely comments! My designer has been great and worked alongside all my annoying changes really well, but I agree with your points and I'll sort them in the next batch of photos. I am just so happy that this is now in wordpress and I can make any changes 'on a whim'! Thank you
Village holiday house, for large groups: Limousin, 30 minutes south of Limoges. http://www.vacvertes.com
https://www.facebook.com/VacancesVertes ... ef=tn_tnmn
www.chambers-maids-brecon.com
declanja
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Location: Nice France
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Post by declanja »

Well done on your new website, I found it clean and easy to navigate. I thought your photos are good too.I know we all want some criticial comments too when we look for reviews but mine are really minor. I was not so happy with the way your main photo on the home page changes, I found the vertical lines hard on my eyes as the photos changed. I also found it distracted from reading the text. I also didnt like what seems to be the shadow of the text bubble on your map page. Do you need that black shadow? Otherwise I think its great and like to format. i didnt read all the text and know nothing about SEO either.

It seems a fine big property and not expensive for suitable families compared to my one bed in Nice! Best of luck with it.

Declan
Chambo
Posts: 240
Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2005 10:43 am
Location: St Germain Les Belles, Limousin, France
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Post by Chambo »

Thank you Declan. Oh yes, that shadow is a bit annoying, I'll ask the web designer about that and the vertical lines to see how easy it is to change them.
I've just had a nose at your beautiful apartment (the direct link didn't work though, by the way) and your bookings are amazing! I have to lower our prices to attract smaller groups and I think they reflect what we offer and the kind of groups who come to the Limousin.
Thank you for taking the time to have a look and good luck with everything, Anna
Village holiday house, for large groups: Limousin, 30 minutes south of Limoges. http://www.vacvertes.com
https://www.facebook.com/VacancesVertes ... ef=tn_tnmn
www.chambers-maids-brecon.com
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donafe
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Post by donafe »

Anna,

I think it’s a very good example of a holiday rentals website: easy to navigate, beautiful colour scheme, not too much text on the pages, good pictures.

One thing that could be improved from the user perspective is CTAs (“Calls To Action”): I can see “Rates & Reservation” tab right in the middle it’s exactly the same as the rest of the tabs. Maybe it’s worth highlighting it somehow – prompt the visitor to use it like “Book now”. To be honest I spent some time before I could find the enquiry form – maybe it’s just me but there might be other people who will do the same.

A little bit more on a technical note

There is plenty of JavaScript on the site but why there is no “date picker” on the Enquiry form? It would be much nicer than using drop down lists.

The site is not as “snappy” as it could be when the JavaScript is on. It takes almost a second before the pages starts rendering: You might have noticed that the page stays “white” for a while before the content is displayed. This is something that your web designer should be able to help you with. Just to see what I mean – switch off the JavaScript and it would feel much more responsive when you go from page to page.

Having said all the above, I believe it’s the best website that I have reviewed on LMH

Well done!
Chambo
Posts: 240
Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2005 10:43 am
Location: St Germain Les Belles, Limousin, France
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Post by Chambo »

Donafe - I don't know what to say! All bashful here. Well, I'd be more bashful if I'd actually designed it.. Thank you so much for taking the time to have a look and to give such amazing feedback. I just checked and yes, the page is white before it changes - not entirely sure about the technical answer involving this but I will definitely pass this onto our designer.

By date picker, do you mean those lovely calenders that pop up and you just click on the relevant date?

Interesting point about highlighting the rates and reservation. Mabe I will rename it 'book now' and highlight it in some way? I'm a bit of a novice to all this but I'll have a big old read of the wordpress guide my designer sent me and see what I can do.

A bit of a plug but if anyone likes his work, my designer's details are at the bottom of the web pages.

Or if anyone else hates something about the site, please do say - I really need this new site to work and I'm never offended by constructive criticism!
Village holiday house, for large groups: Limousin, 30 minutes south of Limoges. http://www.vacvertes.com
https://www.facebook.com/VacancesVertes ... ef=tn_tnmn
www.chambers-maids-brecon.com
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donafe
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Post by donafe »

Anna, I don’t hate anything about your website - I like it! It was difficult to find something to complain about.

Your designer used the latest version of jquery – and there is a date picker widget available. Have a look at the query website to see some examples:

http://jqueryui.com/demos/datepicker/

It’s fully customizable, can be easily localized into French and we can all appreciate the fact that it's free.
gam
Posts: 291
Joined: Thu Aug 04, 2011 6:36 pm

Post by gam »

Just had a quick look and thought, nice, but where's the content?

Reading back through the comments I realised that something must be wrong so loaded the site in another browser - and there it was!

So, thought I'd better tell you that for me, running Firefox (3.6.20), all I can see is the welcome English/French page and if I choose either of those I get the first "proper" page with no further links showing other than the two buried in the text in the last paragraph and the two in the bottom blue bar.

In Internet explorer however, I can see the links in the top blue bar in all pages.
la vache!
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Post by la vache! »

Works fine for me in Firefox 6.0
Chambo
Posts: 240
Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2005 10:43 am
Location: St Germain Les Belles, Limousin, France
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Post by Chambo »

Oh god, thank you Gam - you're right! We must have a different version of firefox to you, Susan. I've just sent an urgent message to try and get this fixed - thank you for bringing it to my attention.
Village holiday house, for large groups: Limousin, 30 minutes south of Limoges. http://www.vacvertes.com
https://www.facebook.com/VacancesVertes ... ef=tn_tnmn
www.chambers-maids-brecon.com
Circé
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Joined: Fri Aug 13, 2010 2:13 pm

Post by Circé »

I'm with Gam: on Firefox 5.0 for Mac all I can get are the welcome pages in English or French
Using Safari 4.1.3 on the Mac I do get the tabs

On the property itself, I can't see any info about where to park, maybe I missed it? I think it's important to mention on/off site parking especially for a large house where guests might arrive in several cars.
Chambo
Posts: 240
Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2005 10:43 am
Location: St Germain Les Belles, Limousin, France
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Post by Chambo »

Thank you Circe, that's a real problem. My designer is on holiday for a couple of weeks, so I'll have to ask family experts how to change it instead!
Great point about the parking, I never even thought about it, I'll update it later.
Thank you all so much for your help!
Village holiday house, for large groups: Limousin, 30 minutes south of Limoges. http://www.vacvertes.com
https://www.facebook.com/VacancesVertes ... ef=tn_tnmn
www.chambers-maids-brecon.com
la vache!
Posts: 11065
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:22 pm

Post by la vache! »

How odd, it looks the same to me in Explorer and FF. Don't most people update their browser to the most recent version?
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CSE
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Location: Galicia

Post by CSE »

With regards to SEO I cannot find anything to comment about except this error.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://vacvertes.com
It is so insignificant though.

You have even got some coding that I do not talk about here included. I think it is a professional job so it should be 100%

Presentation.
I would suggest that you change things around on the first page so that I do not have to pan down to see the link to the French version.
The way I can see you saving some pixel space is to remove this bit of code.
<h6>Vacances Vertes les Belles</h6> Plus reduce the blue border above this, it in the code for the header).
For those who want to see the old site here is the link:
http://web.archive.org/web/200905290208 ... ertes.com/
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
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