feedback on our website please

[Steve Sas]

I have a few suggestions:

1) make the pictures larger. I keep wanting to see more but they are medium sized and bigger is always better.

2) Streamline your Booking process. Use an online Form that gets the exact info you need from your guests (how many, what dates, contact info, etc) then automatically sends you an email with those details. As it stands now, people have to just email you (or call, but some don't like that or what if its off hours?) but who knows if they will leave out important info that will just cause you to have send another email?

There are a lot of good things about your site, but those are two areas that I think could be improved. Good luck!

[HoneypotCottages]

Thanks Steve

[CSE]

Sorry been a while since I looked at your revised website.

Several things that would help are:
Your landing page title should be something better than just “home page”.
In the whole website you do not have any headings i.e. H1, H2 etc.
The email is not linked. I can see it is an image.
In FF; the menu looks a little disjointed with some tabs lower than others. Have you thought about making it the same width as the web pages? I tried your website in I.E. it looks even worse.
No robots text and no site map, plus you have not set up Google Analysis.
The website validator throws up the following errors on your first page:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http: ... ages.co.uk
I have not looked at the others so there maybe more.
This is the CCs errors for the first page.
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/vali ... index.html


Still no photo of Jeremy, after his latest comments maybe find one of him sitting on a loo?

[Wendy@NorthIdaho]

I like the looks of your website, it looks cheery and the one cottage I looked at the pictures were nice and the cottage looked very clean. It would be nice to be able to click on the photos though and have them be larger so I can see details more clearly... also on the one I looked at the rates mentioned low season, high, etc.. but no definition of when those seasons were, are they different for each cottage? I might find myself not emailing to find out... I didn't see the explanation elsewhere on the site.

Overall I think it's a nice website, for myself I don't put my last name out on the web either, I have my phone number and first name, they can find out my last when they book.

Wendy

[CarolineH]

A little problem - the check availability button on each page doesn't work for me - it comes up and asks me to start an application Firefox 9.0.1

[HoneypotCottages]

Thanks for the feedback, very much appreciated.

We are trying to get our heads around linking our booking system to our website so that availability can be viewed.

We will look into enlarging pictures.

Any more feedback will be welcomed.

Andy

[HoneypotCottages]

I have passed that feedback onto our web designer!

Any further feedback appreciated

[Jenny C]

Only had time for a quick look but I thought the website looked nice - I'd be quite pleased if I found your site while looking for accommodation in your area. Just a few points:

- it isn't obvious from a quick look at the site how many people each cottage sleeps. You could consider adding this to the picture of each cottage on the summary page.

- as someone else said, it is not clear which dates refer to which "season".

- it really would be useful to see availability online. If someone has to wait for a reply to an enquiry, by the time you get back to them they may have booked elsewhere on a site which does show up to date availability.

[HoneypotCottages]

'We' have made several change although not everything that has been suggested. The biggest issue is being able to explain to our web designer exactly what is required.

Wish I'd been more interested in computers at a younger age so we could just do everything ourselves!

[lasourcetranquille]

I think it's a nice looking site - very cheery. I'd reiterate what everyone else has said:

1) All photos should be clickable to see a larger version - install lightbox or something similar makes this easy.
2) You must have availability online. I just tried finding somewhere to stay for my own holiday and it was infuriating not knowing if somewhere is available or not. Am I supposed to email a whole load of places and hope?
3) The front page of all the cottages needs to have the capacity of each place so I know if it's worth looking at them.
4) I'd make the cottages link in the top menu link back to the home page to the list of cottages.
5) Make an email form - I don't want to have to open Outlook or somesuch to send you an email

Otherwise, really nice, clean, consistent layout, and a nice logo!

[Wendy@NorthIdaho]

Good job HoneyPot, maybe print off the post from lasourcetranquille and give it to your webmaster, he/she should be able to take it from there. If they can't you need a new one

Wendy

[wallypott]

I informed my web site designer that the site he designed was being critiqued here and so he took it on board from there. Obviously it helps that he is a member. But your guy could log on as a guest.

He would probably be able to understand the why he needs to change things better, as he would see it from a different perspective.

[HoneypotCottages]

Thanks lasourcetranquille, Wendy@NarrowsCottage and wallypott, that's exactly what we'll do.

We really appreciate your time everyone

[paul stanbridge]

In my opinion you need to have more visually grabbing things 'above the fold' as they used to say. Ie, I think it would be better to have a nice bright picture or something higher up the page to grab a visitors attention before they click away. Just my opinion though! The site does look quite nice though; certainly not a bad job at all.

[Wonkeye]

A little problem - the check availability button on each page doesn't work for me - it comes up and asks me to start an application Firefox 9.0.1

Same here! I always feel flummoxed when asked to do this and leave hurriedly! An online booking form would be handy too.