All constructive criticism welcomed

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.
cc
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All constructive criticism welcomed

Post by cc »

Please take a look at our website
We are opening a 4 roomed B&B in Mijas Pueblo in the hills above Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol.
The website is a joint operation between us in Spain and a techie mate in the UK. We like the layout and think the overall impact is good. We are debating whether or not to use an availability calendar, not so easy when you have 4 rooms to let and they can be let individually or as a family group. Any advice or links to other such pages would be very welcome.
We appear on search engines like Yahoo but not on google yet unless you put in the full name, I hope this changes after the monthly refresh.
We already have a few bookings for when we open in May, friends of friends mainly. We are looking to fill the off season with courses, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, yoga and just about anything else that we can find local teachers for. We are aiming fairly broadly at the moment and our bookings are from some Germans just looking to de-stress, a UK golfing group and a Spanish family from Marbella looking for a weekend away to celebrate a birthday. We have some interest from a couple of Tai Chi masters who would like to run some courses down here.

Any help or tips anyone can offer will be gratefully received.
Last edited by cc on Sat Mar 19, 2011 6:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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thisfrenchlife
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Post by thisfrenchlife »

Hi

Looks smart with plenty of useful info and text, very good idea to have a telephone number.

You might want to make it clear when people can call because you might not be at your best at three in the morning when someone in Australia rings!

Also I would look to tell people a little more about yourself, especially seeing that you provide yoga classes.

When I help others market their site I always suggest an About page as you are asking customers to part with a large amount of money, without even a pic of the person the money is going to.

On a techie note I notice that the intial < title > tag is not closed off.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Craig
cc
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Post by cc »

Thanks for that....thought about putting a small biog and a photo but didn't want to put people off!
Will pass on the techie bit to my mate in the UK. Cheers.
mvus
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Location: Andalucia, Spain

Post by mvus »

Hi,

Just worth pointing out you have put the source code (<meta name="keywords" content=") in your Title description that appears at the top of each page. You should also use a different title for each page to briefly say what the page is about
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iracathey
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Clean and Neat

Post by iracathey »

Hi,
I'll leave the tech stuff to the tech folks, but from a purely visual point of view I loved the site. Neat and clean and easy to navigate. One of the best I've seen.

I do like the idea of personalizing the site a bit with a photo or bio, but that's just tweaking. Overall - pats on the back.
Always Willing, Always Learning
Always Just a Bit Off Center
Ira & Cathey
www.southfrancerental.com
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Ju
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Post by Ju »

casa caleta wrote:Thanks for that....thought about putting a small biog and a photo but didn't want to put people off!
Will pass on the techie bit to my mate in the UK. Cheers.
I disagree with this advice for rental owners, but perhaps B+B is a little different.

When I'm renting a house or appartment I don't want to know about the owners, I don't care what their names are, and certainly not what their cats or dogs names are. I don't care why they bought the property, or how much effort went into the renovation. I just want to know the property is nice in the location I want with the facilities I want.

Now I grant you B+B is a little different. You are going to be involved much more with the guests and therefore perhaps they would like to know a little about you. But keep it short and sweet, and relevant. If you are yoga teacher then tell them, if you used to make sproggets in a factory in Wolverhampton don't.

Nice site by the way, but the first photo needs either improving or changing for a different one.

Ju
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Garri
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Post by Garri »

The white square in the top left does nothing for me.
cc
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Post by cc »

Thanks for the positive comments. We will include small biogs when we are up and running. The picture on the first page does need improving, when I get a decent camera and the building work is done we'll change a couple of them.
As for the white square.....there is no white square, I see a sunrise, sunset and moonlight over the ocean!
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Garri
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Post by Garri »

casa caleta wrote:As for the white square.....there is no white square, I see a sunrise, sunset and moonlight over the ocean!
Well, in that case your site is borked in Firefox on OSX. Works in Safari though.
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Alan Knighting
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Post by Alan Knighting »

casa caleta,

It works in IE but it does not work in either Firefox or Netscape.

I does look good though.

Alan
mcderd
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A couple of things that will help with the search engines

Post by mcderd »

Hello,

Here is a couple of things that will help your site in the search engines.

1] Add Andalucia and Mijas to the title, so instead of 'Casa Caleta', have 'Casa Caleta, Mijas, Andalucia'

2] You have Welcome in a H1 Tag, it would be an advantage to also include 'Casa Caleta, Mijas, Andalucia' so something like

Welcome to Casa Caleta, Mijas, Andalucia


Dennis

Dennis McDermott - Website Developer and Database Programmer
cc
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Post by cc »

Thanks for the tip, will give it a try.
mcderd
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It will take a little while to have any effect

Post by mcderd »

Just thought I should say that the benefits will not happen overnight, it depends how often the search engines crawl your site. But I definitely think it's worth changing.

Dennis
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