Hi all, I've not posted here before and a looking for some critiques of my website. I have slowly been learning how to build websites as my old site which I had built by a developer had started to look somewhat dated and this is where I have got to. I was really pleased that I managed to get my head around googles map API on the contact page which gives a to and from directions map and list. The site is also mobile friendly so please let me know your thoughts on that too.
http://www.thesummerhouse.eu
Thanks for your time
Carl
Looking for website critique
-
pizza-salsa
- Posts: 51
- Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2012 9:34 am
- Location: Trogir, Croatia
- Contact:
hello Carl
your villa looks great, and so does the website.
Gallery, the pictures of the house are jumbled up with pictures of the locality etc. If possible I would like to look at all the pictures of the house together, then all the pictures of the neighbourhood, beach etc.
Section Summer House come inside,
has some spelling mistakes
We could more easily and cheaply have knocked the old house down and built in it's place one of the typical non-descript concrete villa's
should read
We could more easily and cheaply have knocked the old house down and built in its place one of the typical non-descript concrete villas
Section Explore Outside
Your description is very colourful and make it sound so inviting and romantic. Just beautiful
section NEWS
the first entry reads "I have been informed by some of our friends on Kefalonia that the weather in 2013 was the best for 150 years!" should this be the weather in 2012?
hope this helps, you have a great property there.
your villa looks great, and so does the website.
Gallery, the pictures of the house are jumbled up with pictures of the locality etc. If possible I would like to look at all the pictures of the house together, then all the pictures of the neighbourhood, beach etc.
Section Summer House come inside,
has some spelling mistakes
We could more easily and cheaply have knocked the old house down and built in it's place one of the typical non-descript concrete villa's
should read
We could more easily and cheaply have knocked the old house down and built in its place one of the typical non-descript concrete villas
Section Explore Outside
Your description is very colourful and make it sound so inviting and romantic. Just beautiful
section NEWS
the first entry reads "I have been informed by some of our friends on Kefalonia that the weather in 2013 was the best for 150 years!" should this be the weather in 2012?
hope this helps, you have a great property there.
Hi Carl,
Looking pretty good, but appears like a work in progress (as is my own). My following comments are having just taken a quick look as if I stumbled upon the site. I have to say the place does look wonderful.
I find that some of the fonts are a little too small (or am I just getting to that age), or are not consistent on the pages.
Some of the images look quite low resolution, (did you download them from the previous site?)
I find it difficult to get to some of the sub menus for information such as prices and info before you arrive. The menus are transparent and despite being careful with my mouse I could not select them easily. Not sure if the buttons need to be a little larger or just not transparent.
If I landed on the site it does not call out exactly where it is, I can guess from the name it is probably a greek island. How are you trying to reach out to your target market?
The News page is very messy in format (work in progress I assume).
I am in mid edit of my own site so I know your pain!
Feel free to ping me again if you make changes, happy to take another look.
Looking pretty good, but appears like a work in progress (as is my own). My following comments are having just taken a quick look as if I stumbled upon the site. I have to say the place does look wonderful.
I find that some of the fonts are a little too small (or am I just getting to that age), or are not consistent on the pages.
Some of the images look quite low resolution, (did you download them from the previous site?)
I find it difficult to get to some of the sub menus for information such as prices and info before you arrive. The menus are transparent and despite being careful with my mouse I could not select them easily. Not sure if the buttons need to be a little larger or just not transparent.
If I landed on the site it does not call out exactly where it is, I can guess from the name it is probably a greek island. How are you trying to reach out to your target market?
The News page is very messy in format (work in progress I assume).
I am in mid edit of my own site so I know your pain!
Feel free to ping me again if you make changes, happy to take another look.
-
French Cricket
- Posts: 3058
- Joined: Thu Apr 10, 2008 3:47 pm
- Location: French Pyrénées
- Contact:
-
funkymonkey
- Posts: 63
- Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2012 7:34 am
- Location: Kalkan, Turkey
- Contact:
-
French Cricket
- Posts: 3058
- Joined: Thu Apr 10, 2008 3:47 pm
- Location: French Pyrénées
- Contact:
Yes, it is fabulous 
I also love the design of your website, Carl, and think it's got the potential to be great. Just a couple of niggles from an initial peruse: I find the font quite tiring on the eyes - it's just very slightly too small for protracted reading, and I'd prefer a bit more weight as well as space between the lines. The italics bits in particular are difficult.
There's a lot of text in big chunks without anything to break it up. I like the fact that you give a lot of information, but I do think it needs to be 'lightened' up to make it easier and more enticing to read.
When I've clicked to 'Come inside', if I then click my back button all that happens is that the page scrolls through various photos. I have to use the menu to return to the home page. This might be a personal thing, but that winds me up, I'm afraid (as do sites that don't allow you to use the back button at all!).
Just my first impressions .....
I also love the design of your website, Carl, and think it's got the potential to be great. Just a couple of niggles from an initial peruse: I find the font quite tiring on the eyes - it's just very slightly too small for protracted reading, and I'd prefer a bit more weight as well as space between the lines. The italics bits in particular are difficult.
There's a lot of text in big chunks without anything to break it up. I like the fact that you give a lot of information, but I do think it needs to be 'lightened' up to make it easier and more enticing to read.
When I've clicked to 'Come inside', if I then click my back button all that happens is that the page scrolls through various photos. I have to use the menu to return to the home page. This might be a personal thing, but that winds me up, I'm afraid (as do sites that don't allow you to use the back button at all!).
Just my first impressions .....
Thanks every for your time and your comments.
I am somewhat confused by the 'low res'/'blurry' image and menu problem comments though. The images are not blurry (except the ones that are intentionally so - for artistic reasons
) and I spent a long time testing the menus on all browsers to ensure that they were working correctly. Certainly the transparency would not be an issue here as this wouldn't affect whether something could be hovered over or not. I wonder if you are trying to click through the drop downs instead of just hovering over them. If this is the case then I might have to do something about it - when you spend a long time coding a site, what becomes second nature to me when hovering over menus might not be so obvious when you first visit the site. Do you have JavaScript turned on? Maybe you could let me no what Internet browser & version you are using?
It was commented on that the photos in the gallery are muddled up - the is intentional and they can be sorted by hovering over the filter at the top of the gallery. Did anyone find this filter or is it too obscure to notice/bother with?
Thanks again for your time (and kind comments about the villa!)
Ps - thanks for the spelling/grammatical corrections - I became a bit blind to these after writing so much copy. It was worth writing this much though as I have now got to number one on google for some of my preferred search terms and am not that much behind top spot for some others - I am still working on these!
I am somewhat confused by the 'low res'/'blurry' image and menu problem comments though. The images are not blurry (except the ones that are intentionally so - for artistic reasons
) and I spent a long time testing the menus on all browsers to ensure that they were working correctly. Certainly the transparency would not be an issue here as this wouldn't affect whether something could be hovered over or not. I wonder if you are trying to click through the drop downs instead of just hovering over them. If this is the case then I might have to do something about it - when you spend a long time coding a site, what becomes second nature to me when hovering over menus might not be so obvious when you first visit the site. Do you have JavaScript turned on? Maybe you could let me no what Internet browser & version you are using?It was commented on that the photos in the gallery are muddled up - the is intentional and they can be sorted by hovering over the filter at the top of the gallery. Did anyone find this filter or is it too obscure to notice/bother with?
Thanks again for your time (and kind comments about the villa!)
Ps - thanks for the spelling/grammatical corrections - I became a bit blind to these after writing so much copy. It was worth writing this much though as I have now got to number one on google for some of my preferred search terms and am not that much behind top spot for some others - I am still working on these!
@french cricket - I know what you mean re the paging and you are correct. Easy quick fix on that which I'll be sorting out today.
With regards to the volume of copy, it sometimes ends up being a bit of a balance between google ranking and boring your potential client. This is a personal choice and I have gone for copy content to improve my ranking. I agree that some people might find it heavy going but IMO if people can't find me then I won't be getting any bookings.
Thanks so much for your time.
With regards to the volume of copy, it sometimes ends up being a bit of a balance between google ranking and boring your potential client. This is a personal choice and I have gone for copy content to improve my ranking. I agree that some people might find it heavy going but IMO if people can't find me then I won't be getting any bookings.
Thanks so much for your time.
Hi carl,
I am using IE8 and the menus for that should drop down from the info button are transparent other than the text which makes then very hard to select. I tried using Firefox and with that they work OK with a semi-transparent blue background.
Sorry if some of the images were meant to be "artistic", I can see that on some of them. The ones that looked to be just lower resolution were the patio area at the head of the main page.
I am using IE8 and the menus for that should drop down from the info button are transparent other than the text which makes then very hard to select. I tried using Firefox and with that they work OK with a semi-transparent blue background.
Sorry if some of the images were meant to be "artistic", I can see that on some of them. The ones that looked to be just lower resolution were the patio area at the head of the main page.
@Pmagowan & Ian - I see what you mean. Have just tested in IE8 and it does look like a work in progress - I sincerely despise IE! I had sorted this issue out ages ago but it would seem that some other change I have made has recreated the problem. I'll have to try and find out why and rectify it. Thanks for spotting this - I cannot understand why IE cannot be like other browsers and update automatically. Website works fine in IE9 & 10 but it should also work in 7&8 
My website also looks bad in IE8 although is still functional. The problem is many people prefer the older versions of windows and so IE8 is likely here to stay for a while. For instance, I viewed your website from work and as we use XP (beacuse vista is awful) we are more or less stuck with IE8. I think microsoft have discontinued support for IE8 and so it is likely, with development of websites, that IE8 will be phased out quite soon.
The website looks good in Safari.
The website looks good in Safari.
It's taken me a while to unravel the difficulties of IE8 (&7) and it seems to just about be there now. News page sorted out (I missed a bracket off one of my IE 8 hacks) and the menu is now working (or at least seems to be on my IE developer tools). Grammatical error has been amended. The site doesn't look anywhere near as nice in IE7 or 8 as in IE9 or 10, nor does it look as good as it does in Chrome and Safari. At least it works now though so thanks to everyone for pointing out the issues. I'd be grateful if someone could just have a quick look over the site in an older version of IE please to make sure it looks how it should.
If anyone reads this & hasn't updated their own home version of IE to the latest (IE10), I would suggest that you do - the more people that use the old versions mean that support for these will continue & anyone writing your websites will continue to have problems. It'll make life easier for you in the long term & not only that but IE10 is so much quicker than older versions!
Many thanks
If anyone reads this & hasn't updated their own home version of IE to the latest (IE10), I would suggest that you do - the more people that use the old versions mean that support for these will continue & anyone writing your websites will continue to have problems. It'll make life easier for you in the long term & not only that but IE10 is so much quicker than older versions!
Many thanks
I agree in principle, but it has so many bugs still, as many functions do not work on some sites in IE10. I even find this forum problematic and some of the section links do not work when you click on them. I had no problem in previous versions. I am forced time and again to open sites in Firefox to gain the full functionality of many sites.Carl wrote:If anyone reads this & hasn't updated their own home version of IE to the latest (IE10), I would suggest that you do - the more people that use the old versions mean that support for these will continue & anyone writing your websites will continue to have problems. It'll make life easier for you in the long term & not only that but IE10 is so much quicker than older versions!