Need some critics for my website :)

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.

How would you rank the website?

Perfect - My grandma could use it blindfolded!
7
64%
Few improvements needed to make it great
4
36%
Potential is there, but needs a major upgrade
0
No votes
Terrible! Needs total makeover!!
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 11

Damien Meuzac
Posts: 27
Joined: Sun Feb 10, 2013 1:26 pm
Location: Nendaz, Switzerland
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Need some critics for my website :)

Post by Damien Meuzac »

Hi,

so we have our website for a year now. Our property is new and I feel that we can do much better!

www.meusacrentals.com


We only have 100 visits per month (and I think google analytics is counting ours, I need to work with the options to filter that out :) ).

Future improvements already planned:

-add a blog
-add more info on the area (activities, events)

So little warning, the calendar for next summer and future winter are not showing properly because we have a little bug on the date system (Will be fixed soon!) but this winter's (2012-2013) works normal.

Any critique is welcome, have fun guys!!
Damien Collot

www.meusacrentals.com
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wallypott
Posts: 1421
Joined: Sat Mar 27, 2010 9:50 pm

Post by wallypott »

All good except that I get the impression that some of the photos are artists impressions. Of course I might be wrong but ......
Damien Meuzac
Posts: 27
Joined: Sun Feb 10, 2013 1:26 pm
Location: Nendaz, Switzerland
Contact:

Post by Damien Meuzac »

That's funny, wasn't expecting that comment at all :)

What do you mean by artist impressions? I'm really intrigued!
Damien Collot

www.meusacrentals.com
annedab
Posts: 762
Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2005 5:02 pm
Location: Midi Pyrenees

Post by annedab »

Your place looks lovely Damien! I like the floor plans - that's something I need to add to ours. Pictures look great - they don't look like artists impressions to me.
Regards

Anne

If there's no such thing as co-incidence, then why is there a word for it?
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wallypott
Posts: 1421
Joined: Sat Mar 27, 2010 9:50 pm

Post by wallypott »

By artists impressions, I mean the kind of photos that are meant to show you what your house will look like once it is finished.
Damien Meuzac
Posts: 27
Joined: Sun Feb 10, 2013 1:26 pm
Location: Nendaz, Switzerland
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Post by Damien Meuzac »

@Wallypot:Ah ok now I see what you mean :)

Nope they are not artist impressions, that's the actual chalet :D. If you want to compare to our actual artist impressions you can see this page: https://www.meusac.com/project.aspx?project=projR
(Yes I know, weird presentation of the pictures, something is going wrong, need to tell our IT guy ;) )

So there's quite a difference compared to the pictures in the gallery for the rented chalet ;)

But yeah, we have a mix of pictures sources in there, some professional and some are ours, so that's why you might have some mixed feelings I guess :)

@Anne

Yeah thanks! I thought it was necessary because of all the rooms, it helps to put everything into perspective for the guest.
We asked our architect for the pdf of the plans, and did some small photoshop/paint modifications.
Damien Collot

www.meusacrentals.com
casagentili
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Joined: Mon Apr 19, 2010 3:57 pm
Location: Italy - tuscany
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Post by casagentili »

Hi Damien

the chalet looks superb and the view unique, that's great starting point for a new business

Website has all informations required

From my standpoint to make the deal more attractive I'd push the feeling of living in there (but this may be a very personal guess, as I'm not attracted by "neutral" environment, that others may likle very much)
So I'd:
- change the picture descriptions, trying to share a more personal feeling
- put more stuff indoor to render the rooms as somebody was linving there (more frames on the walls, newpapers, magazines, some fruit in the kitchen, bottles)
- insert reviews from other guests...

Additionally just a note: the picture on the slideshow have different sizes, so during the show, viewporter changes make the film not smooth enough

hope this help ! :)

Marco
Marco
passionate with historical gardens
casagentili.com
Damien Meuzac
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Joined: Sun Feb 10, 2013 1:26 pm
Location: Nendaz, Switzerland
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Post by Damien Meuzac »

Hi,

Thanks for the review.

So for the neutral part of the pictures, I also agree with you that it feels too neutral, but it's close to reality (although I know that a bit of staging is needed to sell the pictures, but don't want to disappoint the guests either when they arrive ;) ). I also feel that the chalet needs a more personal touch, but was a group decision to keep it relatively simple (at least for now, I hope for my arguments that some guests point out for more personal decoration in there :P)

Regarding the picture descriptions: I wanted to do that, completely forgot about it, very happy that you reminded me of it, will put that in my to-do list for website revamp :D

Guest reviews: I have asked the IT guy to add our reviews from tripadvisor/flipkey. Still discussing which widget format we want to have and on which page we should put it. (for example, just have a badge (as shown on tripadvisor) and the actual reviews on the chalet description page, the other way round, or just the reviews on the homepage. (And then where to place it on the pages ;) )


Also, we don't have a physical guestbook yet. My dad is actually afraid of the negative reviews we could have in there (although I always try to tell him that it's not a problem, that most reviews will be good, and having a bad review from time to time is good if we react appropriately to it), online reviews are more easy to manage (if you ask first your guests what went wrong and what we can improve for the next guests or next time they will come, usually when you ask after that for online reviews, they tend to be good ;) and it avoids discovering the issues after it went public ;) ).
Damien Collot

www.meusacrentals.com
limousin-cottage
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Location: Haute Vienne, France
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Post by limousin-cottage »

Beautiful place! (If you like snow of course! :lol: )

Personally, I find the stark white background off-putting. (Just my opinion) With so much white in the pictures too, if you know what I mean. I think a lovely pale blue would be a lovely background setting, and show off the photos.

Regarding the gallery, may be just my pc but the pics take ages to load. On the home page, where there are just the 3 photos on the top, they load instantly.

I think the content is good. Reviews do help, of course, but that is all part of getting yourself established.

Good Luck!
Damien Meuzac
Posts: 27
Joined: Sun Feb 10, 2013 1:26 pm
Location: Nendaz, Switzerland
Contact:

Post by Damien Meuzac »

@limousin

Hi,

thanks for the review, will look into the white background issue. I also believe we need to take a little time choosing better font and colors.

For the pictures high loading time, I guess that's due to the number of pictures on that page, maybe it should be 2 pages. or 1 and 1/2 page don't know. Although the pictures have already been significantly reduced in size/weight, from a couple mb/pictures to just some kb/picture.

I'm still wondering though if the picture slideshow shouldn't go full screen, or at least just at the limit so as to still be able to see the menu on top dunno..
Damien Collot

www.meusacrentals.com
newtimber
Posts: 1945
Joined: Sat Nov 24, 2012 5:57 pm
Location: Brighton
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Post by newtimber »

Like the site. One thing I noticed was the availability/booking in the summer is not complete and neither is the winter 2013/14 which just shows the first week of the month. Perhaps it's not a good idea to let people know what weeks you have had booked in the past. Fill them in as 'booked' and use some colouring to show dates booked/not booked.
I wouldn't show 3 photos on the top of every page. For people who have to pay for usage/have slow connections/using the site on a mobile device, pictures are not necessary for pages like availability/contact us
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kevsboredagain
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Post by kevsboredagain »

The slow loading pictures is due to the scaling of full sized ones for the thumbnails.

eg.
1,600px × 1,029px (scaled to 270px × 180px)
delilah
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Post by delilah »

I think it's a good one. I like the uncluttered white background. Some websites are very cluttered and your attention is attracted to lots of places at once, whereas this one isn't. My only thoughts are, not sure you need the "detail of tiled roof" pic...only because it drew my eye and i was trying to work out what it was, whereas it would have been better not to be distracted by it. The only other comment is possible to personalise it a bit more...I was slightly put off by it sounding like it was run by a company, and couldn't get a "feel" for the people who owned it. That may not be important to most guests, but i suppose because i'm making that comment it probably is to me on some level. On the whole though i think it is a very good, clean lines website.
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Damien Meuzac
Posts: 27
Joined: Sun Feb 10, 2013 1:26 pm
Location: Nendaz, Switzerland
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Post by Damien Meuzac »

@ newtimber

Thanks for the comment regarding the pictures and slow/mobile connection, very good point. Will be a serious point to discuss ;).

As concerning the calendar, as I mentioned in our original post, it's a known and very important issue that my IT guy is working on. Somehow the system is mixing US and european date format, making it impossible for us to modify/add dates at the moment :/.

Regarding booked weeks, I feel that, even though we don't have a lot of booked weeks yet (because we're new, didn't have that much visibility, which I've started to work on as the ones we paid for it didn't really do as much as we thought), being honest about the weeks booked or not can help for trust. But the trade-off is indeed the fact that it wasn't booked much yet, people might think there's something wrong or not good going on :/. What do you think? (If others want to add something to this, it would be much appreciated :) ).

@kevsboredagain

Thanks for the comment, will pass that on and see if we can improve that.

@Delilah

Yeah I also figured that out during research that our website text in not really personal at all. Working on some new text at the moment :)

Yeah the tiled roof needs a bit more story to it. When you discover that the tiles made of wood were pretty much made by hand, by an old artisan I think (like 65-70 years old) with an old machine (so not automatic) cutting one tile a the time (he had to find a machine, because it's not strong enough to axe them all one by one like he used to). I'd guess about 5000-6000 tiles on the roof, so you can imagine the time necessary to make that! But then again, maybe it's not necessary to add it in the gallery ;)

P.S. Love your website, exactly what were aiming at with ours, simplicity, but yours puts it at a more polished/professional version. Will surely get inspired from it as a benchmark :)
Damien Collot

www.meusacrentals.com
mandyjm
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Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2012 8:10 pm
Location: Coniston
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Post by mandyjm »

Damien

You kindly commented on our site (miner's cottage) so I'm returning the favour. We must have similar tastes for simple and clear websites, as your's hits the mark. Lovely pictures too.

In terms of getting the site recognised in the search engines, I'm just in the process of doing this myself...with help from IT experts :idea:. I was told to get our web address on as many social sites as possible in order that google will recognise it as a popular site and re-cache it. I've opted for facebook and I've just asked for fellow holiday cottage owners (on hike those holidays) to open the website and increase its popularity. I've suddenly developed an interest in stats and can't take my eyes off StatCounter :roll:

Best wishes, and good luck.

Mandy
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