Updated website with added pictures for final review

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.
paul smith
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Updated website with added pictures for final review

Post by paul smith »

Hi there,

Some of you may have looked over our rental site before and may have made comments, wonder if you could again please
as I have now finally uploaded internal pictures onto the site which were not there before, would some of those please have a final look at the site for comments.

Please note for photo gallery you can enlarge to full screen mode bottom left of gallery.

The larger pictures are around 500 bytes I believe so need to know if they load fast.

Note: this is a template based website so the frames cannot be changed.

Look forward to your comments

Regards :D

www.holiday-apartment-turkey.co.uk
A-two
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Post by A-two »

Is this the one we looked at before when there was no water in the pool, so you had to take the photo from a really low angle at the corner of the pool? If so, the photos are seriously better, and good to see the interiors, but a little too small on the thumbnails for my liking and a little too slow to download when I click for the enlargements. Any chance you can get the thumbnails up to 150 pixels width and enlargements down to 50K file size from 500K?
paul smith
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Post by paul smith »

Thanks Jonna, but you can enlarge the gallery bottom left to full screen.

I'm on BBand and the pictures take about 2 seconds to load on enlargment.?????

Wonder if the other pictures on the main site loaded ok?

Regards :D
A-two
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Post by A-two »

Paul,
The pictures on the main site load fine, they are instant, and I have always liked your logo a great deal, it's very striking.

Sorry if what I'm about to say isn't what you want to hear... :( but to be honest, I don't think the photo gallery adds anything at all, in fact I think it detracts from the main site. All the photos are or can be part of the main site. The gallery has problems for me - it's not easy to navigate and requires several clicks (including switching off pop-up blocker) to get to the same thing that's easily accessible by scrolling down the relevant page on the main site.

I may not have the fastest pc in the world, even so, I am on high speed cable and 2 secs per photo is being optimistic - it's slow. If you add up 2-3 secs each to click gallery thumbnails, then gallery enlargement, (which I didn't notice by the way until you told me it was there), then individual photo enlargement, it's actually more like 6-9 seconds to get to a photo - that's far too long and could crash an old pc on dial-up.

Personally, I would seriously think about losing the photo gallery altogether, if only because if someone goes there first, they may give up before checking the main site, or if you really want to keep it, at least call it "extra photos", so people know to go there last.

With the exception of the gallery, I think you've made great strides with the site and well done.

This is only one opinion, and others may differ.
paul smith
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Post by paul smith »

I have changed the gallery over to a different layout and am experimenting with this. I will be adding more photos to the gallery in a few days time but for now that's all I have.

Hope this is better, and if others can try it as well to get a better picture of what's going on it would be nice.

Need to know : loading time is ok, layout is ok, and in full screen mode.


Regards
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enid
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Post by enid »

Layout is clear and accessible and I ilke the colour scheme. I like the text and the photo of the table set for a meal on the terrace is very good - perhaps you could bring some of that life to the sitting room shot as that looks a bit empty. Photos on the pages load fine but the photo gallery just irritates me I'm afraid - takes too long and is too much effort - some of the other pictures need to be sharper too. Hope that helps.
paul smith
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Post by paul smith »

Thanks for your comments. I just seem to have had a lot of negetivaty on the photo gallery page. It's a template type and is a micromedia flash gallery. I only have 5 to choose from and this seems to be the best. When viewers say they have problems I have to listen :D but... when loading it up here and at my work place it's fine, takes about 2 seconds to load the preview pictures page. I have had a few others look at it, not from this forum and it also works fine there too.


I also can't see how clicking on the picture twice is too much effert

I don't think it's a bband problem as many of you have b band.

To be honest I am puzzled ??????????????

Regards :) :) :)
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Ciapolin
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Post by Ciapolin »

Hi Paul,

I like your home page - nice and clean. I am on dial up, and it took about 6 seconds to load. I like the idea of the photo gallery, but I timed it and it took over a minute to load for me. Once I was in, each photo then took 6-7 seconds to download.
Carole-Anne
Cascina Ciapolin
www.piedmont-holidays.com
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enid
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Post by enid »

I also can't see how clicking on the picture twice is too much effert
It's not too much effort in itself but as a punter I may go on to another site where I can get a good range of photos more easily that's all - also it will load easier once you've previously loaded it but again we're all looking to nab that surfer.
paul smith
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Post by paul smith »

Ok, over a minute is far far too long. Will have to look at this again. Suppose there are still a lot out there on dial up.

Regards all
A-two
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Post by A-two »

I clicked from number 5 to 45 on the individual photos and it was still showing me the same photo... :?

I think the main reason people avoid flash websites is because it's too heavy on memory, whichever version you choose, especially if the person browsing has lots of other windows open and programs running at the same time.
paul smith
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Post by paul smith »

This flash template gallery is taking too long to load on most systems it seems.

The other option is to delete the gallery and put each photo as a thumbnail on the gallery page with a hyperlink which opens a new window full screen with the picture. In effect to produce my own photo gallery. I suppose that's all I can do with this site as it's a template version.

Eg would be if you click on the map aerial view which opens a new window but making sure the picture is a smaller file.

Does anyone think this would be better.

Paul
A-two
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Post by A-two »

Paul,
Yes, I think that's a far better solution. On my website I use 150 pixels wide for extra photos underneath the main ones. None of them are clickable and perhaps they ought to be, but even if they were, I wouldn't want to make them any smaller on the main page. Is there an optimum size for thumbnails? Wide landscape shots and complex images do not read well as thumbnails anyway, so perhaps not, but one way round that problem is to show a cropped detail in the thumbnail, then when clicked, the full image reveals itself. This is an elegant solution in my book.
paul smith
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Post by paul smith »

Joanna,

What I have dicided to do is basic clear and just the simplest option and I think it might work. I am creating my own type of gallery on the one page. Just simple images that were in the previous gallery with a little text underneth. No hyperlinks, no pop ups and no flash.

Should it work, it will not take long to load on pc's as it's just a simple page. I am working on it over the next few days and will upload it when I have finished for you to look at.

Kind regards
paul smith
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Location: Turkey / UK
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Post by paul smith »

I have uploaded a few pictures with more to add in other areas. :D

Suppose I better just check that the gallery page loads with no problems. Perhaps a few might be able to look and let me know either on BB or dial up if there problems.

Thanks

Paul :D
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