Lay My Hat

A pop up asking me to book just 2 seconds into looking at the site for the first time. Most visitors will leave as this point and a book now pop up is a HUGE mistake.

Moving on it was not immediately obvious what exactly you were offering. Is it a travel company, an agency, a few villas? To find out required digging and reading the details. Even the location is still a mystery to me. I figured out it was Italy but a map would be a good idea.

On the details the sliders are ok but under each one is way too much text all in one go. It makes heavy reading.

A couple snogging on the home page just seems plain wrong to me. It certainly did not make me think "weddings" as was probably the intention.

It took me a long time to actually find the links to your villas- I missed them entirely the first time round being buried in a wall of text and lots of other hyperlinks.

They do look lovely but they are too well hidden in the site!

Thanks for your comments ... I will definitely take them on board and review the website

The slider photos on the homepage are great except the tiger, it's confusing and doesn't say "Italy".

I agree with Kev the text underneath needs looking at, come straight out with the nitty gritty of what you are offering - number of sleeps, facilities, location etc preferably in bullet list form. People have extremely short attention spans on the web!
Then you can get into the rest, preferably broken up with some sub headings.

Overall the look and feel of the site is nice.

How far are you from the airport? I would want to know if I was coming from the UK. In the location section I would want to know where you are in relation to other things I might know about in Puglia, before going into detail about the local town.

I agree with the others - your home page sounds like you're promoting Puglia in general. The houses seem to be an after thought. Whereas I would have thought if people have landed on your pages, the chances are they already know they want to go to Puglia or at least to that area of Italy...no idea where it is...would proximity to a certain airport be a deciding factor for them?

I would say it's absolutely vital you pick out the best photos of the houses, their selling points. And put that and only that info on the home page.

Then, once you've convinced them to like what they see, you can add in a link to take people to the various pages for the nitty gritty on each property and on the area.

If I'm a traveller and I've decided to go to a villa in Italy/Puglia/anywhere hot, the first 3 things I will want to know are not necessarily the location of the local castles but where am I going to stay and:

Does it have the right number of beds/rooms for my group?
Does it look like my kind of place in terms of decor/comfort?
Does it have any of the extras I know my group will want pool/wifi/aircon/ad infinitum.....whatever?

The features page for villa Rosa - I find the different coloured tabs give me a headache (I am on a small screen though) and the features all seem to be a little mixed up so it's difficult to take it all in. (or maybe it's me after half a glass of wine!)

Hope that's helpful and not too critical.

xx

Thanks both .... I'm working on it!

Under the slider I'm getting a very prominent ad for 'Puglia villas to rent' which takes me to a completely different site - one of your competitors?

I don't like seeing ads at all on villa sites so that would be a turn off for me before I've even got to the main content. If you must have ads then I'd suggest making them less prominent. Maybe in a right hand sidebar and make sure they aren't for accommodation, for obvious reasons. I guess car hire, travel insurance and so on might be OK (but I even get annoyed at the car hire ads that come up on OD).

yup, I forgot to say...I also got an ad - for a Villa in Seychelles! Very prominent -right under the slider and before your text.

I agree about the ad bar at the top, have been considering taking it off while I have been reviewing the site this morning

Thanks for your comments.