my website review

[shazza]

sorry have posted this before as a newbie to the forum and just realised that i put it in the wrong place!!
please can you all look at my website and i would like to hear good and bad comments.
www.gitesdumarigne.com

[Ju]

Hi Shazza.

Firstly, please accept my appologies for not writing a full review, I will try and find time later.

I am known to be blunt so don't take offence.

My first thought was - please not another gite with a sunflower photo (search on gites charente and you will see what I mean).

My second thought was - why is there an advert for internet bingo at the top? Is this the kind of client you are trying to attract?

The font on the petite maison and chez tournesol pages is difficult to read, and columned text is also a problem.

Your pound signs show up as blue diamonds on my screen.

I am sure someone else will be able to help with other comments.

Ju

[ginelli]

hi shazza

just had a quick look.

I went through all the pages and the whole thing grew on me the more I saw. I got this feeling I would feel very welcome staying at your homes.

It's definitely your home page that let you down. Get rid of that gambling thing. The balance of the page also felt wrong. Maybe think about its feng-shui. Also, I'm not a fan of showing the visitor's counter - can look tacky although yours is quite discreet. I think you can check the visitor's number privately.

Much more positive than negative tho. Good luck

[charles]

Techie alert!

The funny characters appear because it looks like the header (the bit between <head< and </head>is missing:

Code: Select all

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

That tells browsers what type of characters to expect (Latin, Japanese, Arabic etc.). You can manually fix it in most browsers by selecting view -> [character] encoding -> Western [European] (ISO-8859-1) but the automatic way is better.

</end techie alert!>

I agree with the previous comments: ditch the ads/counter and pay for some ad-free web-space - it will be worth it in the long-run.

And finally...

1) I would suggest keeping the layout the same on all pages - or make the main page radically different - like a splash screen with a big image and a few links to tantalise visitors into clicking further.

2) Make the pages slightly wider to make more use of the available space [then you can change the font to Verdana and size 11 or 12 to make it more legible.].

3) Change the page file names to something more meaningful - like booking.html instead of pagex.html - helps with Search Engines [and add some <title>some meaningful title</title> tags to each page - again for Search Engines mainly

In short, the content is excellent, it just need re-organising a bit.

My 2€ worth...

Cheers,
Charles

[mario]

I would also add that I have to pull the spacebar down on the home page to see the index,pictures are a bit on the small side and you especially need the map to open bigger to see where place is situated it would also be good for all the pics to open bigger.

[Loopy Lou]

A spelling question - the first thing I noticed. Is the name Marign or Marigne? Both spellings appear and it is a little confusing. This comment is meant to be helpful.

Bonne annee,

Lou

[shazza]

thank-you everybody for all your comments. i have made some changes but untill i do not have orange hosting my website then i will still have the banner on top but i have emailed them and asked to make the banner more in context with my website.
loupy lou have checked the website and cannot see the name marigné spelt wrongly.
the only difference in marigné is on the www.dot bit with no accent on the é.
i appreciate everybodys comments and do not view any of them as negative,only as helping me to make things better with more eyes watching!!
happy new year to you all,
shazza