New Website for New Green-Built Cottage-near Sequoia

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Kathleen & James
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Location: Sequoia/Three Rivers, California
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New Website for New Green-Built Cottage-near Sequoia

Post by Kathleen & James »

Greetings "Lay My Hat" kindred spirits,
We are still in the process of photographing the new cottage on our land. We will add those pictures in the next week or so. Right now we're seeking general feedback on first impressions, navigability, quality of the descriptions and photos. Rather than stating our intent we would like to hear from you about who you think we are appealing to. We've been on-line for about 6 weeks with some of the usual listing services and have been surprised at the demographics of the respondants.
This was made with Apple iWeb software on a Macintosh. When it comes to websites, we have no technical skills whatsoever.
We look forward to your notes and appreciate your responses.
Peace,
Kathleen & James
www.kaweahcottage.com
Last edited by Kathleen & James on Tue Feb 27, 2007 12:28 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Alan Knighting
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Re: New Website for New Green-Built Cottage-near Sequoia

Post by Alan Knighting »

Kathleen & James,

I am no expert on Web Sites, not at all, but you have asked for some initial reactions and these are mine.

I think you have a massive problem. The Site loads very, very slowly - in fact I would say unacceptably slowly and I am on broadband. So slowly that I was initially tempted to move on but I didn’t. Unfortunately, once I was in the Site navigating from page to page continued to be very slow. As examples, your picture gallery and your links page take for ever to load.

If you are to hold your audience you really must do something drastic about the speed of your Site. Potential holiday/vacation makers will not hang around waiting for your Site to load, within a few seconds they will go elsewhere. If your Site is a typical example of what is achieved using Apple iWeb software on a Macintosh my suggestion would be – throw it all away, buy a PC and use Windows software.

I am one who prefers Web Sites to be clean and clear and I don’t care for multi-coloured texts on black backgrounds, give me black on white anytime but that’s just me.

I think “Kaweah Cottage� and its environment look lovely but I think you need to think long and hard about how you are presenting them on the Internet.

Fluffy
Paul Carmel
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Post by Paul Carmel »

It was instant for me in FF, I have not had time to look at the site in detail but as I said before no loading problem at my end.
Cheers
PC
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enid
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Post by enid »

This looks a great property but I'm afraid the slide show didn't work for me. I don't think the black background supports the aims of the text. Sorry a bit negative but I'll have a longer look later.
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Alan Knighting
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Post by Alan Knighting »

Paul Carmel wrote:It was instant for me in FF, I have not had time to look at the site in detail but as I said before no loading problem at my end.
Your are right. In Firefox and in Netscape it is much quicker. The bizarre thing is that on a second try using IE7 it was also much quicker.

Is a speedy withdrawal of initial comments called for? Was my FT broadband acting like a piece of wet string when I first looked?

Fluffy
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

My impression: very nice! That iWeb is good stuff. It looks like a very appealing place, caringly described.
Paolo
Lay My Hat
Fraise
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Post by Fraise »

Hi you two. I haven't had a lot of time but I quickly looked at all the pages. Some pages did take a while to load but I liked what I saw ! The slide show was slow to start. Good luck with it ,something different is always good !!
e-richard
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Post by e-richard »

In the spirit of the website:

Content: Inspiring, Enticing, Original

Website design: Slick, Sharp, Smart, but too many colors for me

Technical: Well, sorry, I just don't get this iWeb stuff. The entire textual part of each page is one ginormous image with all the text reproduced in the Alt tag. No wonder it takes ages to download. BUT, and this may be the key, I suspect that the target for Kaweah Cottage, are upmarket, urban, well-to-do, with big fat pipes carrying many gigabytes of Broadband. My rural, 10 miles from nearest BT exchange 1mb Broadband is just about adequate, and I feel particularly inadequate to be allowed to stay at Kaweah Cottage :wink: :D .
Paul Carmel
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Post by Paul Carmel »

I find the background uninviting......Black is not an inviting colour and does not spell holidays for me. ( sorry big fan of white backgrounds ) and the font is hard to read....remember all of this is only my personal opinion.

Looks like a cool place though.
Cheers
PC
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Jimbo
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Post by Jimbo »

Black is not an inviting colour and does not spell holidays for me
Black is, however, the best background to view photographs. Gives beautifully rich saturated colours.

Slow to load for me too (broadband) but not painfully so. The results were worth the wait. Lovely place and well presented. Thought the swimming looked adventurous. Lovely to see Reimer's Candy and Ice Cream Shop listed under 'Adventures and Events'. Obviously my sort of store!

One slight whinge - wanted the 'Ranch Dog' to be given a name. He looked such a nice old boy with his ball waiting for a game.

Jim
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

e-richard, you've explained it for me -- I couldn't quite figure out what I was seeing!

The page did take longer than usual to load for me. I'm on suburban broadband, and it wasn't prohibitively slow, but it was as though I was seeing stylesheets go into effect (making their way down each page) before my eyes. What I was actually seeing was the unformatted ALT tags get replaced by the newly-loaded, nicely-formatted text-as-images.

I wonder, why does iWeb do this? Is it to prevent plagiarism?

But, yes, if anyone's connection is having a slow day, they will likely just give up on your site.

I think the white on black is fairly slick, but perhaps not what you want to go for with a green cottage in the Sequoias. If I am going on vacation in that area, I want to be thinking nature, fresh air, unspoilt wilderness where you carry your own orange peels out. I may also be thinking that I want to return to a comforting, well-appointed cottage where I can relax and refresh myself after a long day's hike or swim -- and I don't think a black background gets me into either frame of mind.

I think the layout of the site is good, though, so I wouldn't say a total overhaul is called for, more like a change of color scheme.

Your exterior photos are impressive -- particularly the panoramas, which I think really give a good idea of what the actual views are like in that part of California. If you want to keep the colors rich and still change the color scheme, perhaps you could wrap all the photos with a black border, even 10-20 pixels wide.

The interior photos clearly show that the cottage is new and has modern amenities, but unless I missed something, they also don't show any furniture whatsoever. I would like to see new photos with more (and tasteful) "stuff" in them, e.g., the kitchen with a big bowl of fruit, maybe a couple glasses and a wine bottle, with the knife block, coffee maker, etc., possibly also out on the counter. The bathtub could be full of bubbles and candle-lit, ready for someone to soak in. And the deck ought to have some furniture on it -- unless you want your potential clients to picture themselves just standing out on it.

One small thing - somewhere along the slideshow the word "gauge" was misspelled (I think it was a photo of a "rain guage").

When I was younger, I went on a week-long backpacking trip to the Kern River Valley -- some of those waterfront images remind me of the places I visited. I certainly envy you your cottage -- what a great retreat! And I think it's already presented in an acceptable way -- but the presentation could also be much improved.

Cheers!
Brooke
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greenfrog
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Post by greenfrog »

Hi,

A couple of thoughts - I think the place looks lovely but you might rethink the order of photos.
On the home page, both pictures draw the eye to the edge of the page - they ought to draw the eye in. Swapping the two would have that effect .(although it would mess with your captions a little!)

On the photos page - I think if I were interested in renting your place I would want to see photos of the house first, the exterior second. I realise you're still taking photos - I'm just basing this comment on the page as it is.

I agree with Vrooje about the black background. It didn't bother me on the first look but after a few pages it did feel a bit relentless. To me it says slick city apartment not relaxing country retreat. And it does look relaxing! The area looks great!

Maybe you could mix up the text and photos a bit more - pages of just photos and just text lose my interest fairly quickly.

The cottage looks lovely and sounds wonderful. Best of luck with the site and with renting!

Elaine
Lounging on the lily pad...
Kathleen & James
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Post by Kathleen & James »

[quote="laineyfr"]Hi,
On the home page, both pictures draw the eye to the edge of the page - they ought to draw the eye in.

Interesting "insight" The vanishing points of each image are towards the edge. We will experiment off-line with alternatives.

I would want to see photos of the house first, the exterior second.
Good idea, although as wonderful as our cottage is we want people to be drawn to the land and being upon it.

I agree with Vrooje about the black background. It didn't bother me on the first look but after a few pages it did feel a bit relentless.
It does seem slick but with it may also be unusual and eye-catching, giving more prominence to the images. Nevertheless, we will experiment with different background motifs. The site will probably be different a month from now.

Maybe you could mix up the text and photos a bit more - pages of just photos and just text lose my interest fairly quickly.
This is an excellent point!!!

We visited your ad at VRBO. It's well done. The comments were fun to read. We're just beginning to realize the value of comments and reviews from satisfied visitors.
Do you have a dedicated website? If not, is it okay? How is VRBO working for you? We are there as well and received our first booking through them, but after the visitor went to our site.
Thanks again for your notes.
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greenfrog
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Post by greenfrog »

Kathleen & James wrote: We visited your ad at VRBO. It's well done. The comments were fun to read. We're just beginning to realize the value of comments and reviews from satisfied visitors.
Do you have a dedicated website? If not, is it okay? How is VRBO working for you? We are there as well and received our first booking through them, but after the visitor went to our site.
Thanks again for your notes.
Hi,

I don't yet have a dedicated website. I only started renting out the apartment last May so my initial energies went into making the place look good and with getting it on useful listing sites. I've bought a domain name and started building my own site with Yahoo sitebuilder but I'm finding it tougher than I expected - mostly tougher to just keep at it... :roll: I must get back to it.

I'm on several sites and I find vrbo is consistently in my top three for bookings. I think it would definitely be a help to have my own site though, more for extra info for potential guests than for bookings. I think I would be more likely to choose an apartment from a selection on a website rather than an individual one I happened across. But I may be wrong in that assumption.

all the best,
Elaine
Lounging on the lily pad...
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greenfrog
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Post by greenfrog »

Kathleen & James wrote: The comments were fun to read. We're just beginning to realize the value of comments and reviews from satisfied visitors.
PS - I think comments are important and I try to update them every now and then. I send a follow-up e-mail after guests have left to tell them their damage deposit refund is on the way and I take advantage of that e-mail to give them the link to my online guestbook. Only a few people actually go online and write something but I think it looks better on the rentors.org guestbook anyway to have a few entered by the guest.
Lounging on the lily pad...
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