Opinions on our site www.chateau-de-clerac.com

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.
Duchess
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Opinions on our site www.chateau-de-clerac.com

Post by Duchess »

Hello,
Always searching for better ways to do things. A review would be great. If someone could also look at the code that would be fab too. We are looking at continual optimization so your advice will be greatly appreciated.
Duchess
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Hi Duchess,

Nice site and a beautiful property!

I didn't take a very detailed look at the code, but it looked just fine to me -- no obvious dead weight or anything.

Overall I like your site very much -- it's easy to navigate with the left-hand links and the text links at the bottom, and it's attractive, with easy-to-read text. Below are my comments:
  • There are a lot of links on the left, although maybe for a large property such as yours, that's fine. I do like the division of photos into interior and exterior... though...

    Where are the interior pictures? The link doesn't work on the English page and on the French page, it just shows a floor plan.

    On your front page you have a lot of the essential information, such as making clear that it's a rental property and near Bordeaux, in France (you'd be surprised to find out how many property websites forget to mention the country their property is in). That's fantastic! Maybe it would also be worth it to mention that your prices start at E100 per night on the front page. That's an astonishing price and it might draw people in and keep them at your page.

    I appreciate the idea of the special offer, but the blinking red is irritating. Animated gifs are, in general, not classy enough for your property. If you must animate the special offer link, at least make it very subtle (e.g. with the "special offer" text slowly changing colors or something, and not flashing).

    Also, the special offer link shows up just off the page on the home page. Consider shortening the width of the link and bringing it up to just below the left-side menu. That way it would be visible on most monitors, and you wouldn't have to rely on the animation to draw the eye.

    I think the special offer is a good idea, though! I'd be curious to find out how successful this is for you at bringing in winter revenue, and whether for such a low price it's worth the expense you incur in utilities and such.

    Your exterior pictures are taken in good light, just the right size, with good captions -- very nice! As a matter of aesthetics, I would love to see a punch of color here and there with some flowers or something. It's not necessary, but it would be a nice extra.

    On the wine-tasting page, why the ad at the bottom? I understand the idea but it's taking people away from your page... unless you get significant revenue from linking to these books, I'd take it off. If you still want to offer book recommendations, just write them in text.

    The links to "the region", "directions", and "feedback" don't work -- I assume these are on the way, but I'm just making sure you know they don't exist. They all exist in the french version, including feedback in english and floor plans in english, so it's a little confusing that those pages don't exist yet in the English version.

    The downloadable brochure idea is a great idea! However, there aren't any other language versions -- so don't say there are (yet).

    On the links page -- why are you linking to another gite? if someone needs to hold more than 14, let them inquire with you and THEN refer their extras out -- don't let a smaller party slip away from you this way! Granted, the link doesn't work, but still. I'd remove it completely -- unless, of course, you own it!

    For the other links, I was going to say that you should make sure that these sites link back to you, but then, none of the links actually work.

    The printable version is a great idea! With the background as it is, though, it may not print very well... but I didn't try it, so I can't say for sure.
Overall I think you've got a very nice site here!

Cheers,
Brooke
Duchess
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thanks

Post by Duchess »

Hello Vrooje

Thanks for your comments. Will look at the links as they should work. It was good to hear positive comments and will look at all the other points which you raised.
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Duchess,

No problem... and I don't know why I didn't notice this before, but this post should go in the "Website Reviews" section of the forum... so it has been moved there.
Brooke
alexia s.
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Post by alexia s. »

Duchess,
What a great building.
Maybe I didn't get enough sleep, but where do you describe the accommodation (bedrooms, en suite or not bathrooms, dining etc etc)?
Does it only sleep up to 14? I would have thought that a chateau this size could sleep twice this - if you do only rent out part, you might get some disappointed visitors who imagined they would have access to it all. A full description of the accommodation would clarify this......I didn't visit all the pages (too early in the day), but then a lot of people won't: they want the essential info straight away.
Let us know when the photos go online?
Best,
Alexia.
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Hi Duchess,

Taking the beauty of the house, the external pics and the good design of your site as read, here are some things I would do differently.

- The flashing ‘special offer’ on the homepage is not in keeping with a luxury chateau.

- The aerial photos don’t add anything, for me. They are poor in quality and show that there are some run-down outhouses and a busy-ish road alongside. If you want some better, more up-to-date ones, how about going on one of those micro-light sightseeing flights that seem to be available everywhere these days – take your camera and ask the pilot to keep circling your chateau.

- All your internal pics are good quality, but they all use a fisheye lens. I don’t think this is necessary with rooms of this size. It distorts the pics and makes me think – fisheye lens: room’s too small.

- You’ve got a history of the chateau but there is no description of the place as it is now. Potential renters would like to know a little more detail than the pictures alone provide.

- I’d make it more obvious that you have to put your cursor over the floorplans to see the internal pics – some people are only going to see a floorplan there.

- Title tags. Each page has the same Title:
"French villa holiday? Rent the beautiful Chateau de Clerac in France for the same price!"

This is an interesting sales proposition but there are two things to say about it:

1. If you are going to optimise your site for the search engines, each page should be aiming at two or three distinct key phrases. The Title is an important part of your optimisation so it should say something different on every page, in line with the phrases a page is targeting.

2. The Title, or the first part of it, is what you see on a pgae of search engine results, and what you see there goes a long way to deciding if you are going to click on it – there is no point in being found with a search engine if you don’t get clicked on.
This is what it says on a Google pages of results:
“French villa holiday? Rent the beautiful Chateau de Clerac in ...�

It could be worse, but it could be better too. It's too long to appear in full. You could go the conventional route, e.g.:

“Chateau to rent, Bordeaux holiday accommodation�

or re-phrase yours to make it all fit:

“Bordeaux chateau rental for the price of a villa holiday, France�


Otherwise I found it a very handsome site for a very handsome home. I particularly liked the pages on the region, with good photos of the places you are describing. All the links worked for me by the way.
Paolo
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Paolo,

Very interesting... all the left menu links work for you? Some of them still don't for me -- and I think it's because the javascript is different for those links that don't work for me.

Example:

Code: Select all

<tr> 
    <td><A 
                  onmouseover="MM_swapImage&#40;'menu2','','Images/Left_Chat_Outside2.jpg',1&#41;" 
                  onmouseout=MM_swapImgRestore&#40;&#41; 
                  href="GB/outside.htm"><IMG height=30 alt="Exterior Views" 
                  src="Images/Left_Chat_Outside1.jpg" width=160 
                  border=0 name=menu2></A></td>
  </tr>


I can see this just fine, and all the menu links that resemble the above are just fine for me.

The links that look like this, however, I can't see:

Code: Select all

  <tr> 
    <td><img src="Images/Left_Chat_Inside1.jpg" width="160" height="30" name="menu3" id="menu3" onMouseOver="showMenu&#40;event&#41;" onMouseOut="hideMenu&#40;event&#41;"></td>
  </tr>
Presumably that's because the showMenu() function isn't defined anywhere in the code I can view... but I'm not sure. The function might be defined in one of these files:

Code: Select all

<script language="JavaScript1.2" src="../Library/data1.js"></script>
<script language="JavaScript1.2" src="../Library/dqm_script.js"></script>
and maybe Firefox can't find those directories... though even that's strange, but perhaps that is a browser-dependent function.

If I go to a page such as GB/region.htm, which uses a slightly different version of the left menu and has no showMenu() code in it at all, I can see all the links.

Intriguing... well, now I know what's causing the links to fail with me... I just don't know why. :)

Cheers!
-Brooke
Brooke
alexia s.
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Post by alexia s. »

Paolo, You can access the internal photos - is it because I use a mac that I can't? If so, Duchess could be losing out on this market.
Best,
Alexia.
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

I have had a look at the site using Firefox and Netscape Navigator as browsers instead of Internet Explorer, and with both of these I cannot click the links for Chateau Inside, Region, Directions, and Feedback.

Why that should be is beyond my technical grasp, but probably an easy fix. Something to do with the different coding used that Brooke mentioned above.

If you are losing out on any visitors with a Mac or not using Internet Explorer, well, that's still a relatively small percentage, but it certainly needs fixing.
Paolo
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Duchess
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Post by Duchess »

Hi Everyone
Thank you for your comments on this. I am away at the moment and just picked up the comments, these have now been passed on to hubby.

In answer to some points the chateau can sleep up to 20 and it really is rather huge. The point about the Fish Eye Lens is good as I often wondered about this myself. The reason for it is in fact the bedrooms are large, but some folk my thing the opposite. Anyway will pick up on the points and thanks again. Duchess
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