Lay My Hat

Hiya, would really appreciate your review of our site www.villasibillini.com

Hi there!
Just taken a quick look, first impressions are nice site and lovely property but the text is way too small for me to see easily!!

I'm not really sure re the double navigation system - top and side, although the bookmarks to main points are useful as a potential renter I'd feel there was too much going on there and not sure where to jump to next.

The photo's on Accommodation - not sure if the middle photo tells much of a story?? Is there an exterior shot of the property anywhere? Maybe one bedroom shot, a lounge and an exterior would work well?

On your contact page I did like the photo of you guys, that is such a nice touch to see the people you are renting from and would for some reason give me a bit more confidence. I know when guests have met us they have commented "oh, you're younger than I thought!" I guess folk get a mental picture of you, positive or negative. That seems a very stealable idea

I know you'll get lots of constructive comments and points so - good luck with your site and I hope my feedback has been somewhere near useful

When I first navigated to your page, it tried to set a cookie -- why is this? Just curious... are you tracking my movements through the site, or something else?

Your page titles are all the same across all your pages. I recommend distinguishing them, varying them around a theme. Also, I'd mention that you have a rental villa in the title as well. Page titles are one of the things that search engines use to index pages.

I agree with soodyer that the two different menus are confusing, especially since the menu items have different names on the right side, but go to the same place as the top. I like the more descriptive link titles on the right side, but you're already using these as the titles for those sub-pages, so I'd suggest just leaving that right side blank on the main page. It's useful for some of the longer sub-pages, however I'm also not sure how necessary it is for e.g. the Specials page, where you link to stuff that should be already on the page for anyone who browses to your site, regardless of screen resolution...

I also agree with soodyer that your text is a size or two too small. A lot of the people who enjoy self-catering holidays are, well, not as young as they used to be, so it's important to make all your text very easy to read.

However, if you increase the size of your text I think you'll find that your text is a bit too long. Most people surfing the web prefer short paragraphs that they can skim to recover the important information. I'd say each of your paragraphs ought to be about half its size, or smaller. (This is something I'm also working on for my site -- I love descriptive paragraphs and I tend to make them too long.)

Is the telephone system in Italy really so fragile that you need to mention it on every page? If I were thinking of a holiday I wouldn't want to stay somewhere where I knew in advance that things don't always work right.

Your testimonials are buried within an article far down the page in the News/Info section -- I'd make these easier to find.

I would love it if the images were clickable so that I could see larger versions! I'd also like to see captions on them...

Overall, though, I like your color scheme and high-contrast text!

Cheers!

Hey, hiya Pam.

Well we finally got our house sold (well, completes in the next few weeks!) .... so we'll be booking in sometime late march / april during our 'tour of marche', if you have the room that is

Regarding your site ...... love the colours and the header image, not to mention the informative content. Have to agree with the 'above' regarding the text though.

See you soon! (ish)

Thanks for the constructive comments, will take a look again and take some onboard. With regard to setting as a cookie - its not happened to anyone else we know and as I'm not a 'techie' can't answer that.

Am working on a new site that will link to the original that will feature the rental side. We don't actually offer it as self catering, we rent complete with live in staff.

I love this web site - and find it very useful, keep up the good work.

I agree with everything Brooke and Sue say, and as well as the small type, the paragraphs are sometimes too long, especially on the homepage. Breaking them up into smaller chunks would make the prospect of reading that amount of text less daunting.

But otherwise it's a really good site, with loads of information, and you have thought to sell the idea of the region too - this is often overlooked and very important, I feel.

Hello Pam, David and Georgina. Villa Sibillini looks lovely. Just hope that Paul Carmel doesn't follow your idea of having his collection of photos on his contact page ........ If you read some of the threads on the forum, you'll see what I mean!

Not sure I can add a lot as, like the others, I enjoyed your site, but did find it difficult to read because of the size of the text and the amount of info in one paragraph and I found the two menus confusing.

But the good thing is it looks like you could be getting a booking from this review. Glad to hear your house sell is just about finalised, Tony. Good luck with the move!

Cheers

Christine
www.stybarrowcottage.co.uk
www.troutbeckcottage.co.uk

I agree with what has been written so far, wow- things look exciting for 2006!The restaurant looks lovely, I want to come! The only thing putting me off would be the mention of "stag" and "hen" parties, but hey, that's just me!!!

www.thepetitmanoir.com