Our website- revamped- opinions please!

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.
Reta
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Location: Mousehole, South-West Cornwall
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Our website- revamped- opinions please!

Post by Reta »

Hi everyone,

We decided to get our website professionally re-developed.
There are a couple of changes we need to make, but on the whole we're very pleased with it.

www.ritascottage.com

Can you provide any advice, and we will pass this on to the web designer.

Great forum by the way, lots of info!

- Reta
guest 4
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Post by guest 4 »

Hi Reta,

Your cottage looks lovely, really homely.

I would like to see more pictures, there are only two of the cottage and both are quite dark. Also, you are using the same picture (boats) for each page, the picture looks dark on my screen, perhaps you could take one when the sun is shining?

I think your information page about the location is good.

I tried to click on the dates to book and it kept saying there is an error please choose another date. Perhaps I am doing something wrong. :lol:

Good luck with it.

Ruth : :)
Reta
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Location: Mousehole, South-West Cornwall
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Post by Reta »

Hi Ruth,

Thanks for your feedback. The photos are indeed a little dark, though I am on a laptop so the colours maybe different. Thanks for pointing that out though.

The booking form will give an error if either the date you select clashes with another, or you just select the number of weeks and no starting week. Could you let me know how to replicate the error?

Thanks again

- Reta
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fibi
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Post by fibi »

Hi Reta,

cute cottage- lovely location and lucky you. I liked the layout and colours of your site but didn't like the photos. The ones of the kitchen and living room were quite dark and not big enough, the larger photo of the bedroom just showed the bedlinen mainly(it would be nicer with a crisper more dressed bed look, white coton covers, throws, cushions, tray casually laying on the bed with champagne and a red rose!). The patio area wasn't that attractive either.

Sorry this sounds negative but photos either sell your property or not (I am off to check mine now...)
I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.
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fibi
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Post by fibi »

Hi again,

sorry just looked at your photos again and noticed that you can click on them to enlarge. I love this facility will someone please tell me how to do it?

While it is great to enlarge the photos in doing so you have to ensure that what is enlarged is immaculate. Yours doesn't seem to me to be so. The bed linen looks rumpled as do the pillows, there seems to be no headboard, the lounge is fine however the kitchen has cleaning materials on display, a close up of electrical flexes and empty shelves. The patio is fine I don't like plastic furniture but thats just a personal quirk.

Like Ruth I couldn't get the availbillity calender to work, clicked on lots of dates but kept getting an error message.

One final point I would like to see an external shot of your cottage.
I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.
la vache!
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Post by la vache! »

I agree with Fibi's comments - I haven't looked at the site in depth, but the interior photos should be lightened (easily done using Picassa or other editing software), and I would have liked to have seen an external photo on the homepage. Also more shots of the outside area.
Apart from that it is a nice clean colour scheme and a very straightforward site to navigate around.
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enid
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Post by enid »

I love Mousehole and your cottage sounds very good.I agree that you need to add more photos of better quality throughout the seasons but I expect that's on your agenda. Although at first the availability and pricing information looked very interesting I think I would prefer to see all the prices across the year at a glance - I would find it tedious to have to keep entering a date to find the price. Just one other thing - the link to the downloadable booking form doesn't seem to work.

I liked the text very much and the descriptions of the cottage and the region. Good luck :)
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fincafern
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Post by fincafern »

Hi Reta,
Lovely location - my husband loves your area, being an ex lifeboat man.
We are just revamping our website now and have finally managed to find a photographer who can take interior shots and make the rooms appear the size they should be. We tried standing on chairs and all the tricks to take the interior shots ourselves but to no avail. We have only completed the first two pages at present but you will see how the bedrooms are displayed to their best advantage, even though a couple of our rooms are small like yours. Leave the lights on, that helped us.
We owned a fisherman's cottage in Cromer, Norfolk once so I know they are not huge inside but there is no point making it look smaller. Perhaps you can ask your man to find a wider angle lens and do the bedroom and patio again and I would take any spare chairs away from shot, dress the bed up, put a glass of vino on the patio table etc., borrow some cushions for the bed, etc for the shot, as our photographer did.
I am a nobody to try to give advice on this matter, however - our websie has looked a mess for years - very much an amateur attempt, made six years ago, even though we had professionals do the shots and site.
Good luck with everything
e-richard
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Post by e-richard »

I think all the problems have been mentioned above.

Its really a super crisp and clean looking site, definitely looks professional without being overly complex. Just right for your purposes.

But let down by dull photographs. Now I understand what you're saying about looking at it on your laptop. All computer screens are different, but even on your computer can you see the difference that a little tweaking (in Picassa as suggested by La Vache) can do:

BEFORE:

Image

AFTER:

Image
la vache!
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Post by la vache! »

I have to add that e Richard did the same with my photos when he gave my site a makeover and it has made a big difference to the internal shots!
Reta
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Post by Reta »

Thanks for the criticism everyone.

I was aware the photos werent the best- these were taken last minute in a rush, and some better ones will be taken in a couple of weeks. The ones on the website at the moment were all taken in winter as well. Further photos will also be added of the exterior.

Does anyone have any problems with the booking system? It has been tested by the web team but if there are any outstanding problems I will pass these on. Also, the idea of a seperate page showing just the prices is good, thankyou. Enid: the downloadable form works for me?

All these points have been emailed to the web team, and I thank you again.

-Reta
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enid
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Post by enid »

I go to bookings where I find this text 'If you prefer to use our paper-based booking form, you can download it here.' - I can't actually see a link here but I clicked on the here and get a page not found error.
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boberry
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Post by boberry »

What about talking about the winter lights?
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Garri
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Post by Garri »

Absolutely love the ambition of this website, looks fresh and bloglike, well laid out and great typography generally.

I'd make the 'features' box stand out more with perhaps a very light colour background, with maybe stylised bullet points.

I don't like the mouse-over arrow at the top of the nav, it's annoying. If you're going to keep that idea then maybe the triangle when you mouse over should come up from the coloured lines underneath and be part of them (if you know what I mean)


The word 'mousehole' underneath your logo should be, in my opinion: mousehole, cornwall. It sorta looks weird as it is.

Are the views of mousehole in your gallery the actual views as seen from the cottage?

Finally, put some navigational links in the footer so we have an easy way of navigating through your site once we've scrolled down to the bottom.
Last edited by Garri on Sun Aug 05, 2007 12:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Garri
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Post by Garri »

Oh no!

I've just had a look at the Booking page and have to say it's a mess but easily rectified. Where to start?

First, the pricing info should be laid out in tabular form, easy to read. People scan websites, they don't read them.

The whole procedure needs to be designed carefully as it's far from being intuitive.
Last edited by Garri on Sun Aug 05, 2007 1:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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