Unsurprisingly ... comments welcomed

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.
slartibartfast
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Unsurprisingly ... comments welcomed

Post by slartibartfast »

Hi there, I'm new to this forum , letting and creating websites so any advice is appreciated.

This is far as I've got so any comments would be useful. I want to try and keep it "clean" without too many links to click ... which is a challenge when you want to keep the text count down but want to tell everyone how great the villa and the area is !

I am not happy with the villa photographs so I have to re-shoot them when I am out in September and I still need to add booking related stuff .. and probably sort out grammar and spelling !

Headings are inconsistent as are some table colours and I haven;t thought about trying to built for hit-rate yet. I suspect using MrSITE has made it easy to get this far , but may come with a penalty of restricting what can be done to "enhance" search hits.

Any advice gratefully received. I will reciprocate .. honest :wink:

Regards

Ian
www.villadalriada.co.uk
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Garri
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Post by Garri »

Hi Ian and welcome to the lion's den, I mean the forum :twisted:

First question: what do you plan on using the vast expanse of space at the top of your site for?

Without looking much further, the most obvious problem is that nowhere in the header, title tag, opening blurb does it mention this is a holiday rental, or that YOU can rent this villa. You talk about 'our' villa too much.

It's not until we reach 'below the fold' that it starts to become (almost) obvious that we can rent it ;-)

Mouse-over in the nav becomes invisible, bad choice of rollover colour.

Photos of both the villa, and in particular the area, are fine - better than most I've come across on my travails, I mean travels! ;-)

Lots of work to be done on your copy. Tip: use headlines to draw people into the copy. People are more likely to read headlines than blurb.
slartibartfast
Posts: 87
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:12 am
Location: Ovacik , Olu Deniz, Hisaronu , Fethiye ,Turkey ..but live in Perth
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Post by slartibartfast »

Thanks Garry. The large expanse should be photo's. Reloaded and now OK.

I hadn't though about the menu rollover. I don't think I can change that on MrSite so I may need to change the template :evil:. I'll check.

Thanks for the tips on the content. It's amazing how the blindingly obvious doesn't always smack you (me) in the face !

Regards

Ian
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Garri
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Post by Garri »

It's amazing how the blindingly obvious doesn't always smack you (me) in the face !
I visit hundreds of sites a week and you're not alone ;-) People often assume that users will read all the blurb they've carefully written when the fact is users scan websites.

Knowing that, you have to craft your site with headlines here and there and possibly break up large paras, or even edit your copy down and make it more efficient.

One other tip is to provide your nav at the foot of your site, as once we've scrolled down to the bottom, assuming we've digested every letter of your blurb, we need a) an easy way to get back up to the top and b) a menu so we can move on through your site.

Currently, your nav on the left disappears when we're at the bottom.

If you're feeling bold, consider placing a 'call to action' at the end your pages like: interested in booking the villa? then click here

Make it easy as possible for us, we don't have a lot of time and hunting around websites looking for the 'contact' page can be tedious ;-)
slartibartfast
Posts: 87
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:12 am
Location: Ovacik , Olu Deniz, Hisaronu , Fethiye ,Turkey ..but live in Perth
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Post by slartibartfast »

More goods points. Thanks.

I was trying to get something presentable up and working as a priority. Another irritating feature of MrSite is you can't easily work on a "version 2" and get a decent preview without publishing as your live pages. I may end up using an off-line package but for the moment MrSite has been quick to get going ... before the frustrations kicked in :wink:

I don't want lots of menu items or sub-menus so I'll have a look at using heading , cutting down the visible text and add click-throughs for more information if people want to read it.

Do you find that approach works OK ? ... I was worried about that being to fiddley but it would reduce page length

Ian
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Rosbif
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Post by Rosbif »

Ian I will have a proper look at your site later, but just to let you know I am sure you can change the colour of the navigation roll over as I created my site in Mr Site and had the same problem. In fact I had the same colour scheme as you at first then changed to black and white. However, I can't remember exactly how to do it as I am on my work computer and my password etc is saved on my home computer so I can't log on to look! Will try and look tonight and tell you how to do it and will also look at your site in more detail.

One suggestion I would make is I would make the facilities either on the page or as a separate page rather than having the pink hyperlink which I don't think looks particularly attractive. Also I would suggest if you bullet point your facilities as you mention them in the text you might not need the second page about the facilities if you see what I mean.

As for Garri's suggestion about the navigation along the bottom, I don't think that is possible in Mr Site at the moment. It is a good package but is slightly restricting in places, but I think will give you a good basic website. You can also put up an Under Construction thing if you prefer it is not published while you work on it but then we wont be able to see it :?

Carole :)
slartibartfast
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Post by slartibartfast »

Thanks Rosbif. I have added some crude links at the bottom of the Welcome page just to show it works. Not pretty but I will create some buttons with a graphics package and use the image map functionality to link to specific pages (I just isnserted links into a table for this basic version)

If you have any handy MrSite tips that would be much appreciated
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Garri
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Post by Garri »

Do you find that approach works OK ? ... I was worried about that being to fiddley but it would reduce page length
There's 2 approaches:

1. Design a site so that everything appears above the fold

Or...

2. Design a site you have to scroll but help people navigate through your site by providing the main nav at the foot of your site for the moments when the user scrolls down to the bottom.

I'm not sure that in 2007, with the web going the way it is, MrSite is the correct tool for creating a decent website. But that's just my opinion ;-)
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Rosbif
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Post by Rosbif »

Ah good idea Ian - why didn't I think of that! Might have to 'borrow' your idea for my site! :idea:

Will look more this evening :)

PS Posted same time as Garri - agree MrSite is not ideal, but I think it can give you a decent basic website on a budget and for me that is important as I only have a little studio. Also it saves the hassle of registering domain name, sorting hosting etc. I am quite happy with mine although would prefer a few more functions to be available on it! :D
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Garri
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Post by Garri »

Not pretty but I will create some buttons with a graphics package and use the image map functionality to link to specific pages (I just isnserted links into a table for this basic version)
Hello! It's 2007, not 1997! ;-)
slartibartfast
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Post by slartibartfast »

OK OK .. maybe I'd better buy a book or something :lol:

Any suggestion regarding the best "how to" material (other than here of course :wink: ) I can take getting laughed at if I mean it to be funny :lol:
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Garri
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Post by Garri »

OK OK .. maybe I'd better buy a book or something
No need. It's all freely available on the web. You're paying MrSite for they service but you may as well buy your own web space, learn some xhtlml and css and away you go!

There's even xhtml/css frameworks for layouts that you can use and rejig for your own purposes.

Some starting points:

Start by designing your layout using a grid...
http://www.designbygrid.com/

Free CSS templates to download...
http://www.freecsstemplates.org/

This is great - all laid on! ...
http://www.blankcss.com/

And more!...
http://layouts.ironmyers.com/
slartibartfast
Posts: 87
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:12 am
Location: Ovacik , Olu Deniz, Hisaronu , Fethiye ,Turkey ..but live in Perth
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Post by slartibartfast »

Thanks Garri much appreciated. My ambitions were pretty limited when I started this a couple of days ago. To be fair MrSite allowed me to gain a "critical mass" quickly and easily so I can't knock it. If the path had been more painful i may have given up .. or have been left with even more of a dogs dinner !

I'll try and get the content improved and look at the basics in it's current incarnation then look at a more flexible solution.

PS. The MrSite imbedded links are doing my nut in. I've had trouble with them already but they seem to have a mind of their own again :evil:
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Rosbif
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Post by Rosbif »

Hi Ian

I am at home now so will try and help you with Mr Site if I can! I tried to find the place to change the colour of the roll over on the menu but it only seems to change the colour before you roll over it, if you know what I mean! However, you could email the support desk as they are usually quite quick to get back when I have had a problem.

What are the imbedded links that are giving you a problem?

I think you are doing OK, will have a better look through your site now and see if I can suggest anything.

Garri - I agree there are better ways of doing things, but for some of us (well I speak for myself now not Ian necessarily) having the time to get our heads around CSS etc is a bit time consuming and not easy and quick for a 'beginner' to website creation. Obviously the main thing is to get a site up and running and these other methods can be learnt in due course and maybe another site created using a 'better' method.
slartibartfast
Posts: 87
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:12 am
Location: Ovacik , Olu Deniz, Hisaronu , Fethiye ,Turkey ..but live in Perth
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Post by slartibartfast »

Hi Rosbif. Those pesky links (like the few I have in images and the few which take you direct to other pages) are very temperamental.

I have emailed MrSite a few times and they have been OK responding. I was beginning to think I was going do-lally when a new link worked when I first inserted it, then I was getting page not found.

On the links I put at the bottom of the welcome page as an experiment they worked initially then they all started to serve up the index page. The html looked OK, the link in the MrSite dialog looked OK and they looked OK if you "viewed page info" in the browser .... they just served the wrong page.

I couldn't correct the links so I had to delete the table and start again. They then worked.

It's that sort of inconsistent behavior which drives me nuts. Unfortunately it's not just the links which often need more than one attempt. Ho hum

Ian
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