What do you think?

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.
Millie-Holly
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed May 23, 2007 11:26 am
Location: helmsley, north yorkshire
Contact:

What do you think?

Post by Millie-Holly »

Comments appriciated.

http://www.helmsleyholiday.co.uk

Go easy please.

Thanks

Holly
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tree-peony
Posts: 1308
Joined: Sun Apr 01, 2007 9:40 am
Location: gozo
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Post by tree-peony »

well I think it looks lovely :)

one TEENY comment is that I would personally make your pricing structure a bit easier to find.

well done!
http://www.gozoluxury.co.uk
actually quite nice apartment in Gozo!
Martha
Posts: 2289
Joined: Sun Apr 16, 2006 7:01 pm
Location: Chamonix

Post by Martha »

Hi Holly,

It looks lovely, and what a super place.

My only small comments would be -

-When you click through to a photo, you are at something of a dead end navigation-wise. Maybe a back and next, to see all the pics? A photos page would be good - there are some lovely pics, but no way to see them all together.

- maybe brighten up some of the interior ones a little? Some of them could do with a bit more contrast. The outside ones are super :)

Jorvik, not Yorvik, on the home page

...and welcome! :)
Chalet la Foret, Chamonix
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Ju
Posts: 1949
Joined: Mon Sep 27, 2004 6:56 pm
Location: Vendee, France
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Post by Ju »

Really nice site.

My main comment is that you can not see what you are selling up front. you have 2 seconds to grab people before they are gone, so it needs to say on your home page that it is a holiday rental property (or holiday cottage for rent, or self catering accomadation for hire etc) and it needs to say how many people it sleeps. I would also make the north yorkshire a bit more prominant.

HTH

Ju
Millie-Holly
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Joined: Wed May 23, 2007 11:26 am
Location: helmsley, north yorkshire
Contact:

Post by Millie-Holly »

thanks for the comments.

all taken on board and implemented !
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Mountain Goat
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Location: Leysin, Alpes Vaudoises, Switzerland
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Post by Mountain Goat »

Really nice site.

I know we all know but perhaps worth mentioning which country, even if it's just stuck in the (hidden) meta keywords? Unless you're just looking for domestic punters only....and it would help the SEO.

MG
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vrooje
Posts: 3202
Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 2:48 am
Location: Burgundy, France

Post by vrooje »

Welcome! Feel free to have a look around the rest of the forum too, jump in by reviewing other websites -- don't be shy! :)

I think this is a very attractive site with colorful photos, and the cottage looks lovely.

Since you're looking for suggestions, a few things:

-- Is your e-mail linked with a straight mailto link? It looks that way to me, and that means your e-mail will be nicked by spammers who crawl the web. There are ways of having an e-mail link without letting automated spam crawlers find you...

-- In the price chart, "Tarrif" should be "Tariff".

-- Your price chart seems really long to me. Is there a way you could shorten it somehow? For example, you have each of 8 weeks from 26/10 to 21/12/07 marked at the same price. Could you just have one row for 26/10/07 - 21/12/07 at that price, and have a line at the top of your table that says "all prices are per week"? I'm not sure about everyone else, but when I see a huge chart like that, my eyes sort of glaze over.

-- For me the home page is the only one with the tan background under the writing. Is that intentional?

-- I agree with Ju, you can't really see what this site is selling right away. I think you could solve that with a second-header line under your main header. You have "Holiday Cottage, Helmsley - North York Moors", and under that, in smaller letters (say in an h2 tag), you could write something like "Lovely Holiday Rental Cottage in (your location, including country)". It's true that you do talk about booking your cottage on the right, but I didn't see that at first... I think it might be good to have something in the main text as well. Also, consider adding that information to your page title. As MG says, that's great for SEO.

-- I think your meta description text might be a little too long: that much text is never going to fit in the results of a Google search. Consider shortening it (without losing SEO keywords, which is a bit tricky).

Your cottage looks so charming -- wish I were visiting! :)
Brooke
mvus
Posts: 118
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 8:56 am
Location: Andalucia, Spain

Post by mvus »

You've used the popular free template 'charity' from freewebsitetemplates.com
http://www.freewebsitetemplates.com/preview/charity/

However, the border has gone out of line when viewing in Safari, Firefox and Opera browsers (not sure about Windows). The site is css based so you may have to spend some time working out where things have gone out of order
Millie-Holly
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed May 23, 2007 11:26 am
Location: helmsley, north yorkshire
Contact:

Post by Millie-Holly »

vrooje wrote:Welcome! Feel free to have a look around the rest of the forum too, jump in by reviewing other websites -- don't be shy! :)

I think this is a very attractive site with colorful photos, and the cottage looks lovely.

Since you're looking for suggestions, a few things:

-- Is your e-mail linked with a straight mailto link? It looks that way to me, and that means your e-mail will be nicked by spammers who crawl the web. There are ways of having an e-mail link without letting automated spam crawlers find you...

-- In the price chart, "Tarrif" should be "Tariff".

-- Your price chart seems really long to me. Is there a way you could shorten it somehow? For example, you have each of 8 weeks from 26/10 to 21/12/07 marked at the same price. Could you just have one row for 26/10/07 - 21/12/07 at that price, and have a line at the top of your table that says "all prices are per week"? I'm not sure about everyone else, but when I see a huge chart like that, my eyes sort of glaze over.

-- For me the home page is the only one with the tan background under the writing. Is that intentional?

-- I agree with Ju, you can't really see what this site is selling right away. I think you could solve that with a second-header line under your main header. You have "Holiday Cottage, Helmsley - North York Moors", and under that, in smaller letters (say in an h2 tag), you could write something like "Lovely Holiday Rental Cottage in (your location, including country)". It's true that you do talk about booking your cottage on the right, but I didn't see that at first... I think it might be good to have something in the main text as well. Also, consider adding that information to your page title. As MG says, that's great for SEO.

-- I think your meta description text might be a little too long: that much text is never going to fit in the results of a Google search. Consider shortening it (without losing SEO keywords, which is a bit tricky).

Your cottage looks so charming -- wish I were visiting! :)
Thanks for the advice. Especially the bit about the mailto spam trick! I’ve implemented an alternative.
Millie-Holly
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed May 23, 2007 11:26 am
Location: helmsley, north yorkshire
Contact:

Post by Millie-Holly »

mvus wrote:You've used the popular free template 'charity' from freewebsitetemplates.com
http://www.freewebsitetemplates.com/preview/charity/

However, the border has gone out of line when viewing in Safari, Firefox and Opera browsers (not sure about Windows). The site is css based so you may have to spend some time working out where things have gone out of order
Yes, i'm no web designer but I can hack just enough to get by.

It works fine with IE, so i'll have to have a play with other browsers.
mvus
Posts: 118
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 8:56 am
Location: Andalucia, Spain

Post by mvus »

If it's any help, the pages are all afffected in the same way apart from the home page so you've possibly just missed out one line of code. Someone who knows css here may be able to spot it easily
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Garri
Posts: 1689
Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2005 7:26 pm

Post by Garri »

Nice and compact site and easy to get around. Works well on OSX in both FF and Safari - no obvious problems I can see.

I agree with Brooke re: your price chart - bit dense and I too glossed over it. Mind you, I'm not in the market for a holiday cottage to rent in Yorkshire right now, so didn't persevere.

One technique would be to apply some, what they call, zebra striping to the rows i.e. alternate colours.

The reddish background sort of implies the dates are booked. So some people may make that visual association.

A neat idea would be to provide links after each date which then take you to an enquiry form with the selected dates pre-filled.

People will love you for that and want to have your babies!
Millie-Holly
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed May 23, 2007 11:26 am
Location: helmsley, north yorkshire
Contact:

Post by Millie-Holly »

Garri wrote:Nice and compact site and easy to get around. Works well on OSX in both FF and Safari - no obvious problems I can see.

I agree with Brooke re: your price chart - bit dense and I too glossed over it. Mind you, I'm not in the market for a holiday cottage to rent in Yorkshire right now, so didn't persevere.

One technique would be to apply some, what they call, zebra striping to the rows i.e. alternate colours.

The reddish background sort of implies the dates are booked. So some people may make that visual association.

A neat idea would be to provide links after each date which then take you to an enquiry form with the selected dates pre-filled.

People will love you for that and want to have your babies!
Thanks for comments Garri. I'm going to redesign the Price page as i have to agree it's crap !
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Garri
Posts: 1689
Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2005 7:26 pm

Post by Garri »

No probs Millie.

I guess if you start thinking of dates as your inventory or as products, if you like, then it becomes clearer how that info should be presented to prospective customers.

We don't go to Amazon, see a book we like, then have to hunt around the screen for an order form that we then have to fill in and email back ;-)

Make your dates your product, it's after all what you are actually selling. If some dates are gone, they're out of stock. In that case disable them.

Don't show me dates that have already gone!
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Windy
Posts: 3219
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2007 8:21 am
Location: Windermere UK

Post by Windy »

Don't show me dates that have already gone!
I'm not so sure about that - wouldn't you agree that showing past and future dates as booked might make the place seem more atttractive. (Conversely if most weeks weren't booked I'd remove them as fast as I could! I wouldn't of course stoop to showing them as booked when they were not ) :wink:

When I book s/c accommodation myself there are two things that annoy me - one is trying to work out from short tables where the week I want fits in (so I quite like seeing all the weeks out there long hand like you have it ,as it makes it easier for me to find the week I want). Horses for courses I suppose.

The major thing that annoys me though is not being able to see from the website if the week is available. (Yes I'm Mr Angry I admit it)

There are loads of free calendars out there that let you show availability in line on the page - Dateblocker and RentCalendar to name but two. I use Dateblocker on one of my other sites where I let other people advertise so I won't give the address here, and it also updates my listing on Homelidays automatically for me.

Alternatively, as you already have a slot for each week, you can do what I do on windermere lodge and show availability using colour coding in each week's listing. If you do this though you MUST keep on top of it, and the next most annoying thing is an out of date availability chart IMHO.

HTH

J
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