What a way to start...

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.
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Big Sis..
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Post by Big Sis.. »

Hi Martin :) ,

Welcome to the Forum,

I found the photos a bit cluttered as well.
Little things like the towel in the bathroom,
also the photo of the Television, just things that niggled me.

On your contacts page you seem to have an email 'contact us for a brochure' or if not telephone us.

Generally I think people email more often than phone
and you need to make it as easy as possible for them to contact you.[to ask questions, or ideally book]

A brochure is a great addition to this of course.
But by the time you get a brochure out to them they might have booked elsewhere.

As for photos I would listen to the advice E Richard is offering, as there isnt much he doesnt know on the subject.
Hes generously helped me and lots of others in the past.

Well done with the Website though :wink: ,
and its nice that you seem appreciative of people giving you their thoughts.

Do you advertise with any other Rental Website Companies ?

Good Luck with the Website and Future Bookings.!
KathyG
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Post by KathyG »

Hi Martin,

I agree with e-richard re the photos, some of them do look rather blurry now.

I'd be inclined to drop the Comic Sans MS and use Arial and drop the font size even further, and smaller again for the picture captions. Do you really need all that info under the pics? Bit distracting I think, you want just a simple one-liner.

Could you change the 'Details' tab to The Villa, Accommodation or Gallery.............I didn't think it was immediately obvious what 'Details' meant.

It's good to see someone immediately acting on advice so quickly - so many people request a review, you spend ages analysing their site, write it all down and never hear from them again! :evil: I only spent a few minutes on your site though Martin but those were the obvious things to change IMO.

Welcome to LMH by the way!
Kathy
Waterfront location in Le Faou
"My goal in life is to become as wonderful as my dog thinks I am."
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Jimbo
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Post by Jimbo »

e-richard wrote:
I feel that "Tiled garden area with palms....." feels smarter. Dunno why though.
It's because, when you're trying to ensnare site-hopping punters, you need to trim all extraneous fat. Otherwise - with a twitch of the mouse finger - they'll be off. It hurts me but some of the finest practioners of these black arts are the tabloid press. Clever picture cropping linked to compelling headlines and imaginative captions - these guys really know their stuff. Look and learn from the 'redtops'.

Jim (with a copy of the Sun tucked into his Guardian!)
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Topcat
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Post by Topcat »

I don't know why, but the text is still in red for me. I'm in Firefox. Is anybody else still seeing that?

TC
Debut novelist at http://tinyurl.com/or89jle

http://wivenhoewriters.blogspot.co.uk/
Contributor to anthology 'In a Word: Murder'
e-richard
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Post by e-richard »

Yes, TC I also experienced that, and even if you try to refresh the page, it comes back red. I suspect thats because its (unnecessarily) in Frames, and FF isn't refreshing the sub frame, but keeping its cached version or something like that.... I haven;t really investigated too deeply.

If you want to clear the cache, in FF go to Tools > Clear Private data and click OK. Then close FF, and restart and you should see black text.
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Topcat
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Post by Topcat »

I'll just trust you Richard. The trouble is, are people going to know to do that?

Martin, I know it doesn't get much credit here, but I built my painting holiday site www.watercoloursinspain.co.uk using Microsoft Office Live. I didn't need to know HTML or any other techy stuff, and it isn't a bad site in my opinion. I did try to use Worpress but couldn't get going on it other than if I just wanted to produce a blog. But someone on here, I think it was Istrian holidays, recommended MS Office and I've been very pleased with it. They have great real-time help as well.

It's not as sophisticated as my apartment site, but that was built by a designer.

Just a thought.

TC
Debut novelist at http://tinyurl.com/or89jle

http://wivenhoewriters.blogspot.co.uk/
Contributor to anthology 'In a Word: Murder'
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Interesting ... I've seen this kind of use of frames before... Overboard's Tully House website used to use them. It seems to be done in place of a permanent redirect. In martinb's case, the site you see at rentmyvillainspain.co.uk is actually hosted at aman.demon.co.uk, and rather than set up a 301 redirect or a DNS re-pointing, either martinb or the hosts of rentmyvillainspain.co.uk have used a frame to provide the illusion that aman.demon.co.uk is the same site as rentmyvillainspain.co.uk.

I strongly recommend against doing this, as it really does your site a disservice. If someone is using a browser that doesn't support frames, when they go to rentmyvillainspain.com they will see a page with no title that just says "This page uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them." And many search engine spiders don't support frames, so you won't get a good ranking on their search engine. The way you have it now, according to many search engines, aman.demon.co.uk will have a decent search engine rank (and it also has a page title, I see), but rentmyvillainspain.co.uk is essentially a blank website.
Brooke
martinb
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Post by martinb »

Thanks everybody - once again.

1) Pictures - yes, exactly right Richard, I did the "quick and dirty resize", but only as a short-term measure. I wanted to see results myself and get comments. Seemed to work OK so I subsequently re-processed originals and replaced.

2) Frames - yes, my domain is not hosted at my ISP and I have set my redirect to frame the site to avoid confusion of rentmyvillainspain changing to aman.demon.co.uk. No frames used in the site itself. I will be changing ISP shortly and moving the site to my homepages there. I will then host my domain with my new ISP and there will not be any necessity for the dreaded frames. Short-term measure again I'm afraid. Sorry for any confusion.

3) I need to re-do pictures (well some of them) bearing in mind comments.

4) Big Sis - I've changed the text in the contact page so it should be more obvious that we welcome everything from direct booking and payment on the website, email and long telephone chats (had a few of those). In reply to your question I only have the villa with Villarenters but am reading the forum furiously to see if its worth considering a paid site.

Next major activity will be moving ISP and site late November, I've a few other things to do with the villa itself in November which should be an opportunity to get some better photos together and overhaul the site again.

I'll beback for more punishment!
:roll:

Regards to all,
Martin
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Big Sis..
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Post by Big Sis.. »

Hi Martin :) ,
In reply to your question I only have the villa with Villarenters but am reading the forum furiously to see if its worth considering a paid site.
In my opinion I really think you need, especially in the beginning.
Think it will be money well spent.
Im on quite a few, as I think youll find most on here have paid sites..

Its one of the first things Id tackle.

Take Care and hope all goes well!!!
martinb
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Post by martinb »

Big Sis.. wrote: Im on quite a few, as I think youll find most on here have paid sites..

Its one of the first things Id tackle.
Yes, I noticed that. I put the villa on a paid site last year - result one booking - poor choice! I have this theory that if a site is commission-based (like Villarenters) they'll work harder to get bookings because its in their interest to do so - and they have worked for me. What is there to drive pay-up-front sites except to sign up new clients? Many businesses have a short-term view of the necessity to keep customer loyalty and are content to "churn". (Off hobby-horse now).

That's maybe a bit harsh and I am going to seriously evaluate the advertising sites to see what is value for money. A good trawl of the contents of "Rental Listing Sites" might be in order and I've noticed some excellent tutorials on the subject too.

It all takes time doesn't it - Sigh...

Thanks for the comment, useful as always.

Regards,
Martin
Musetta
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Post by Musetta »

nope...your theory doen't seem to be the case at all...I listed with villarenters...and did not even get ONE enquiry from them, let alone a booking! (and have since removed my listing)my point being...what works for one may not work for all! I am always surprided at where my enquiries come fromm...some paid...some free...some free trials...a total mix.
martinb
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Post by martinb »

Musetta wrote:nope...your theory doen't seem to be the case at all...I listed with villarenters...and did not even get ONE enquiry from them, let alone a booking! (and have since removed my listing)my point being...what works for one may not work for all! I am always surprided at where my enquiries come fromm...some paid...some free...some free trials...a total mix.
I wonder if that's could be because VR is better for Spain than Italy? Very strange. No doubt somebody from Spain will jump in here and say VR was rubbish for them too...
:?

Anyway, I want to get my website up to scratch so I get most of my bookings off it rather than through VR (10%) - though I'll still use them for the online booking system which works quite well.

Regards,
Martin
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