Revamp awaits your comments

[Brian]

Thanks for you prompt if rather brief review. I shall add you comments to the list.

I don't know anything about font types, layouts and the like, your website looks like most websites. In my perverse mind, That's good and bad, good in that it's status quo and seems professional, but bad in the sense that for a typical web surfer, who might be looking at many many sites, your site joins the slushpile. The typical website overwhelms me with data. This world overwhelms me with data. If I was looking for a vacation home, I'd have two considerations: 1) where is it and 2) what's it look like. To #1, the parameters of the search hopefully established that. To #2, that takes some navigating. There's a good chance, I might move on if my search had turned up multiple hits. I love to cut to the chase.

This is just my personal take on sites, I have no idea if it's valid, but it's what I believe. People generally don't like reading. They like pictures, especially moving pictures--hence the success of sites like youtube. If you can't do a video, then a nice flattering photo of your property to set the hook. Look at magazine at your newstand, they don't have tons of text and thumbnails, they have big, eye grabbing photo. the detailed stuff is all on page 2, inside. I can't think of any objective reason that websites should follow the same paradigm as print media.

Sorry, I don't represent the orthodoxy on this, but it's my take.

[Bellywobble]

I don't like videos. I don't mind if they are there and I can ignore them, but if I have to rely on them for info I would just switch off and look else where.
I like to read information as I can do that at my pace not the pace of a video presenter. I also like photos, ones that I can control, again at my own pace, not the pace of a slide show.
Nice photos and clear text ticks my boxes.

[Jimbo]

Brian wrote:

I think sites should be visual not textual ...

Photographs on a rental website should be big enough and striking enough to hold a viewer's attention, sell the dream and make the viewer want to read the text. If the photos are good but the text is poor, the viewer is still likely to move on - it's a package and everything has to be right. Thin and badly written text can easily undo the impact of good photographs.

… bad in the sense that for a typical web surfer, who might be looking at many many sites, your site joins the slushpile.

I wouldn't imagine that Enid is looking for ‘potential web surfers’ but rather for ‘potential guests’ who will take the time and trouble to look closely at all the love and care she has lavished on her website (and her rental operation) before deciding if they wish to book. To me, the photo of the cat sitting on the window looking at the sunny garden is worth a hundred slick videos.

Jim

[Martha]

Many people find videos tedious to load and too linear. They are a great extra to a site, but until we all have computers and connections capable of displaying them quickly and easily, they certainly shouldn't be the main feature of a site. They cannot yet provide the detailed information that text and photos can, and most importantly of all, the content can't be indexed by Google.

Photos are hugely important of course, but I can think of many, many differences between the front page of a website and that of a magazine - SEO considerations, loading times, the need for at-a-glance information about the offering which cannot be clearly shown in photos. It's a balance.

I don't agree that this site looks like most - I find it fresh and inviting - informational without being overwhelming.

I agree that a clear link to exactly where the property is would be good - since you are on site, do you give out the address? I always find this to be a plus.

I still think it would be good to get more photos of the gites themselves into every page eg
http://www.peyrenegre.net/_newsite/accommodation/
should perhaps have clickable photos of the gites rather than the countryside photos?

[Giddy Goat]

Interesting debate about videos and I'm glad that the consensus still comes down in favour of still images and text - for SE considerations if nothing else, but the arguments against videos taking priority are fairly compelling I think. Nice as an add-on but not the main feature of the site.

I agree Martha, the pics of Enid's gites should be more readily accessible!

The top banner montage ends in half a picture, makes me want to scroll sideways. I would cut it and work in a picture of the surrounding countryside to say "Rural French idyll!" I would also put in a thin white line between each of the pictures, for clarity.

My OH has said that although he likes the banner, could it be simplified a bit Enid, so that as Jim suggested before, the cat is in the first image. It would entail looking again at the way you currently have 'Peyrenegre' nicely highlighted in the corner with the sweeping curve of colour though, but where there's a will there's a way ... alternatively you could retain that present sweeping curve and just use one panoramic shot? ..... Pussy could find pride of place somewhere else?

I know you've done some work on the banner since Paolo's comments, but a line between the images would be helpful still I think, if you decide to keep a collection in the banner and not just one.

Otherwise, it's looking fantastic, and there's such a wealth of info there Enid, with friendly wording that doesn't daunt the reader but simply draws them in to read more!

[vrooje]

Hi enid,

Sorry for the delay on feedback, but at least this way you do get things spaced out a bit!

I think it's a lovely site, really nicely put together. But I will focus on all my little nitpicks here:

Overall

• Page titles are WP standard but won't help you with SEO as-is. Consider installing a tool or just modifying the code to add a few more keywords to your base title.
  
  At the very bottom of your template, it would be good to have a "Home" link, and perhaps some basic contact info like your (javascript-encoded to foil spammers) e-mail address. I know that the "Aquitaine Holiday Cottages" link goes to the home page, but that's only obvious if people already know the title of your site.
  
  Also consider having your topmost banner be a hidden link back to the home page. If I don't see an obvious "Home" link, I go to the logo and see if that's clickable. Neither is present here.
  
  Can you have captions for your top-left page photos (below the banner) as well?
  
  I agree with Paolo that the quotes should be attributed, but only with "F.L. -- Town, Country" if it's from a guest.

Front page

• The first text I see is "Aquitaine Holiday Cottages." Good. The next I see is "Holiday Cottages Aquitaine Lot-et-Garonne SW France" -- to me, not as good. Consider adding a bit of punctuation to make it less a string of SEO words and more a title: "Holiday Cottages in Aquitaine, Lot-et-Garonne, SW France" (and is "SW" the correct thing to use instead of "southwest"? Which is more optimal for Google? I really don't know).
  
  When I mouseover the top menus, there is a pause where the background color turns dark green and the text is hard to read, before the images load. You could reduce or eliminate this load time by having the images load in the background when the page loads using a javascript function. A small detail, but it would help make the navigation more smooth.
  
  Currently, I can only see 1 of the 2 lowest images on the front page. The left image -- apparently the terrace (thank you for captions) -- does not show up, nor does the after-click photo. The right image, of the bedroom, does show up -- but the clicked-on image does not.
  
  Incidentally, I'm not that fond of the idea of having a different image show up when you click than the original (smaller) image. That just gets confusing to me. (The terrace caption implies that that's what's going to happen.)

The Gites

• The three central images are too wide by about 20 pixels, so that they overlap the article links on the right side. (I'm using Firefox in OS X.)
  
  Consider tweaking the copy somewhat to include the location of the gites again -- so that if someone comes straight to this page of your site from Google they will still know exactly where it is.
  
  I agree with Paolo's idea of extended captions on clicked images -- the wheat harvest, for example, could have a caption which briefly tells you when this takes place and a quaint/interesting fact about it. I see you've already done this for some of the photos, though, so well done!
  
  "The house on the hill" photo has typos in the extended caption: "theer are panaoramic views"

Les Hirondelles

• The top-left beam/stone photo seems out of focus.
  
  Nice sub-heading!
  
  In "Les Hirondelles ( The Swallows)" -- no space after left parenthesis (I told you I'm nitpicking )
  
  Break up sitting room bullet into two so that it doesn't go onto a second line, or use a true bulleted list (you can format these to your heart's content in your CSS template) so that the second line of a bullet point starts under the first line's text and not the bullet.
  
  In photo trio: swap 2nd and 3rd photos so they're aligned more neatly (someone already said this, I think). On my screen, this shows up as two images in one row, then one in the next. Swapping them would make the first row have two same-size images.
  
  Photo captions, too!
  
  Kitchen photo: microwave door is open.

Les Etables

• "Les Etables provides flexible accommodation" -- suggest you make it "flexible holiday accommodation"; just one extra SE word!
  
  True bulleted list here, I think that looks much better.
  
  Again, swap 2nd and 3rd photos for better alignment, and if third photo is not forced to a new line, force it with a carriage return tag.

The Region

• Top left photo looks like it was originally much smaller (pixelated)
  
  I notice now that the parenthetical statements are all ( like this) instead of (like this) -- is that a UK/US grammar difference?
  
  I believe there's an unintentional carriage return at "the gentle hillsides and
  cornfields and sunflowers"
  
  Small photos in the top row (between 1st and 2nd paragraph) don't bring up Flickr details but take you to a photo comments page... that seems a bit confusing.

Facilities and Services

• Bedroom thumbnail is absolutely tiny -- can you make it bigger and have the text wrap around it (since it's very wide but not very high)?
  
  Suggest bulleted lists here, makes it easier for people to read.
  
  Actually I'm noticing that all the photos are tiny. Can you make them bigger? At least for those photos which are the only ones in their section.
  
  Suggest: remove "(it can get very hot by the pool !)" -- that could sound like a negative, and you already state that there is sun and shade by the pool.
  
  I'm not sure if anyone has yet pointed out this typo: "lovely village nd the locality"
  
  For the additional, fee-payable services, what are the fees? It doesn't necessarily have to be answered here (it could be done with a pop-up table), but it should be answered somewhere.

When to Come

• Okay, I presume this page is not yet done, so I'll reserve comments until then.

Travel to SW France

• Very nice description of exactly where the Lot-et-Garonne is!
  
  Okay, I think this page is just plain great. Really clear information and everything I might need.
  
  Do you get many visitors from outside the UK? If so (and even if not), you might want to provide a bit of info on the nearest international airport that serves flights from JFK and/or Sydney, etc., or perhaps what kinds of transfer flights are available from Paris.

Rates,Booking,Contact

• No spaces between comma and next word in the link button? If that's for image width reasons, would "Rates/Booking/Contact" or "Rates-Booking-Contact" work instead? As it is now it just looks like a typo.
  
  Typo: when you like to the availability calendars, you link to "Les Etable".
  
  As a philosophical matter, is it a good idea to provide booking contracts in .doc format? PDF is readable by anyone who can read a Word Document, and you don't have to read a PDF contract thoroughly each time to make sure no changes have been made.
  
  It looks like you haven't put in any spam-filtering javascript for your e-mail address... just letting you know.

Peyrengere Blog

• I think this is a great idea, and can't wait until it's finished!

This looks like a LOT of stuff, I know, but like I said, it's mostly nitpicking of very small details. I think it's a really lovely site and you have a lovely property!

And I also think it's a good thing that the site is still photos and text. Videos are good as extras, but I don't think they take the place of the text/photo combination (which others have said). My webstats seem to imply that a lot of people browse our site at work -- that wouldn't be possible if the site were all video. I can just picture the boss walking by: Bob, what does a French holiday cottage have to do with your upcoming marketing report? What is Peyrengere?

[cottageguru]

Enid - I've mentioned before how much I love this site. The colours, the banner, the clarity of the presentation, the information. I already mentioned that I will be using this as an example of best practice in using Wordpress for web sites, in my seminar in Toronto next week.

I'll leave it to the techie types to feedback on the little stuff, but as a 'big picture' reviewer, it is a treat for the eyes.

[Brian]

Interesting debate about videos and I'm glad that the consensus still comes down in favour of still images and text -

I'd be careful about putting too much stock in any "consensus" as most people here have put up sites laden with text and photos. It's hardly a representative or meaningful sample.

I'll add that motion pictures are the most influential art form ever created and TV (moving pictures again) advertising is the most powerful sales tool ever created. Why anyone should think different rules apply to the internet is hard to fathom. You can't make the the connection speed argument, not with the success of youtube.

There's a paradigm shift going on here, I'm not saying abandon text and photos, I'm saying it works better when it's ancillary to video. Web 3.0 is coming and it's precisely this shift from static to dynamic web content.

[Brian]

Brian wrote:

I think sites should be visual not textual ...

Photographs on a rental website should be big enough and striking enough to hold a viewer's attention, sell the dream and make the viewer want to read the text.
Jim

\


I disagree. The photos should make you want to go stay at the property. As in "I want to go THERE!"

[Jimbo]

Brian wrote:

I disagree. The photos should make you want to go stay at the property. As in "I want to go THERE!"

The idea of a photograph, like a boat that's slipped its moorings, just bobbing around without caption or text, is a fascinating concept that is highly seductive to many photographers. When I taught photographic workshops, I used to ask students to examine and explain photographs without any hint of where, when or why they'd been shot. 12 students ... 12 explanations. All plausible.

And here lies the rub for a rental site. You need the photographs to reel them in but, equally, you need the text to demonstrate that your place is what your guests' need. They may have mobility difficulties, special dietary needs, allergies to animals, worries about this, or that or a thousand other things. Only the text can tell them these answers. A romantic sunset shot on a beach may do the business for a young couple desperately in love but most families have slightly more complex requirements.

Jim

[A-two]

There's a paradigm shift going on here, I'm not saying abandon text and photos, I'm saying it works better when it's ancillary to video. Web 3.0 is coming and it's precisely this shift from static to dynamic web content.

I completely agree with this statement, but it's harder to implement effectively than it sounds. I have yet to see any video promo for any property anywhere in the world where I could honestly say, "I wish I had done that". They are all so underwhelming, especially in the sound department. Panning around a few empty rooms, just doesn't do it for me, sorry, no offense intended to those who have attempted it here. Even worse are all those "virtual tours" which are zooming in and out of some rather average snapshots, that are not even true video. I'd rather have a stunning still image, beautifully lit and moody, and without the elevator music and eulogy to a jetted bathtub.

[paolo]

Web 3.0 is coming.

What happened to Web 2.0? That was also supposed to be coming. Did I miss that?

[A-two]

What happened to Web 2.0? That was also supposed to be coming. Did I miss that?

Yes....it got tired very quickly

[Giddy Goat]

There's a paradigm shift going on here, I'm not saying abandon text and photos, I'm saying it works better when it's ancillary to video. Web 3.0 is coming and it's precisely this shift from static to dynamic web content.

I completely agree with this statement, but it's harder to implement effectively than it sounds.

Video is a useful tool, there's no doubt, but should be ancillary to great still photography and text in my view, and not the converse. In the holiday rental market, people will always need to know the finer details of what they'll be getting for their money, other than as Jim says, a young couple whose primary interest is romance. Our property sleeps 8 and is in rural France - we haven't had one of those yet and I doubt we ever will!

If we were looking to sell our property, rather than rent it, that would be a different story perhaps. But any old amateur video still wouldn't cut it; as you say, it has to be done really, really well to be of any use at all.

[Brian]

Web 3.0 is coming.

What happened to Web 2.0? That was also supposed to be coming. Did I miss that?

Web 2.0 is old news. It's all about user generated content. Sorta like this place! Social networking is another element, myspace, facebook, I think you know these names...

Web 3.0! All we need is a new font!