Yes another site from another new member

[marcus]

Hi there all,

Yes I apologise if I haven't served my time reviewing other sites before submitting my own, I'm doing my best, I just spent two hours removing a nest of snakes from under the entrance to one of the gites, finishing 5 minutes before the guests arrived (4 hours early...) instead of getting on with the serious business

Anyway our site is at www.bastide-vacances.com and I would be very grateful for all thoughts and comments. Whenever I think I have it just right I suddenly have the urge to change it all again.

Thanks in advance and I promise to keep contributing...

Marcus

[Ciapolin]

Marcus,

I've only had a very quick look, mainly because your site seems to take so long to down load - I don't have a great connection so it could be at my end, but I know there are techie things you can do to speed it up.

The gites look wonderful - again the pictures are slow to download (a couple didn't show).

I have great sypmathy with you on the snakes - I have a terrible phobia which I have struggled with since childhood. Unfortunately I live in the country and in the last week alone I have seen 4! I don't know what I'd do if I had to have a nest cleared out.

C-A

[Hanorah]

Lovely photos your house and surrounding area look gorgeous. From a personal point of view I would prefer a white background as I believe the photos would look even better. However your existing background is fine as it is not fussy or distracting it is just my personal preference.

I would probably make getting there a new page on its own as well and expand on the details. There is information available on the contact us / map page but once you have wetted the appetite which your site does I would immediately want to know how to get there.

I liked the area activities page especially the bits about what the guidebooks forgot. Overall the site is great and it would certainly entice me if I was looking for a gite in your area. Well Done.

[Hells Bells]

Your Paypal link doesn't work, and I think you'd better check your surcharges as I think they are against Paypal terms and conditions. Other than that nice site.

[Renata]

I can tell that you resized your header photos, as they appear distorted and they are the first things that I noticed when I logged in.
Your home is beautiful!!!!!


Renata
www.Daytona-Vacation-Rental.com

[enid]

Bonjour from your part of the world.

I think your property looks borgeous and you have a very detailed and interesting site. There is a little too much reading for me on the first page - a shorter introduction with the photos enticing me deeper into your site would be better in my opinion. We wondered a little about your domain name - of course we know what a bastide is but our American friends certainly didn't. Hope it doesn't get confused with something less erudite!!!!!

[Fraise]

[quote="enid"]Bonjour from your part of the world.

"I think your property looks borgeous " Enid- I love that word, it may be a mistake but what a bit of serendipity eh? It made me chuckle

[enid]

Yes - I just noticed - and that I put bew instead of new on Renata's site. ( and I once typed sight instead of site!!!) I once did an amendment to my web blog apologising for a spelling mistake - and yes there was a spelling mistake in the amendment. I expect there's a spelling mistake in this post - it's the curse that was put on me by the many pupils I corrected when I was headteacher - 'may your retirement be full of spelling mistakes'!

Marcus I wanted to say gorgeous of course but like Fraise I like this new word which could mean beautifully gorgeous!!!!! and Renatas site is a beautiful new site (bew)!!

Sorry wandered off the subject - please forgive me - I needed a bit of light relief as I've just been stung by a ****** wasp!

[Fraise]

Sorry wandered off the subject - please forgive me - I needed a bit of light relief as I've just been stung by a ****** wasp!




That's definitely not borgeous!!

[paolo]

I very much liked this site because it is really informative and the information is conveyed in a personable, friendly way. The pictures are also of a good standard, sunny and holiday-ey.

Some random notes I made when looking through it:

- I did a row of garden pics at the top of a homepage and I found that it worked better with a gap between them so they didn’t blend into one another – like you have done lower down the page.

- The ‘Remind me later’ button is a nice idea and one I have not seen before. Do people use it?

- Book List – terrific page – both a useful resource and a way to plug into the good feelings about France we associate with books and films based there.

- Easy payment plan – typical of the impression of helpfulness I get from this site.

- Could do with a navigation menu at the bottom of each page so you don’t have to scroll back up to the top.

- Having lots of pictures of local attractions with explanatory text is a very good thing. I would make the user's role in clicking through them more obvious though. Maybe something like 'Click the arrow for more pictures' next to the arrow. And 'Click on the picture' above the thumbnails. I know you have these instructions at the top, but it's always good to make these things blindingly obvious.

[marcus]

Thanks very much for all these comments. Some changes I have already made and some I will make, along with others discovered elsewhere on this site.

Regarding the pictures, they shouldn't be distorted, since all I have done is 'crop' them, 'sharpen' them and 'save them for web', all in Photoshop. I am reasonably sure I have never resized them without 'keep proportions' but I will go back and check the originals. I might well have taken them on wide-angle on the camera, which perhaps distorts them a bit? I did possibly take them from a curious angle to try and get flowers etc in the picture. Or perhaps we have terrible subsidence that means our buildings really look like that?

The 'Remind Me Later' buttons are not really a big hit, only used twice in a few months, first didn't book and second hasn't reached the date to be reminded yet. I'll leave them though for the time being.

PayPal? I will just remove it for the moment I think. I added it mostly because we had someone coming who kept saying the cheque was in the post, lost, would be resent, and so on so in the end I said 'as the date is so close you can pay me by credit card now' and I didn't see why I should pay the 3.5% charge.

Thanks again
Marcus
www.bastide-vacances.com

PS Am I supposed to add a quote here? Saw a good one recently, possibly on this forum, I can't remember?

There are 10 types of people in this world.
Those who understand binary and those who don't.

[paolo]

I didn't see why I should pay the 3.5% charge.

I invite renters to pay half of the PayPal commission, but not on the website. Others pass on the whole commission as 'convenience charge'.

PS Am I supposed to add a quote here?

Only if you want to - there is a field for this in your profile so a signature is left on each of your posts. It's just something people do on forums - like a bespoke car sticker.