Please review my website francecottage.com

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AndrewDunn
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Jun 30, 2005 7:41 am
Location: Dordogne
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Please review my website francecottage.com

Post by AndrewDunn »

I first set up my website 5 years ago, but recently it was looking a bit old-fashioned and I dropped out of Google.

So I created a completely new website and have just gone live with it. Please let me know what you think!

Many thanks, Andrew

http://www.francecottage.com
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enid
Posts: 5599
Joined: Mon Dec 27, 2004 4:47 pm
Location: Labretonie France
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Post by enid »

Looking at your availabiltiy calendar I don't think you need any help from me - great bookings! But you did ask so here's my contribution:

First impressions were very good - we loved the colour scheme, the lay out and the sunny day photos - excellent. But when I came to read the text it was way too small for me - tempus fugit and all that. We liked all of your photos but they did take a long time to load - we do have a slow connection to be fair. One comment about the pool shot labelling - it says view from 'the bottom of the pool' - does that mean underwater photograhy?

So summing up a really good site just the text size to make us really happy.
Clexane
Posts: 330
Joined: Fri Apr 22, 2005 3:42 pm
Location: Provence France
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Post by Clexane »

Andrew,

the site looks good and professional. However I had quite a number of problems with dead links once I got on the pricing page. The same links on other pages (ie the header links) worked fine, but on the later pages they did not work. It could be because I use Firefox though.

I agree the text is too small. I would recommend that all your photos should have captions - this is only a small issue though.

It llked it. It was clear and concise.
So you wanted a holiday home in france ...

www.villaemmanuelle.com
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vrooje
Posts: 3202
Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 2:48 am
Location: Burgundy, France

Post by vrooje »

Hi Andrew,

Welcome to the forums! I hope you'll review some of the other posted websites while you're here.

Let me briefly make a list of the things I've noticed while I was browsing:
  • The text is not too small for me but it may be too small for most clients (older or with older browsers/computers). I think I also have a minimum font set in my browser, so it wouldn't display below that even if the code specified it.

    All your pictures open in their own new window! I suggest having them open in the same new window using the "target=windowname" option in the A tag. Otherwise, whoa! I'm only on the third page and I'm already up to 30 new windows (new tabs, actually, which is why I love Firefox). That will overload many computers without top of the line RAM specs.

    Does being a part of a web ring help you or hinder you? I'm curious. It seems to me like you have nearly as many links to your competition as you do to other pages within your site!

    Some of your photos are rather large (over 100K) when I click on them. I would try doing some jpeg optimization in your graphics program.

    No loo photos = always a plus!

    I like that picture of the hammock. It embodies relaxation and looks wonderful!

    I like your text -- there's enough information, but it doesn't feel like an overload.

    All the top links on the Prices page are broken! Whether that's because I'm in Firefox or not, that's not good. The page source tells me that the links on these pages are not relative links like they are on the rest of the site. So when I click on "Conditions", it's trying to go to http ://conditions.html (without the space) rather than to ./conditions.html. (Note that since you use frames, this is actually happening on the page cgi.chauses.plus.com/cgi-bin/Prices.pl?year=2005 .)

    I just tried the links at left on the Prices page -- I didn't know they were exterior links? It's good that those open in a new window, but you may want to point out somehow that those links take people off your site.

    Why does Firefox keep trying to install a plugin when I refresh the page? Is that for the bird sound? (I didn't actually listen to the sound, I just saw it in the page source.)
Overall I think it's a nice page -- I don't know what it looked like before, but I'd say you did well in the redesign!
Brooke
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