Feedback on site for Villa Rental

cooperguy

Hi, I am in the process of completing my first ever website. I am completely self taught so im sure there is problems!

I am hoping ye would be able to give feedback on www.holidayvillafuerteventura.com This site will hopefully help me to rent out the villa to people travelling to Fuerteventura. This will be used alongside advertising I currently use on big villa rental websites. So the idea of this site is that I could refer people to it for more information if they find me on one of the Villa sites and also hopefully get some new customers directly.

Dont hold back im sure there is plenty of problems!

Also im sure we could organise a bit of a reduction for anybody on here who wanted a trip to the Canaries as a thank you for taking a look, just mention boards.ie on the reservations form (Mods I assume it isnt against the charter to offer that, I can remove if you want)

tricky D

Light grey text on white has bad readability. Contrast is your friend. Not a fan of your colour choices.

No postal contact information - vital for trust.

No map.

No how to get there (airlines, car rental etc.)

Some of the photos are bad quality.

You need to use your content better wrt SEO. Proper use of headings, strong, etc.

Links broken/pages not found: Dining room.html

Don't use spaces in filenames.

Why have review and email testomonials separate? Why is the german one not translated?

Homepage replace 'Welcome' with something that has SEO value.

DON'T USE POPUPs - grrrr. (or disable scrolling)

The booking form placement puts the cart before the horse for 2 reasons: having it on the homepage is too early in the process, the user hasn't yet read enough to start making a purchase decision but more importantly, the user should be able to check the available dates before attempting to book. Trying to make a booking only to find it unavailable annoys users. Don't bury the prices link, put it on more pages or change the text and page function to something like 'pricing and availability'.

Use a spellchecker.

Forms could be laid out better and have better styling.

Some of the current page text link styling is off - made smaller in some places and bigger in others.

No background colour specified.

You have a 404 page, but make it more useful by sticking something like a sitemap there.

Some of the pages have little text content. They also tell users to use the menu of the lhs. This should be obvious so as not to have to tell users.

No links to external things to do like golf clubs and other resources/activities etc.

gl/hth

Trojan

Fair play tricky D, you're a patient man!

cooperguy

tricky D wrote: »

Light grey text on white has bad readability. Contrast is your friend. Not a fan of your colour choices.

No postal contact information - vital for trust.

No map.

No how to get there (airlines, car rental etc.)

Some of the photos are bad quality.

You need to use your content better wrt SEO. Proper use of headings, strong, etc.

Links broken/pages not found: Dining room.html

Don't use spaces in filenames.

Why have review and email testomonials separate? Why is the german one not translated?

Homepage replace 'Welcome' with something that has SEO value.

DON'T USE POPUPs - grrrr. (or disable scrolling)

The booking form placement puts the cart before the horse for 2 reasons: having it on the homepage is too early in the process, the user hasn't yet read enough to start making a purchase decision but more importantly, the user should be able to check the available dates before attempting to book. Trying to make a booking only to find it unavailable annoys users. Don't bury the prices link, put it on more pages or change the text and page function to something like 'pricing and availability'.

Use a spellchecker.

Forms could be laid out better and have better styling.

Some of the current page text link styling is off - made smaller in some places and bigger in others.

No background colour specified.

You have a 404 page, but make it more useful by sticking something like a sitemap there.

Some of the pages have little text content. They also tell users to use the menu of the lhs. This should be obvious so as not to have to tell users.

No links to external things to do like golf clubs and other resources/activities etc.

gl/hth

Thanks alot for the feedback, some of the issues I was aware of (e.g. quality of pics - heading out there to ensure I have plenty, my main problem is I have a shortage of pics to put up) im also working on adding new content such as the maps, airlines, car rental, links etc.

I assume you are on about the calendar popup when you are talking about the scrolling popup I think I will integrate it into a page. I thought I had fixed my terrible spelling ill look into that! I was thinking the grey/silver might have been a bit light. Ill darken it up. Maybe its just me but I like the Silver and Gold links.

Once again tricky thanks for the comments I will be working on them

Any help anybody can give me on SEO would be great. I have made an attempt e.g. alt tags, title tags, bolded and italicised font. I am a complete beginner at it though so any help from anybody would be appreciated.

Trojan wrote:

Fair play tricky D, you're a patient man!

Trojan can I take it you just think the site is terrible in general?

tricky D

cooperguy wrote: »

I assume you are on about the calendar popup when you are talking about the scrolling popup I think I will integrate it into a page.

Not just the calendar, but the feedback form too. Keeping it simple, avoid popups altogether unless you have a very, very good reason to use them - you don't.

cooperguy wrote: »

I thought I had fixed my terrible spelling ill look into that!

Testomonial was the only one I noticed, but I didn't read much of the text because....

cooperguy wrote: »

I was thinking the grey/silver might have been a bit light. Ill darken it up. Maybe its just me but I like the Silver and Gold links.

... I have slight difficulty reading grey on grey text partly due to very mild colourblindness. (I can easily enough but usually don't) It's also hard for older users or those with vision issues to read. That accounts for a lot more of the market than you realise. Wrt link colours, design for your users, not you.

cooperguy wrote: »

Any help anybody can give me on SEO would be great. I have made an attempt e.g. alt tags, title tags, bolded and italicised font. I am a complete beginner at it though so any help from anybody would be appreciated.

strong not b, and use headings logically: h1 once for your main headings, h2 for any subs (you could have more of them), etc... Focus more on keywords with particular attention to locality. Three very important ones are in your domain name which is great.

cooperguy wrote: »

Trojan can I take it you just think the site is terrible in general?

He might be commenting on the regularity of my reviews.

gl

Trojan

cooperguy wrote: »

Trojan can I take it you just think the site is terrible in general?

Hey cooperguy, no, don't take it as completely negative! There are a lot of issues with the site, but really it's not bad at all for a first site, particularly if you're self taught.

My comment to tricky D is because I often come in here to the Reviews forum and see sites that need a lot of work. I usually think "Where to start, there's a lot to comment on", and I don't have the time to write it up: most of my posts in this forum are about 1-2 issues per site, not exhaustive lists like from some of the other contributors. Then tricky D comes along with a massive post giving great feedback on all the stuff I was thinking about! Kudos due.

cooperguy, it's good to see you take the feedback in such a positive manner.

On SEO, tricky D mentioned use of headings, here's some more info on that.

cooperguy

tricky D wrote: »

Not just the calendar, but the feedback form too. Keeping it simple, avoid popups altogether unless you have a very, very good reason to use them - you don't.

Testomonial was the only one I noticed, but I didn't read much of the text because....

... I have slight difficulty reading grey on grey text partly due to very mild colourblindness. (I can easily enough but usually don't) It's also hard for older users or those with vision issues to read. That accounts for a lot more of the market than you realise. Wrt link colours, design for your users, not you.



strong not b, and use headings logically: h1 once for your main headings, h2 for any subs (you could have more of them), etc... Focus more on keywords with particular attention to locality. Three very important ones are in your domain name which is great.


He might be commenting on the regularity of my reviews.

gl

Ok ill remove the popups, im fairly sure must of the spelling is right but I had better check! Ill change round the <b> tags, I thought they worked the same as strong.

Trojan wrote:

cooperguy, it's good to see you take the feedback in such a positive manner.

On SEO, tricky D mentioned use of headings, here's some more info on that.

I appreciate the feedback, well aware I havent been doing this too long and its great to get people to have a look. Thanks for the link by the way

cooperguy

Hi im looking for a little more help with SEO.

The site has made its first appearance on google (which I was surprised with because its not up very long at all). If you google - holiday villa fuerteventura - it is result number 12, 13 and 14. Unfortunatley for most users that means it is not on the first page.

I have a couple of questions. Number one: I dont understand the three pages that come up. The homepage is number 12 which is fine but number 13 is the page for the Kitchen which I didnt think had a huge number of those key words compared to other pages and even stranger number 14 is my rates page which apart from the title and address dont have ANY key words! Any ideas?

Question 2: Any help with SEO? I have <title> tags, <alt> tags, <strong> tags, <h> tags, italicised font and meta tags. I know im up against some big villa rental company sites so im not expecting miracles but suggestions are welcome. Is it just a case of trying to get the site linked to by other sites?

<Edit> Overnight I have gone to rank 4, 5 and 6 which I cant really complain about I suppose!

mbiking123

well done, looks good especially for first site

only problem i can see is if I google holiday villa fuerteventura rates I dont get your site. Otherwise it easy to google your site. Maybe try to make it easier for search engine to find your rates. People are looking for best value in current climate. Best of luck with project

cooperguy

Hi guys, im back again looking for more advice!

I had gotten reasonably good Google search rankings for some keywords over the last while. However since Google changed their search algorithm last week I have dropped off the face of Google almost entirely! Even when you search Holiday Villa Fuerteventura which is my URL I dont appear until the second page!

As far as im aware Google changed the search algorithm to counteract Spam Websites etc. I clearly am not one of those so is there anyway I can get myself back onto a reasonable rank again. Have I used some keywords too often?

Any help would be appreciated!