Please review our website www.directholidaylets.com

[directholidaylets]

If anyone has a couple of minutes to spare I would be greatful if you could view our webstie www.directholidaylets.com and give me your opinions.

We specialise in the advertising of holiday home rentals worldwide and at the moment advertising is free in order for us to list some properties and start filling the database.

Thanks

Rob

[AstarothSolutions]

simple clean layout which I like

not keen on either the over use of bold in the copy nor the long list of locations underneath.

Personally would have the login for owners in a much more descrete place... having it so prominant is just asking for someone to try an SQL injection attack.

Several of the photos are thumbnails blown up to full size... dont know if this is your sites error or owners uploading too small a picture.

On some pages such as http://www.directholidaylets.com/property/56/ the seeding is wrapping over itself in FF and IE6 (dont have IE7 on this pc)

My concern as a user is the reliability of the availability grid if the person has the villa advertised on 20 different similar sites how likely are they to update each one when they make a booking? Am I going to have to go through half a dozen "available" villas before I find one that truely is available?

[directholidaylets]

Many thanks for taking the time to look at the site.

I was aware of the overlapping of text on one of the sites and am working on this now.

The problem is with some owners using thumb nail photo´s although I do specify that they need to be a certain size and format but it seems that some people just dont RTFM(read the instructions)

As for placing the login area somewhere discreet I dont think it would be a good idea as the customers might not be able to find it either.

Availibility is down to the customer. The more effort they go to to filling these things in and making their ads more attractive the more responses and enquiries they will get. I think I will probably put some basic instructions up front and centre where they will have to read them before adding properties.

The browse list is a bit lengthy now at the bottom of the homepage so will tidy this up soon.

Thanks again for your comments. Much appreciated.

Robert

[fisicx]

I actually like the site. The accomodation pages are very comprehensive and I've already reccomended the site to some friends with holiday homes.

The main problem is the homepage. It is very busy, lots of things going on with no real focus. Without even scrolling down I can see 6 different options: the main navigation, your blurb, a register for free box, featured holiday, login and advertise my holiday home. The actual ability to search for a holiday home is hidden way down the page.

I would suggest that the focus of the site should be to search for holidays. Make this prominent at the top of the page.

The main navigation (and quick navigation) offer little value to the customer. You can move the: adevertise with us, FAQ and help, about us, blog and owners links down to the bottom of the page. Visitors will only be interested in this information if they find what they are looking for. Think about it this way: if you wanted to move house, your initial searches would be for houses that met your criteria. If you found one you liked you would then maybe investigate the estate agent, local area, FAQs etc. Same with your site. I do not care about you at all. I'm not interested in your business or where you live. All I care about is finding a holiday. And get rid of the quick navigation, if I can't see it it without scrolling down it's not exactly quick.

You have featured holidays. Why are they featured? Unless there is something special that makes them different to all the other holidays then you might as well get rid of them. If you have been there and seen the property or have testimonials from holidaymakers then you 'might' be the need to feature the holiday (this is the personal touch that astaroth suggested).

You DB isn't working well. I went to 'holiday ideas', clicked on 'holiday cottages' and got a bunch of cottages in mainland europe not the UK. Even the banner tells me I was looking in Spain even though there were French and Scottish properites. This sort of poor service will drive customers away.

On the property pages you have a breadcrumb trail that doesn't do anything. I expected: 'Located in Europe > Spain > Inland Andalucia' to lead me somewhere. None of the properties show their rates.

Why does your links page take me to your competitors?

The text in the logo is way too small, I can't actually read is on my screen. And the blue banner has lots of weird shades - all sorts of lines and other lumpy bits in the gradient.

Hope this helps,

Graham

[directholidaylets]

Thanks Graham for your very thorough and comprehensive view of the site. You have made quite a number of excellent suggestions which I have taken on board and will work with.

The db is actually working fine. The problem is with the title that is being extracted from the top property in the results. If you search for say spain and not for something more specific like spain, costa del sol, mijas it brings up all the props in spain and then gets the title from the top one and uses that. Thats why its coming up with the wrong heading at the top. Its already been noticed by a customer and we are looking at it at the moment. You are spot on though.

Holiday cottages are found all over world though, not just in the UK.

I see your point about the quick navigation menu and I think you are right. I will look to probably remove this completely.

As for saying that I "blurb". I like that word. I think i should have a link to "Our blurb" instead of "Our blog"!! ;-)

Thanks again for your time Graham. Much appreciated.

Robert

[fisicx]

Agree that holiday homes are found all over the world but the Holiday Ideas page has a box that says: 'How about a country cottage break in the United Kingdom?'. This is the link that returns the Spanish and French properties.

[directholidaylets]

Thanks for that fisicx. I have now changed this.

Robert