Site Feedback - Hamlet Court

tommytom

Hi all,
mind having a look and give us feedback? A friend of mine did it, asked what I thought, and I said to myself I would post it here! He says the colour scheme is what the hotel wants, and that there is still a few more pictures to be included in sections like the History, and Bar & Lounge pages. Also, they want the lack of Flash so that it loads faster for dial-up users (like the hotel!). One problem he has is that some of it uses the Papyrus font (a nice font), but some computers won't display it for some reason. Turned up fine on mine (IE and Mozilla on W98).

See what you think if bothered:

The Hamlet Court Hotel

Thanks folks,

Tommy.

cgarvey

• HTML isn't valid (for starters)
• I'd question the use of frames here (browser compatibility issues & search engine results)
• Could do with more graphics
• Basic layout .. it just isn't very visually pleasing (sorry, if that's harsh). Maybe that's because there's just a whole load of text (banner, menu, content) with very little structure. Each content page just looks like a basic HTML page that you'd do in your first few HTML lessons.. it lacks structure. .. take a look at some other hotel sites to see how they do it (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.).. they all use graphics to present the content a bit better.
• Flash buttons are completely unnecessary, and there is no alternative for the many users who don't have/enable flash.
• The grey background for the content frame is awful/old skool, even if it does offset the content from the navigation.

HTH
.cg

mneylon

Splash pages are very passe
Frames are dubious
The font looks very odd, probably because I don't have the one it's looking for

dead air

The reason why the font won't show up on some computers is that the user viewing the website must have that font installed on their computer. And, to honest the chances that a user will have the same font installed are slim. A good guideline is to stay with the familar common fonts such as arial, times, etc.

Your friend should look into incorporating style sheets into his websites. In this case a style sheet could have specified a different font to use if papyrus wasn't found.

tommytom

Thanks to Tommy for posting, its Sean here.

Thanks for the feedback guys. It is appreciated. I can only learn by what others think can be improved upon. Strange thing is, most of what you see is liked by the 'customer' a great deal. The drab grey background, lack of images, and the use of frames is what they like about it. So, I know where you guys are coming from with the critique, but its a little out of my hands!

Although I can still touch up pieces incorrect or missing, of course. I have tested it in Netscape, IE, and Mozilla, and it does work in layout and principle for me.

cgarvey - thanks for the links to checkout. They are nice hotel sites, and I'd like to do more like them. But I am limited in my abilities at present. Those sites use XHTML, I'm using DW 2004 - as if you didn't know! The one downside for me on those sites is the loading time on dial-up. I am on broadband in work here, and it took about 6 seconds for the Irish Court Hotels site to load, which translates to me as almost a minute on dial-up!

But, I am learning more as time passes. I am not a professional by any means! THATS why I call it Basic Concept web design!



Thanks folks,

Sean (on Tommys login)

cgarvey

tommytom wrote:

The one downside for me on those sites is the loading time on dial-up. I am on broadband in work here, and it took about 6 seconds for the Irish Court Hotels site to load, which translates to me as almost a minute on dial-up!

I see your (good) point, and raise you 2.

1) IMO (and it is only that), I much prefer the style of Irishcourts sites, but it is graphic heavy, I agree.
2) 6s vs 60s is unfair, as the comparison in question is just under twice the size. So initial page size (including linked media) is ~114K vs ~62K. Granted the irishcourts site has a lot more requests to fulfill, this (in HTTP/1.1 day 'n age) shouldn't equuate to that much more extra time. So on a reasonable 40kbps dialup connection, you'd expect the site to be loaded in short of 30 seconds. HC site would be faster than that but still be > 10 seconds. To me that time would be worth the wait.

.cg

stepheno

To be honest, I think its terrible.

Maybe you should learn a bit more about web design before you charge a client for this.

pork99

Very clunky layout.

Learn to use CSS, it gives you a lot more control

You used Flash for an image rollover? :eek: do you know how easy that is to do with javascript?

An index page should have more in common with a site map. Your index page won't help search engine crawlers which are attempting to index the site.

SantaHoe

cgarvey wrote:

Flash buttons are completely unnecessary, and there is no alternative for the many users who don't have/enable flash.

Aha! So that's how you get into the website!
I've removed flash from my browser because it only brings me annoying animated adds... I definitly second this suggestion, flash if you must but not as the only way to enter the site.
Even clicking on the flash element only sends me to download the plugin.
I also agree that splash-pages are so over.

tommytom

Good point, thanks for that. I didn't realise that there may be some people going without Flash on their computers. I just took it for granted that in this day and age, it was part and parcel of every day computing life.

I think I will remove the flash link at the start, and just have a standard link in its place.

I am still trying to do too many things at once right now, but it will get done soon. I tell you, one of the hardest parts of doing that site is getting the material from the 'customer'. I am still waiting on photographs they took months ago, for the last 4 weeks!

Still, as plain as it looks, they are quite happy with it, as I already described in my first post. So, I'm happy...

...but I will be touching it up as I go along, and learn new stuff!

pork99: wouldn't the search engine problem on the index page not be taken care of with a metatag? Thats what they're there for. I thought that no matter what your index.html page was about, as long as you had a good descriptive metatag (which I still have to include :eek: ), it should help in the search and rank...

So?

Seanie.

mneylon

Meta Tags are not "the solution"
If you do not have any real content on the site's main page the spiders will have nothing to grab.

You've still got that "splash page" thing.

Most people won't get past it. They'll just go somewhere else.

stepheno

Good point, thanks for that. I didn't realise that there may be some people going without Flash on their computers. I just took it for granted that in this day and age, it was part and parcel of every day computing life.

The point is, why potentially turn some users down because they don't have a plug-in? Rollovers are pis easy with javascript or CSS.

Still, as plain as it looks, they are quite happy with it, as I already described in my first post. So, I'm happy...

The problem is not that it's plain, it's that the site is quite ugly, and hard to use. I for one love a clean, simple layout- but this is not one.

pork99: wouldn't the search engine problem on the index page not be taken care of with a metatag? Thats what they're there for. I thought that no matter what your index.html page was about, as long as you had a good descriptive metatag (which I still have to include ), it should help in the search and rank...

No. This site will rank terribly on search engines.

1. Invalid markup
2. Little if any semantic markup
3. Frames

Learn to make a CSS/XHTML layout, it will be the best thing you ever did. Try HTMLdog.com and read articles on alistapart.com.

Again, I don't think you should be charging people for sites like that.

decob

Are the table borders supposed to appear around the images in opera/firefox?
if not use border="0" and remove the bordercolor..

Didn't that hotel have a website before, and iirc it was 10 times better.
And as for the use of frames, i cannot see the need, if it's a case that you don't want to be editing x number of pages for a menu change or such, use SSI if enabled on your webserver

Fergal C

Fine hotel.

Personally I hate frames. I like the simple white background surrounding areas.

I see you have a location page but the site appears to be missing a "contact us" page. Could the site be more sales focused, encouraging people to book rooms, even if it is by phone? Plus I'd be trying to get the interesting info displayed upfront. Eg many visitors to that site will not notice that the hotel was completely rennovated only last year.

You shouldn't necessarily just be giving the owner what he wants. He will be relying on your expertise to tell him what will work best for the hotel's site. You have a responsibility to educate him.

Cabaal

For me anyway the frames and the background colour make the whole thing look like its made in frontpage
I'd have to agree with everyone
- lose frames
- lose gray colour
- lose flash button on front page

I only installed flash a few days ago for my gf to use, if I did'ent have it installed I wouldn't have been able to get into your site.

tommytom

Ok, I tidied up the table that the menu was in. The Flash entrance button has been removed. Still got to change the other Flash buttons in the Weddings section. Still waiting on photos from the hotel.

Can those who don't like the use of frames expand on that? Kinda got me hangin' there!

Seanie.

mneylon

tommytom wrote:

Can those who don't like the use of frames expand on that? Kinda got me hangin' there!

Nobody uses frames anymore. They were all the rage back in 97 when browsers were first able to support them.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html

Serbian

Funny, the article above is 8 years old, yet it's still pretty much relevant (apart from the fact that all browsers support frames these days). To be perfectly honest, I don't think the site is great.

From a design perspective, the font looks horrible. Use Verdana or Arial, it will look a hundred times better. The papyrus background looks awful, and reminds me of people's personal homepages back in 1996. In design, more often than not, less is more. Take something as simple as Studio M Architects. A site in this general style would serve the hotel far better than the clunky site that currently exists there.

From a more technical perspective, the Markup doesn't validate, but then again, few HTMLers these days seem that concerned with Standards and Validation (Try validating any of the major sites out there - Including Google). The frames are completely unneccessary (just use a big table if you have to) and will hurt search engine rankings. MetaTags are far from enough to get your site ranked. You need meaningful content on the homepage, pushing certain keywords. You also need recipricol links to the site from external sources, usually similar sites.

That's all I can really think of right now, but it's probably better to take these things in bite size form.

Serb

andersde10

1) Get rid of the frames

There's just no advantage in using them.

2) Change links on left from images into real text

You should never use images when you can use text. The search engines have no idea what the image is saying, by changing to text you are adding good quality content to the page that the search engines can read. Also, if you ever need to change the link it is much easier to change text that images. Finally, for accessibility purposes you can enlarge text links to make it easier to read but can't do this with images.

3) Get rid of the home page and go straight to the welcome.htm page

The splash page serves no purpose, you are just making a user jump through one more hoop before getting the content.