Review my holiday site

Hi akdiver, thanks for looking at some other sites first.

Overall this site is not too bad, but I think it could be a lot better. The first problem is that the photography is not very good. You might want to try to partner with a good photographer in your area to get some good quality shots. When I'm looking at a tourism site I want to get a really good idea of what that destination is like. Small, poor quality photos just aren't good enough (and a lot of sites have this problem!). All photos should link to larger versions of the same.

When navigating the site, the left side menu should stay the same and another method used for secondary navigation. You really don't need to change that menu - the user can navigate back and forth to the index pages instead.

I also expected some of those links to take me to a list of sites with more information. If I decide I want to visit Ulladulla, what do I do next? the accommodations section should have a page with links to hotels & such and so on for each section.

Some of the pages here are blank so I take it you're not finished yet. The links page needs work - those should be categorized somehow, and left aligned so they are easier to read. The font size is bigger here than on the front page (and I've seen that on other pages as well). It should be consistent. You should define your font size in the CSS body tag and then it will be consistent throughout the site.

Good luck!

Have you taken a look at this site in different browsers? I am using Firefox and I have gotten some interesting stuff. For example ...

- with the exception of the homepage every place where the "© 2005 Small Business Website Design, All rights reserved" is listed it does a crazy black box thing and moves around when I mouse over it.

- I looked at your code that handles your menu and I think you are doing more work than you need to. You can get the exact same effect with pure CSS and you don't have to do the complicated linking with JavaScript. In addition it will come up as a standard "pointing finger" mouse icon instead of appearing as a "text edit" mouse icon ... which I think is confusing.

- You are missing the Title of My Site in your HTML.

- I would pull out the fake bread crumbs saying "South Coast > NSW > Australia" since they never change and I don't think anyone came from a South Coast page.

Are you using any server side scripting? Just curious ... you can make dynamic bread crumbs if so to replace the ones that don't move or you could even (gasp!) hard code the bread crumbs (yuck!).

I think that you really need to clean up the CSS and then the overhead of polishing this site will become much ez'er as you get comments from TWF Members who are a bit more artisticly inclined than I.

Good Luck,

Ryan

As Megan says, team up with a photographer (offer him a dedicated page on your website perhaps?). Always remember, first impression counts!

I like the idea with the movie reel but with the help of a decent image editor it could be better, likewise with the 'southcoast > nsw > australia.'

Have you noticed you use different fonts in the sub-pages?

Once that is done you need some SEO work.

-Rob

First i will start with the bashing....

The photos like other users said could be better, and the navigation could be more exciteing looking. Other than that it is not bad.....

I WANNA GO!!!!!

Check out robfenn's website.... he has some great pics on it......

Firstly, I'd like to ask what is the main attraction with this site? Is it the huge image of the harbour? Or is it the content?

Obviously, it is the content right? So, try making the header a bit smaller, as a rule of thumb, I try to keep my header to 100 - 150px high. Additionally, the image is quite pixellated and looks very unprofessional.

What is the background colour of your site? Never assume that the background is white because it isn't always, mine is grey and quite frankly, it doesn't look too good. Try setting a background colour to the pages and it should be fine.

Blue and white are nice contrasting colours, however, the site still looks a little bland, try introducing another colour to the site?

Lastly, try and space things our a bit more, everything on the pages looks very cramped together and very busy. Give the objects some "breathing space."

The content is good, but yes, team up with a professional photographer to get some quality pictures. I would go to google and check out what other sites have done. Check the content and the design, make sure it fits with what you are doing. The sidebar with the links is hideous, and you need more colors. I would start with this and with what preceding posts have. But remember, good artists copy, great artists steal!

Here is a great site where you can get some unbelievable FREE pictures, some are just killer! http://www.sxc.hu/

Good find Lucas.

You can really do better than this, at least you have a good start here, some editing and itll look really nice...

Thanx for all the help guys.

The photos are a continuing process i will look into it.
I didnt realise my bg was grey in some browsers ill fix that up as well as the text. It is a work in process and many of your ideas are great. I agree with the colour theme being a bit bland im just trying to see where i can add colour.

I will fix some of it up and check back here for more great ideas.

Thanx heaps

I liked the site overall but on your page where you want advertisers you don't have anything that tells much about your stats, such as where your internet visitors come from or how many you have had in the last few months. Without that information it seems like the prices to advertise on your site are pretty high.