21 replies to this topic

[Rene]

Hi Scottie,

Do you remember your site critique on my site Roomfast.com on the ihelpyou forum? I promised I would post it when it was done, well here it is. I think you did a really good job steering me in a certain direction and maybe from a webdesigner point of view it could be better but overall I am quite happy with the result. At this time I am optimizing it according to the ebook of Dan Thies and working hard to get links so I hope to have some rankings soon. Anyway, I just wanted to post this to thank you for all your help.

Regards
Rene

[compar]

If I can offer a quick opinion, I like the site. If I was going to Miami I'd use your service.

The one thing I noticed during a very casual look around is that your titles are weak on some pages. For instance did you do any keyword research for the restaurant page? I can't imagine that "Savor the Flavor" is going to be used as a search term by many people looking for Miami restaurants.

BTW if you're looking for foreign visitors, either Canadian or British the spelling should be Savour the Flavour.

I think all your titles are shorter than they need to be. You could easily add another keyword phrase in most of them. Just a quick appraisal. But titles are probably the most important single element in SEO for Google.

Overall an excellent job I think.

[awall19]

My site is really ugly right now so I really should be spending my time working on it

The one thing I do not like about your site is the banner ads. They seem to be highly unrelated and thus detracting from the overall page value.

[Rene]

Thank you guys for the comments. As I mentioned I am working on the SEO optimization as we speak so those titles will be improved within the next week or so. About the banners, you are absolutely right, I am taking them all down, it is distractive, ugly and since it is a free banner exchange service it does not look very professional. I think my great selling point is that my site looks so different from all the other travelsites (they all look like they came out of the same can), the personalized service, no prepayment and 9 out of 10 times the lowest rates on the net.

[Rene]

If I was going to Miami I'd use your service

So why don't you, if there is 1 thing I need now is reservations

[awall19]

One more thing. I went back and still saw your banners I wanted to see if you actually were already taking them down - might have inspired me to reformat my ugly site.

The additional thing I think would improve your website is if your order form in your cgi-bin still had a little more of that happy peppy look that your other pages have.

for that page to change so dramatically it may help trigger the guilt feeling before the purchase is even made.

i just read alot of books - i don't necissarily make good websites myself

[Scottie]

Ok guys, no beating up on my buddy, Rene'! That's my job.

Rene- what a difference!

You did a great job of bringing in more of the "attitude" of Miami.

OK- more suggestions:

I still don't like your animated graphic, but I know you do. I think it makes the page look less professional. Just my opinion.

The background image tiles and looks odd at 1024 screen resolution. If you really want a background image, (I would get rid of it myself) you can use CSS to "fix" it in a single position behind the page so that it doesn't tile OR find an image that tiles more gracefully; maybe a beach scene that repeats horizontally but not vertically.

Copy suggestions:
Your current copy:

We are the Miami Beach Hotel Specialists!
Our selection of hotels in Miami and Miami Beach are all original Art Deco historic hotels or small sized resorts. Roomfast.com offers accommodations from economy hotels suited for the budget minded traveler to upscale hotels that accommodate the most demanding guests. Any hotel you book with us will make your vacation an experience you will never forget. Online reservations, NO PREPAYMENT required! 

Try this:

Miami Beach Hotel Specialists!
Original Art Deco Historic Hotels
Some stuff here about the beauty and charm of staying in an original Art Deco Hotel in the heart of Miami.
Upscale Hotels and Resorts
Some words here about how great it is to have enough money to afford our top of the line hotels.
Economy Hotels
Work in keyphrases here about budget-minded travel and getting the best deal for your money.
Online Reservations
Don't waste your time on the phone!  Find the room you want and book it online, today!  If you need more assistance, feel free to call one of our friendly travel experts.
No Prepayment Required
No need to tie up your cash by prepaying your lodging costs.  More stuff about how it works.

You can tie key points into headings- easy for a user to scan and gives the spiders something to read as well.

Let's punch this copy up as well:

At Roomfast.com we book hotel rooms in Miami and Miami Beach and we advise our clients on how to spend a vacation of a lifetime in a beautiful sub tropical setting. We represent only a small number of hotels, many of them family owned boutique hotels and we trust these hotels to take special care of you, our guests. Our mission is to provide you with accommodations for a price you will not find anywhere else.

Try this:

If you are looking for the vacation of a lifetime, let our travel experts at Roomfast.com help.  We can advise you on how to make the most out of your Miami/Miami Beach vacation.

Only the Best
At Roomfast.com, we only book reservations for a limited number of hotels that we trust to take care of our guests.  We don't accept just any hotel; we carefully screen our properties and personally visit each one of them.

Many hotels in our portfolio are boutique hotels whose mission is to take special care of their guests. The pampered environment will make you want to return year after year.

Our special relationship with these hotels and resorts allows us to offer you the best value for your money.  Our special prices are unbeatable!

The copy above builds uniqueness and trust, as well as appealing to a status-oriented visitor and a cost-concious one as well.

[Jill]

Quick word about using this:

Miami/Miami Beach vacation

I wouldn't put it in that way. The engines may not be able to pull the word "Miami" from that. (They may, but they may not.)

I always recommend that if you're going to use a slash, put spaces between it and the words. I know it's not technically correct, but it will ensure that the engines see the words correctly.

For that particular phrase, I'd just leave out the extra Miami and just say Miami Beach vacation.

Regarding the site itself, I only took a really quick look, but my first impression was that it was very homegrown and had a circa 1997 look to it. If you're going for that, then you've done a good job. If you want a more professional look, well, um...it really needs a redesign. Some people want the more homegrown look so they don't look like a big company. Not really sure if that's your goal or not.

Jill

[Rene]

One more thing. I went back and still saw your banners  I wanted to see if you actually were already taking them down - might have inspired me to reformat my ugly site.

I hope I am inspiring you, I took them down.

Scottie, you are so good, I wish I could hire you. As you noticed I am not such a great copywriter so I really appreciate your help. Since you hate that flashing GIF so much I removed it, I hope you are happy now.

The background image tiles and looks odd at 1024 screen resolution. If you really want a background image, (I would get rid of it myself) you can use CSS to "fix" it in a single position behind the page so that it doesn't tile OR find an image that tiles more gracefully

I removed the background just to try and it looks very empty Check it here Maybe if I put an image of a well build guy instead of a woman you would like it better
About CSS, maybe you can explain how this works, I am a FrontPage user with little knowledge about anything else. How many people are using this screen resolution anyway?

Jill,

About the following:

my first impression was that it was very homegrown and had a circa 1997 look to it. If you're going for that, then you've done a good job.

Because I did not have the budget to hire a webdesigner I needed to do this myself. You might remember my first tryout on the other forum and how with Scotties help it turned to what it is now. I know that from a designer point of view it looks amateuristic but I noticed that a lot of people like it. There are plenty of big companies offering the same as I do (hotels.com, Expedia etc. plus all their affiliates which all look pretty much the same) and I need to set myself apart from them. There will be people who prefer to go the Hilton and others like to stay at a mom and pop hotel, I am the mom and pop hotel.

My wife and I are doing the sales for the Haddon Hall Hotel we did notice 1 person who still booked his room with Expedia after I referred him to Roomfast (and paid more money) and about 10 others had no problem booking on my site. I am in the very beginning so I have no exact data yet but it looks like the conversion visitors to sales at the moment is about 1 in 33 (several people where referred to me by phone so the actual figures are somewhat different) Like I said, I don't need to be like hotels.com, if I get 10-15 reservations a day I can make a very descent living.

[garyhall]

About CSS, maybe you can explain how this works, I am a FrontPage user with little knowledge about anything else.


Because I did not have the budget to hire a webdesigner I needed to do this myself.

As for the CSS go to:
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/
There is a wealth of info there.

As for not having a budget for the site I feel that is cutting it a bit thin. To revamp your site won't cost *THAT* much and will give you more time to do the Florida "Shake and Howdy"! with your guests. Just my personal opinion but I would lose FrontPage and go with another brand. Adobe or Dreamweaver come to mind. I think it is because I don’t want you to look unprofessional. I do know that these two offer CSS coding, not sure about FP.

What is important here is that you want total strangers "searching" the engines to find you and not someone else and you want to look good. Cutting corners is not always the best thing to do with strangers. Paraphrasing an old saying, "The first appearance is everything". Pay a lot of attention to your SEO efforts; that is where your SE efforts are going to pay off.

Regards

Gary

[mcanerin]

FrontPage does offer CSS, as well

There is a fairly good Tutorial HERE for setting it up.

Make sure that you also go into your Tools/Page Options/Compatibility and make sure you choose Both Netscape and IE for compatibility.

Ian

[qwerty]

FP is ok with style sheets, although I prefer to type them in manually. What I sometimes do, however, is apply a given style to an on-page element, then go into the code, copy the styles and put them into the CSS, naming it as a class. Then I take the formatting out of the HTML and replace it with the class name. That way, I get a decent idea of what the style looks like before I write it into the style sheet.

But I want to add a warning about editing style sheets in Front Page. I don't know how common an experience this is, but when I was using FP2k, attempts to edit a style sheet, either manually or using the wizard interface, almost always caused the application to crash on me. I tried using detect and repair, and even reinstalled FP a couple of times, but I never got it to work well. That has not been a problem since I upgraded to FP02.

[glengara]

Must say I found the amount of blue text somewhat.........boring ;-)
You should experiment using a sans serif font such as Verdana, and possibly using a different colour for your various headings, just to add a bit more Floridian colour.

[Scottie]

Since you hate that flashing GIF so much I removed it, I hope you are happy now. 

Thank you! Much better.

I removed the background just to try and it looks very empty Check it here Maybe if I put an image of a well build guy instead of a woman you would like it better

What are you implying? Honestly, I like the white background. I don't think it looks empty at all.

Can you center "Miami's Finest Free Hotel Reservations Service" ? It is right justified and looks odd. It could be bigger too.

SEO- Those headings we created- can you link them to corresponding pages? Art Deco hotels, budget hotels, etc?

How about a really wonderful view of a pool or historic hotel, right-justified under your Miami Beach Hotel Specialists heading? You do need an image to break up all the text there. Let the existing text wrap to the side and under the image.

Hot Deals- try moving that between two top headers and make it a link to the deals page. For many people, that's all they want to know about.

Remember my suggestion that you visit each hotel and take pictures of any special areas, courtyards, architectual features, and the rooms themselves? Write up a personalized review that will really make your visitors want to stay not just in Miami, but in THAT hotel.

What's nearby? "Walking distance to white sand beaches, the famous Joe's Stone Crab restaurant, and several popular nightclubs" etc. Write reviews on the attractions and link each of them to your property page for more info.

You could really have a lot of fun with this and build some truly unique content. I think that was preventing you from getting directory listings, wasn't it? You've got a lot of competition, so you have to be different and better!

[glengara]

I prefer your woman in the hammock to the plain white, but what about trying a darker blue for the text?