Please take a look at our new Gambia site

thepoacher · #1 (**permalink**) 05-09-2008, 09:58 AM

Hi there,

We recently revamped and relaunched our Gambia Holidays site - please take a look and let me know what you think. All criticisms and wild praise are welcome:
Holidays to Gambia with The Gambia Experience

Great!

Cheers

Matt

davebarnes · #2 (**permalink**) 05-09-2008, 10:17 AM

No negatives from me.
Good colors. Plenty of content. Easy to navigate.

aidsntcg · #3 (**permalink**) 05-09-2008, 10:34 AM

I really like everything about your site. Great job!

mtheory · #4 (**permalink**) 05-09-2008, 11:22 AM

Very well done.

cw1865 · #5 (**permalink**) 05-09-2008, 11:37 AM

I agree, very strong offering. You might want to mention the food. In the pictures, I see people with beverages.

ExplainThat · #6 (**permalink**) 05-09-2008, 12:24 PM

Seems like a nicely done site - no surprises and good functionality.

Clicken · #7 (**permalink**) 05-09-2008, 06:15 PM

Hi Matt,

The home page looks great, the other pages were not loading for me due to “connection reset”. (It was a problem on our network!) So while waiting I checked the code at this link…
The W3C Markup Validation Service

There are errors reported, which may cause problems for some browsers or may even trip up the spiders during a crawl. Some of the errors I don’t understand but others I noticed shouldn’t be too much problem to correct. Things like using more than one div id.

Also when validating, select the box to “Show Outline” and then look at the bottom of the validation results page. You will notice that there is no outline reported for this page. Try styling your heading tags using CSS as illustrated at the HTML STYLE TAG W3School tutorials. There are duplicate tags being used as well.

jxw · #8 (**permalink**) 05-09-2008, 08:41 PM

Really love the site. I ended up spending more time looking at the site than I planned on. Only thought, you might want to offer a map of The Gambia and Senegal. (If you have one, I didn't find it. Maybe I was too busy checking out the hotels and other well-done features.)

thai_guy · #9 (**permalink**) 05-09-2008, 10:59 PM

Very nice website indeed. The booking engine is fabulous I have only a couple of comments that are perhaps nit-picky but would perhaps bring this site from outstanding to over the top.

First, when I land on the splash page as a new visitor, I spend some time on the site before I figure out that your company specializes in package holidays (airfare, hotel, set departures and durations). Perhaps a few words to the effect of what your company is offering... up front and to the point.

Your heading "Our Gambia Holidays" maybe could be something more enticing like "Experience Gambia". Minor semantics perhaps but I think more clickable and more to the point of the category (or maybe "Your Holiday in Gambia"??).

"New to The Gambia Experience?"... how about "Why The Gambia Experience?"

On a functional navigation note, your hotel description page should probably include a "Book this Hotel" button at top or bottom (or both) of description. This would give direct link to "Prices and Availability" and the "Book" button that you really want to help people find.

If striving for perfection, your booking function "Extras" would also give people the opportunity to prebook excursion trips. I see how you handle excursions and I appreciate there are probably very good reasons for handling your excursions as book on arrival.

Nice niche; nice site; difficult to find much to say. Your SERPis already doing very well indeed, keep an eye on those keywords, maybe need a couple of tweaks. For example check your title and density and maybe you can quickly get 1st page Gambia Hotels (I use Google.com maybe you are already where you want to be in the UK).

Also, where is your link partner area? I would be interested in doing some reciprocal linking, if you are interested you can contact me through any of my sites via contact form. We about to begin promoting a travel site design niche for our business and I am grateful to stumble across one of the few very well designed travel operator sites (Travel Website Design, Travel Website Development, Travel & Tour Website Designers).

thepoacher · #10 (**permalink**) 05-21-2008, 07:54 AM

Hi all,

Thanks so much for all the positive comments on this - great to know the hard work was worth it! And also thanks for the constructive criticisms too - I think we'll certainly look into some of them. I agree completely about the 'book this hotel' button and it's something we've considered ourselves.

Thanks again

Matt

stiriaz · #11 (**permalink**) 05-21-2008, 09:13 AM

I like the colors of your design. In my opinion i'll change the font size

traveljunkie · #12 (**permalink**) 05-22-2008, 07:07 AM

Good site so we've put in a link to your website on Travel Junkies,The Worldwide Travellers Website for Travel, Holidays, Accommodation, Tours, Activities & Attractions
cliff at traveljunkies

copywriter39 · #13 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008, 01:38 AM

I like the look of the site, but not sure about the wording on the home page. Rain is virtually unheard of - not sure if this makes sense. And I wouldn't advertise the brief, but heavy rain element. All in all, however, a very good site.