Some of you may remember last August reviewing this site submitted by another web designer. I do admit on a personal level we have had a frank exchange of views especially when that designer claimed on his web site to have built my web site.

I am not sure if I should place a link to the thread last August or not.......maybe not. This is after all a request for constructive criticism

Needless to say I have been asked by the owners of the yacht to trash the old site and build a new one, here it is.

Skippered yacht charters, daily and full charter sailing holidays in the ionian islands

all comments and opinions most gratefully received!

\astro

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Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

1. slow down movie in upper-right homepage
2. contact us is missing: postal, physical
3. some minor alignment problems using Firefox 3 under Mac OS 10.5
4. I expect to be able to click on the logo to go home
5. you don't need this tag <meta name="title" content="Skippered yacht charters, daily charters in the ionian islands"> as you already have a <title> tag
6. you have IDENTICAL title, description and keywords tags on every page. Well, at least the two I looked at.
7. get rid of the mission statement. Only boring corporations write mission statements and NO ONE READS THEM.

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Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
http://www.marketingtactics.com
sitting in my basement with my iMac

Thanks Dave,

Points one and four fixed, the postal issue will have to wait until my return to Greece late February. The problem here is a boat is not static! It is currently out of the water on another island. But we will explore the possibility of a PO box.

There are subtle changes on the meta tagging, I did not worry too much as I suspect google no longer looks at them. But will address this issue in due course.

Err..... the mission statement! When this was first shown to me I laughed and said do people still do this??? I think I offended, so I made a mental note to be more diplomatic in future and it went up on the site!

The firefox issue is a problem and I am aware of it. I know firefox hates java and builds pages in the browser differently. I have tried to get round this on other sites only to destroy the layout. I assume the only solution is CSS. I have issues with CSS when it comes to printing off pages. Which many of our clients do. What you see on line is not what you get on the print off! I suspect this is a topic covered, recovered then covered all over again.
I am with the Ostriches on this one for the moment, whilst I get my head round CSS.

I thank you for your comments which are much appreciated.

/Astro

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Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Hi Astro,

The site is very inviting, and once you have incorporated css then the style of your navigation links at the bottom will remain constant on each page with little effort.

It is pleasing to see a site which varies from all the others however it can cause frustration or even missed pages when the navigation is not the typical and expected layout. I found it took more effort to navigate than a typical site which has a top and bottom navigation.

Some of the links were not present on all of the pages, which makes it a little confusing for new visitors to get around without confusion or extra effort.

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I thought the copy seemed awkward in spots. For example the phrase Day sailing aboard a large luxury yacht you’ll be proud to be seen on is easy to arrange and a joy to experience.
This seems to be almost cut off. In fact, the format almost has the sentences running together.

As a matter of interest is there anyway you can use CSS and have the page print out exactly as it is seen on the web page? We are in the travel business and I have often seen people with web page print outs looking for various places of interest. Especially our own websites which all provide information of the local area. This information is downloaded and printed off. CSS pages are almost impossible to follow as the page information sent to the printer is disjointed and the print off almost impossible to follow and read.

It strikes me (and very happy to be corrected) CSS is not user friendly in this respect.

Valid point!

The copy was provided by the client, I had already offended over the mission statement. Just how much should we tweak their wording as they are paying for the build?

/astro

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Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Just why you bother with having your website inspected, if you already know everything and are offended by pointing out other people opinions. After all we just offer our point of view to you. You can of course do as you like with your website.
Paul

Paul, having a bad day?

I am very sorry if you are offended, never intend to offend anyone, no need to. I just quoted people who had made comments to ask another question as a result of what they had said. I am always the first to admit the more I learn the less I know! So I ask more questions.

Please accept sincere apologies if you or anyone else is offended. Not my intention, just curious to learn more.

smiles
</astro>

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Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

The copy is going to be important for your ranking and your conversion. I'd spend some time looking it over and then explain to the other party why its necessary. You want to make your site a marketing tool and the copy will go a large way toward this.

you might increase your global visibility if you assign relevant links to your images

i'm a little confused by your navigation bar: not sure what the logic is.

Nice color scheme...good navigation...I would have liked to see blown-up images of the yacht for closer inspection.

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I agree with other contributors that some of the copy would benefit from revision. It lets the site down.

I know it can be difficult persuading a client that what they have written would benefit from changes. Try presenting the argument to the client that they are writing for their prospective client, not for themselves. Then you can give them examples of feedback from your researches that appear to support the advice you are giving.

I take it that in About Us Dave and Jan have written about themselves. So why the use of the third person? The impression I get from their copy could well put me off the whole idea of making a booking because of the perception conveyed to me of the personalities of the people with whom I would be sharing a confined space.

For example, not everyone shares the same sense of humour: “Answering the call of the sea at a very young age (well he would say that wouldn't he!) has resulted in over 40 years sailing experience in many different countries.”

“… well he would say that wouldn't he! …”. Not to me, I trust. And then to combine such attempts at humour in a muddle of sentence and you have me wondering will I really be able to get on with this guy?

Might you not make the About Us out of straight CV-type stuff and, to add a sense of feeling for the personalities, quotes from previous guests about how good they found Dave and Jan as hosts; how Dave and Jan added to the whole experience by their charming, attentive and unobtrusive company; how much Dave and Jan’s love of the sea, interest in the places they visited and experience of yachting, all contributed to such an enthralling voyage of a lifetime.

I agree with what others here have said about the need for improvements in the navigation.

In page construction, perhaps you should be concerned at the ratio of code to message, do you think? There is an awful lot of code.

I consider that you are missing an opportunity by not making full use of the description tag, certainly on the Home page I examined.

There is no document type declaration and so validation may throw up some spurious errors, should you be concerned with code standards. W3C validation is identifying errors.

I hope my comments are useful and not too direct. In my view, this is a site with great potential: it is looking good, presents an appealing product and, with some of the work people here are suggesting, stands to be a very successful one.

Regards, David.

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Databases and Spreadsheets | Software Training

I get a 403 forbidden when trying to access your site...

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James Weisbrod - programmer

soooo embarrassed, whilst setting up/playing with the server today as I am migrating eight sites to UK servers due to the rubbish exchange of £ to $ my costs have doubled. I stupidly ticked a box to synchronize all my sites on that server. (luckily only two at the moment) Net result was site got trashed. I had to cancel the hosting package and set up a new hosting package. Mia culpa!

It will stay that way for 24 hours whilst the server resets itself and the domain name is re mapped

But thanks guys for all the input I will tackle the copy angle even if I have to give way on the mission statement. The site will go back up tomorrow afternoon!

/astro

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Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Astro, I did a search for the term ‘printing css pages’ because I do not have experience with this topic to give you any advice however there are many results to choose from to learn the different techniques. The following link offers some tips on achieving what your client needs. Advanced CSS Printing - Using CSS Page Breaks

Quote:

I have one customer that absolutely insists his web pages print perfectly. Why? Because he refuses to look at his pages on the screen — he tells his employees to print the website for him to look at. And since he looks at pages that way, he believes most of his customers do just this. Needless to say, I’ve learned quite a few tricks to making a website print properly. I’ve already shared methods for making your website content printer-friendly, as well as making your website structure printer-friendly. One important aspect of making your pages printer-friendly is by using CSS/XHTML page breaks.

The technique at this link will explain a 'print style sheet' which allows printing of the content only, and not the pictures or navigation which for some sites will work best so that visitors do not waste ink. You may find it useful for future clients or perhaps others reading this thread will find it useful.
Making web pages printable using CSS

Hope that helps!

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Just judging the layout, look, usability and feel here... I'm not going to read the content. Yes it is important, but it sounds as if its up to your client to provide the copy.

Over all I like the site, with only a couple minor flaws I see. The images need to be centered in the white space a little better. If you dont want them centered, keep it constant. Resizing the three images at the top to match the widths of the three columns respectively may help. Or maybe go the other way where they are nowhere near the same. When something is close... but not quite... it stands out.

In the menu, since the background changes on mouse over, I expect to be able to click it to follow it. Small detail, but surfers are lazy! Also the menu should not change from page to page. This gives the feeling of being lost. The "about us" link should prob be in the menu too.

Good job!

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Eric Griffiths
OhioWebPro

I think, sute contain abundantly many jaht pictures

Many thanks to all for comments, all have been helpful. I have the thread printed off and it will be noted. I have started another site now, in 2004 I announced to the world I am off to Kefalonia and I have built my last web site.....hmmmm! But I will return to this one next month and start to apply your comments as best I can.

Thanks for the reference to the doctype declaration I cannot believe I forgot that! Now added them!!!!

Thanks again!!!

smiles
astro

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Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Just a quick visual, I do not like the blue boxes on either side of the title on the page like "Corazon The Yacht? I am viewing using FireFox 3.0.5.

Love the colors, placement of everything else, graphics.. can I steal it? Ok, here in the use we use the term "Liberate" it!

nice job,

MIchael

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The site is ok except for the BLUE background. I suggest that you use the blue from your LOGO. It looks great. Adding some link hover changes would add a little assurance on the viewer that he/she hovers a link.

That is my $.01 review for the site.

I really like the design its a very nice layout and the flash pictures are very good I give you an A valerie

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