Do you think my simple design website reflects my product better or worse?
-
Its been suggested my holiday cottage letting website maybe could do with a professional polish up and maybe restructure and navigation and if it would improve bookings I wouldn't hesitate. My only thought pattern is that this particular website is certainly not high-tech (this website was designed by me in Dreamweaver) I have a great guy working for me which is much better web design than me and technically more capable of producing a professional standard website, but with this new sideline I'm presently a small home-based company currently only letting eight old cottages. My thinking was keep the website simple, personal and homely for the moment.
http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/
The website tends to be competing against large agencies which have often hundreds of properties on their books and you have to go through their filtering system to find the small number of properties that might be of interest.
I can see that if I was selling large quantities of electrical equipment or something similar you just in a very polished well-designed website.
The feedback I get from customers is that like the website and they like to know they can get hold of the person behind it.
Which direction would you go? polished professional company styled WordPress website or simple design website with lots of pictures and descriptions.
If I ever hit the big time and have hundreds of cottages I would have to join the design and more complicated navigation of the other agencies websites but whilst I’m small maybe not?
Thanks for reading Alan
-
There are sitewide links to http://www.whitby-holiday-cottage.com/ and http://www.northyorkmoorscottages.co.uk/ in the left navigation.
I would not do that. I would have a page on the site that received traffic from those links and then one link on that page to the other domain.
-
Excuse my lack of knowledge EGOL but don't understand what you mean about promoting cottages on other domains?
-
Thank you Dana for your points, and was discussing a few weeks back with a web designer the idea of making the site completely compatible with mobiles and the other small devices, but thanks for reaffirming this idea. The website is working as it is at the moment so there's no rush but I do understand your points about tidying up. I was just asking if other people thought I should make the website look more businesslike and streamlined even at its small stage of representing only several properties. I personally at this moment in time felt I didn't want to make it too cold and impersonal like some of the larger companies website, until I become one of those larger companies
-
Yes I can see the logic of the quick company statement making a first impression but I'm not sure about the side links, I'll think about it.
-
Missing is a strong, short, clear and convincing statement at the top that communicates your value proposition.
Can you come up with a way to promote cottages on other domains without giving them sitewide links?
-
For the most part Alan, I'm with you. I like the "homey" low-tech nature of the site. The only thing I would say you could improve would be making it easier to read (maybe larger fonts on a white background as opposed to light blue)....maybe keep your layout but improve the quality of your header image, fix some spacing issues in your CSS. These are all just little "housekeeping" details that really wouldn't change the overall look and feel, but would just tidy it up a bit.
You might also want to consider an update because a lot of platforms like WP include some nice built-in functionality that make your website easier to read and navigate on mobile devices.
I'd address the housekeeping issues first (for example, you have the Google+ like button twice at the bottom of this page http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/endeavour-cottage.html). You might find that alone produces more bookings, simply because it's easier for your visitors to read your information and they'll be more inclined to trust the site if it appears to be well cared for.
Hope that's helpful! The cottages look really cute!
Dana
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I let 22-year-old website go or revamp it?
Hi, I’m trying to decide whether to renew annual hosting for my old website and hoping a wiser brain than mine in these matters might be able to advise me. The website was the home of a weekly website review column, e-newsletter, content writing tips and other web content/marketing related content so has lots of backlinks since 1997, though hasn't been updated for about 10 years. The domain email address is listed on some spam lists as I suspect it was harvested from the site by crawling spambots. I haven't bothered trying to de-list as don't use the address or website anymore. The site has never been used for PBN or sending spam (at least not by me). There's lots of good content in there, and some would still be relevant, but not sure if it's worth keeping for backlinks and for redirecting to my new website when it’s built. Plan to build a new WordPress website for my new writing as no longer in the content marketing business. It's a country-specific domain so can't really sell it as need to own the business name to own the domain name. I no longer use the business name either as plan to set up new brand for new website. But it might be useful to direct traffic to my new website domain once it's up and running if I cleaned up all the many broken links to expired websites in the databases of hundreds of website reviews. It's all on archive.org but I'm still very attached to the old site, even if it's no longer useful from a business point of view. Did a Moz check which showed: Domain Authority
Branding | | brizc
20 Linking Domains
89 Discovered in the last 60 days
1 Lost in last 60 days
4 Inbound Links
1.9k Ranking Keywords
0 My web host stats show the site gets between 300 and 500 visits a month. Had about 138,200 visits since October last year. And about 653,200 hits. Is that amount of traffic worth the time and expense of pruning the site of hundreds of expired links and fixing up other glitches? It's very dated in design and layout and is written in .asp I could send you the URL in private message if you would like to look at the website first. Been agonising over this decision for months as budget is very tight but don’t want to lose the site if it might have future value. Would greatly appreciate advice from someone who's up on this stuff as I've been out of the game for a long time and the deadline to renew the site hosting is very soon. Thank you in advance for your time and help.0 -
My question is in regards to possible conflict in creating an additional website under a new domain for our company.
Our companies, Vulcan Information Packaging and ATC both live under the domain “www.binders.com”. This is a great thing as far as us dominating in the binder industry. However, in the next 2-3 years and forward, we want to build our presence as a company who offers packaging products such as boxes, marketing kits, and other forms of packaging. Obviously, the “binders.com” brand/domain does not contribute much to this effort and can be confusing to customers visiting the site. Essentially, we want to build an additional branding for our company in the packaging industry. Keeping this in mind, we own the domain “www.vulcaninformationpackaging.com” and we are considering building a new website using this domain which contains the word “packaging”. This new site would only promote and contain packaging related products. This new website will advertise and direct traffic to our company Vulcan Information Packaging, which is the same company “binders.com” directs traffic to. So my question is to determine whether doing this might be a practice that Google and other search engines might frown upon. I tend to think it will be fine because we will be promoting and driving traffic for non-binder products where as, binders.com is heavily in binder related products. thank you, Dominic Zaidan
Branding | | dzaidan0 -
Lightbox to show our sixteen most popular products
We wish to create a minimalist Lightbox (without flashy transitions) for our home page that displays a matrix of 4 x 4 images - sixteen in all. Each image (approximately 240 wide x 360 high) needs to have its own descriptive text and a hyperlink to the appropriate page on our web site. We are trying to identify a simple yet effective SEO friendly add-on that will allow us to quickly change the Lightbox on a daily basis. Suggestions from the Moz community would be very welcome. Thanks
Branding | | JustInsulation0 -
Could product sample giveaways be seen as 'paying for links'?
One of our main methods of advertising for my startup business is by sending samples to bloggers for review. I've read a lot of good things about this method and many of my competitors use it very well - I've even seen it suggested on the Moz blog several times in the past. The one thing I do worry about is that Google may see this as a form of 'link purchasing', as I'm offering something in exchange for a link and some of the blog posts may reference that fact (or at least most likely use the word "Review" - Which could be some kind of footprint?).
Branding | | azu25
We don't intend to ask for anchor texts, so at the very least that should look natural. What are your opinions? Could this be seen as paid linkbuilding or is it regarded as a natural marketing method? [EDIT]:
One idea we had was to potentially offer bloggers the chance to earn a portion of their purchase back by writing a review on their blog. They'd buy from us and let us know they have a blog, then we'd reimburse them some credit towards their next order for every blog post they write about us. Does this sound like a good idea or is this potentially more dangerous than simply offering free samples?0 -
Long term risks of using .org for commercial websites
Hi everybody, I'm having a 'heated' discussion with a collegae about .org domains. Originally .org domains were created for non-profit organizations and it was fairly difficult to get a .org domain ( like .gov and .edu still are). Nowadays it's easy to register a .org domain and i see plenty of commercial .org emd's ranking well. We are planning on launching a new white label in the Netherlands (.nl) and have several domains in our portfolio that we can us for this. I recommend using an exact match .org domain (.nl and .com are already taken) for the new white label www.exactkeyword.org. **My collegae says don't use www.exactkeyword.org, because we aren't a non-profit organizaton and we can't garantuee we won't lose our rankings over the next 3 to 4 years. He would recommend going with the available www.exact-keyword.info. ** Who right and who's wrong and why? Can i garantuee no risk with .org for a commercial organization?
Branding | | PrizeWize0 -
Infographic Design
Hi Guys I am looking to outsource some design work to have infogrpahics designed, this will also include the gathering of data and distrubution etc... Can anyone recommend any agency's, specialist infographic design company's? Matthew
Branding | | EwanFisher0 -
Social boxes on website - facebook comments feature
Hi everyone, does anyone know where i can install a comments box which when people see a post of page they can add a comment - which also goes to facebook? however i would like to preapprove this? I have seen this kind of thing on websites and wondered how it is done? im assuming it can help obtain more social noise? Any help much appreciated.
Branding | | pauledwards0 -
Using mlm and 'scammy' websites to identify brand/reputation management opportunities
I think this almost warrants a youmoz post, but I was wondering if anyone has used MLM or 'shady' industry companies to see where they place their reputation/brand links to dominate the first 2-3 pages of google for things like 'company name + scam' 'company name + reviews'. On a side note what is your opinion of a company that goes to great lengths to create a very strong push to control those keywords? Would you recommend your clients dominate the first 2-3 pages with 'honest review about company x' and 'the truth about company x' fakeditorials? Do you guys think people see right through them. Take any MLM..for instance legal shield scam (not my company, but an MLM that I am very wary of) as professionals what do you think of their reputation management build out......what do you think consumers would see when they read this? is there such a thing as going to far to refute false claims and building sponsored reviews? I'm personally against doing sponsored reviews and spamming with them, but maybe I am naive.
Branding | | ilyaelbert1