Draft of my new responsive website redesign any opinions?

[WhitbyHolidayCottages]

After a couple of years of talking about having a redesign of my website I finally taken the plunge and I'm paying for responsive design version. Before they go fully into the redesign I thought I would try to get some feedback on whether the initial look and functionality looks good or not. My old website is a very basic Dreamweaver website constructed by myself and because there's only 12 holiday properties on this holiday letting website it has done the job, but you have to scroll down to see the pictures and read the information. At the end of the day I'm certainly not a professional web designer I'm fully aware.

With the new very first draft of the responsive design I've asked for functionality where clicking on the property allows you to check out the photographs and information without scrolling. This is the very first stage of a redesign any opinions regarding functionality and initial look would be very gratefully received.

New draft website  http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/newsite/

Old website http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/

[matbennett]

Hi Alan.

I've had a quick look over this from both my phone and my laptop.  My first impression is that it is a great looking website (lovely part of the world too).  Text is clear, it's obvious what the site is, it's inviting and easy to navigate.  Responsive handling works well on my devices too.

A couple of thoughts though:

The first is an interim one: You might want to stop the development site from getting indexed.  Either get it blocked in robots.txt or add a noindex,nofollow tag.  You don't want that to get indexed whilst you are still working on it.

My initial thoughts were that I'd prefer to see the cottages before having a "book now" prompt.  I get the logic though (hoping to be booked out a lot!).

The date checker is actually very intuitive.  I use a lot of pretty big accommodation sites and they often do a worse job - particularly when fixed length stays are being used.

I'm not usually a fan at all of modal windows/lightboxes on mobile, but these actually work OK on the new site.  The thumbnails could do with being much bigger for me though.  They are way too small for my ageing eyes.

I hope that is a useful start.  I'll try to have a longer look later.

[DirkC]

Hi Alan,

The redesign has a more 'modern' look, but content is more difficult to access. As it still in draft, it's difficult to assess what the final result are going to be, but here my first impressions

On the old site, it's quite obvious where to click to get more detail on one of the properties. On the new site, you need to click on the 'details' before you get to the additional info. The additional info is opening in an overlayer - given the fact that Google doesn't really like content which is hidden, it's may be better to make a seperate page for each rental property. As the format for the images is fixed, it seems that some of the images are stretched to fit.

The home of the original page contained a lot more info than the current one.

Not sure what you're going to put into the navigation - the left bar / right bar puzzles me.

If I resize my screen - the content is not always resizing in a smooth manner, it seems you have optimised the site for very specific screen sizes, sizes which are in-between need horizontal scrolling to see the full content (example screensize 768x1024 => only 60% of content is visible)

I would say - looks better than the old site, but take care that you don't try to do everything on one page, and make sure that content remains visible, regardless of the size of the screen.

Rgds,

Dirk

[WhitbyHolidayCottages]

Hi Mat

Yes thank you for the excellent comments and test,  much appreciated

You set me thinking because possibly the small pop-up window boxes might not be a good idea from the respect of search engines also the old website as all the properties indexed individually which get more searches obviously I'll have to discuss this with the designer.

I agree about the book now before seeing the property and also about the size of the thumbnails special for older eyes.

Thank you Alan

[WhitbyHolidayCottages]

Hi Dirk

I think regarding the content it was my instructions I didn't want people to having to scroll down long pages, I can not think of a way of displaying all the text videos and pictures without the window box page with links to different descriptive content.

I do actually take seriously comments about an individual page for each property they are on the old site indexed separately and this needs to be same for search results and traffic on the new site.

The drop-down menus are working yet but I'm sure they can be utilised.

Very interesting about the content not been totlay visible,  that's the aspect I was chasing on the responsive design so I'll certainly bring that up with the designer

Also I take on board definitely all the content needs to go back on so it can be seen quickly and easily in whatever layout is most efficient for the user.

Thank you for your feedback

[EGOL]

Huge improvement Alan.  Nice work!

I bet you get lots more clients.

[WhitbyHolidayCottages]

Cheers Egol I will let you know...

Best Alan