I get cannot be found
Hello all,
I've been redesigning a website for my Uncle's garage/car hire business and would appreciate any comments on any aspect of it. It's my first one, believe it or not. I know it doesn't pass correctly as xhtml, but that's down to one of the scripts I'm using and am awaiting to hear back from it's author.
There are also a few pictures missing in the car & van hire sections, as I'm waiting to get these. In general I'm interested in how usable the site is, are the colours too much/gaudy (mix of car hire firms and my Uncle's sign colours) is the layout clear etc.?
http://www.elftronics.co.uk it's hosted on my own website for testing purposes
Thanks in advance if anyone has a look
I get cannot be found
Odd, it's working for me both from the link I posted and typing it in manually
I got to the site OK. Went to cars for sale... £1 mill for a ford zetec?? I'm guessing it's a gold plated engine??
Then accidentally closed it again, cos I'm a genius... More in a bit...
Looks good.
One thing I would do though is put the location in the header (under the number or something) or at the very least, the town the garage is located. This will let people see right away they have a local garage.
Also on the Home page you have contact and location links twice. I would remove the three top links to EMAIL CONTACT and LOCATION and instead list the actual email (clickable) and address.
Final thing (for now) the pictures you are using could all do with being sized down a little. The site takes awhile to load.
Other than that it looks good
Nice car
From a lay point of view
Doesn't look gaudy and layout is clear
I kept searching for a "back" button on the website (I know I can use my browser back button) although I'm not sure if that's cos I was having a peek around and wanted easy quick navigation.
Would it be useful to have a "contact us" link under the hire T&Cs? instead of having the link at the top. I'm really used to hire websites where you can specify dates on the website and instantly check availability/book
Last edited by HelenB; 23rd-March-2010 at 05:35 PM. Reason: thanks for the great excuse to escape from my report writing boredom :)
Thanks for the suggestions Lee
The garage is located in a small town where pretty much everyone knows everyone else, so the location part is more for visiting tourists to know where it is easily. The main town is Fort William, the garage is located 5 miles away in Corpach, I didn't want it to be too off putting for any visitors, even though free hire vehicle pick up and drop off in Fort William area are available. I'm working on the googlemaps API, where I can highlight an area that collections are available, might make it a bit clearer.
I was a bit unsure about whether to only list the email address at the top of the page. Mainly because it's a bit long "info@slipwayautos.co.uk" and include the contact form link as well, depending on how the website was being accessed i.e. your computer versus internet cafe etc. The email only option might be better though.
I'm still playing about with image quality and have a bit to learn yet. Will get the thumbnails a bit smaller. Are the sizes of the images in the gallery itself acceptable? Do you have any suggestions for a good default size to go for that wouldn't be seen as too excessive?
Thank you
I was trying to keep navigation and pages to a minimum so you wouldn't get lost pages down, would a bread crumb trail help? i.e. you are in Home>Vehicle Hire>Car Hire ? So you can click back to where you wanted to be a bit more easily.
It used to be part of a larger online booking system from the hire company itself but that was stopped by the hire company. It would be useful but I doubt it'd happen as it would need to be something easy to administer for my Uncle who's, although a mechanic, is not really a computer person. His current website has not been updated in 5 years
http://www.slipwayautos.co.uk
Maybe something like a google calender link could work for vehicle availability. Something to look into and maybe persuade him
Not sure, I was quite keen on having contact info, mainly phone number and email, prominent and easy to find at the top. It's rather buried away in the current site.
Thanks for having a good look
If you want the site to be found by the desperate in urgent need of a repair and relacement then location info is vital.
People start reading at the top left. I would have Vehicle Repair, Hire, MOT, Sales on the top of the page.
Could you have a google map displayed showing local accomodation? You scratch their backs ... A customer with a breakdown may need it.
http://seohimanshu.com/2010/03/22/op...al-web-search/
Ask yourself if it's worth doing an online booking system. Writing one from scratch is not easy ( I know!). How much will it get used? How many cars does he have for hire? How will the bookings be taken at his end? Will their be deposits and card payments? etc etc etc
If only a couple of cars a month are hired out then it's not worth it.
The way I would look at it is this....
Would having online booking increase the amount of hire business he does to the point it would pay for the hours and hours of work in writing the code and maintanance?
Think about how your site looks to people with poor sight using phones to search Internet.
Again, work out if it is worth spending the time and effort to do this on such a small site. You may be able to find stats on a control panel with the current webhosts that the current site is using, showing what percentage of browsers have accessed the site in the past.
If it's a very small percentage and the site is only getting, say 50 hits a month, then I personally would not overly worry about mobile browsers.
Having said that though, mobile browsing is becoming more and more popular.
Just weigh it all up.
I like the site and can't add more than has already been said other that a little tweak to the language maybe here and there. For example on the contact page it says:
'Fill in the bits below and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.'
Which is fine, but 'Please complete the details below and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.' just sounds better IMO.
Also on that page you have a 'wil' with only one 'L' '..will only be stored by us and wil never be passed or sold on to any third parties.'
Little things, but overall it looks good!
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