What do you think of our site. what would you do to improve it?

Dear Experts,
I have been reading for a while your comments and have learnt a few things..
This is my company's website and we are running a small hotel.
I would really apreciate if you can comment on the design and if you think that somethign needs to be changed please feel free. (thats the reason of the post anyway!) I am seeing around all the new site sites have this web2 effects and really like them so i need a second opinion before i get someone to do the change of looks for me. The site is: (www.hoteljuliani.com)
Many thanks
El Greco

 

Optimize the flash. The main swf on the homepage is larger than average (122 KB). The flash at the top is annoying as hell, I hate animations that repeat over and over. The flash transitions on the left get annoying as well. If you really want it, just have the transition crap on one of them, make the other a "still" or static image.

The front end code is outdated. Suggest you go with a css layout.

 

I like it. Easy to navigate etc... etc...
The coding I can't comment on but designing I can.

One thing I would change is maybe the colour? Little boring. I like the layout just the colours. But then again I can be funny

 

Design is fine, but I\'d recommend to change menu font to more bigger size.

 

To me, it looks good, the design is good, except I would say the menu bar should be bigger

 

1. Flash navigation is a no-no. I'm using Opera browser, and I have flash (as other plugins) disabled most of the time. Stumbling on a website and not seeing the menu is bothersome.
2. The design is ok, nothing fancy.
3. I agree with all the people that mentioned the font-size: it should be a little bigger.

 

Get rid of flash right now. Use some exciting colours, pale grey and blue don't inspire me to want to look around. How about some purples or reds or yellows!

 

Thanks for all your comments so far. Colour scheme has to be kept the same as the whole hotel scheme is in these colours....
If I remove all the flash then what do you suggest? Just static images?
Would you reccomend any of the new web2 styled images? (mirror effect etc..)
Is it easy to convert this site to CSS layout? and if yes how much should i expect to pay for it?
Thanks again...!

 

Let's see - aesthetically:

I too say axe the flash - it's distracting when trying to read the text, adds 170k or more of bloat for little more than 'cutsie' nonsense..

I'd switch to a fluid or semi-fluid layout so it's not this narrow little stripe down the middle of newer screens.

The flash menu is too small for 'large font/120dpi' users, and is hard to read because it's transparent over the animation. That part DEFINATELY needs to go for a more conventional CSS menu.

I'd make the word Hotel more prominant, it's hard to tell what the page even is for until you get to what should be a H2.

In that "experiencing... Hotel Juliani" which should be an H2, I'd add a span set to white-space:nowrap so it doesn't look so silly when on large font machines the word juliani is pushed to it's own line.

The form on the left for availabilty is also ugly as sin, needs some padding or even being broken to multiple lines. There seem to be a number of 'padding issues' I would address. Too little here, too little there... makes the whole thing look amaturish.

Also, the seafoam green needs to have some of it's red channel stripped, the saturation is low enough it looks 'muddy'. #CCEFE8 would be roughly the same intensity and hue, but look a bit less 'muddy' with the higher saturation. (therin it should keep you in the same color scheme methinks)

Source wise - everything needs to go. Nested tables for single columns, inlined presentation, font and bold tags where there should be headers - this thing's got the works.

Oh, btw - careful throwing around that 'web 2.0' catchphrase - it's a bunch of nonsense where some self-important yahoo's decided to slap the name on a bunch of existing pages, and is more marketing buzzword than fact. The only people who take the phrase seriously are the types who think 'Forbes' is a great source for technical reading.

 

addendum.

Was browsing your gallery (that script needs the axe too for something a bit quicker/simpler) and that's a beautiful old brick building. I'd try to work one of the exterior shots onto the front page. You've got lots of pictures of inside, which is good since it's a hotel, but at least one clear outside shot should be there too.

You've actually got a lot of good pictures, they just need to be 'worked into the theme' more while relying on flash less.

I'm also looking at your decor, and there's a lot more colors and patterns there that look quite promising.

 

Thanks DeathShadow. I guess i need to look for a new designer that knows CSS better than the current one....

 

You are in the most competitive market there is and you have made the most basic mistakes.

Flash is nice but not if you want to make money. Look at the designs of the top 10 and follow their design lead. Flash navigation is death.

 

nicely organized. only thing is add some color to the flash banner

 

Damn, the view from the balcón is soooo pretty. The only thing the hotel is missing are some plants.

I agree the Flash (the way it's done here at least) should go. You can have Flash, but for instance if someone insists on keeping the thing at the top (without menu), have it play once and stop unless someone clicks on it again-- then have a .png or something behind it so it looks just as good for people without Flash Player.

You could have the sea-foam colour used as borders and the such, with images (like for instance a small image of one of those candle-holders from the restaurant) sitting in corners of the text to brighten things up.

You should be looking for a web designer who really loves to play with all the neat pictures you have, and yes they should be "modern" (they should not be coding in tables and should use CSS). They should also be aware of accessibility (the site should work great for everyone).

There is a company whose name I've seen on the bottom of a few pages (thus the reason I visited their site). Their code didn't always work with my browser, but they DID know how to get nice effects with Flash. A bit of Flash can really make a nice homepage for a site; it just needs to be complimentary, not annoying, ugly, or in the way (such as when you stick a menu inside it).

 

Thanks all of you, really did not expect such a response..!
Do you have any samples of CSS drop up menus? like the one we use for the current site which is done in Flash?

 

Have a flash and a non-flash version. It's quite easy to do.

The flash menu is transparent and sometimes the background words (eg Doing... etc....) mix with the menu making it hard to read.

Very nice work in General!

 

Flash and non-flash is so 1990ish and lame. I've never done a flash site but it must be a bitch updating. Have an HTML version and wherever you have flash just have a static image and then replace the image with flash (progressive enhancement).

 

Make your site more exciting by adding forums and chat. And let your employees chat with customers looking for your hotel