Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

When you have such short duration stays it generally has to do with people finding you via search engine then landing and seeing you are not what they had in mind.

This information can be researched very easily.

Dear friends
Thanks for the comments.

The general agreement so far is that the landing page is dull, not related to Spain. True that Spain means sun, light, history, landscapes, gastronomy and warm people.

Right now I´m on holiday in Andalucia, in front of the sea, palmtrees, wonderful sunlight, beautiful sights... and this is not at all obvious in the page. That will change. Just let me see if there are other comments.

Regarding how people arrive to the page: our first customers said "surfing the net" typing "summer camps in Spain". For that time, a month ago, the site was in Yahoo´s first page.

Kathleen´s remarks, along with Joe´s, Paul´s and Stefan´s, all go in the same direction: lack of warmth and Spain-related emotions on the landing page. Frank says the same. Perception is the problem, and there is a gap between the idea the visitor has in mind and the misty London-like grey page.

Regards,
Alberto
Spain

Dear Alberto,

My first overal impression was: not clear content, bad look, confusinf logic of the site, extremely high prices.

It's looking like someone in the streets of New York selling Rolex. Will you find an authentic one there?

The idea of a website - is advertising. And depending of your business idea, services you offer and prices you charge you have to choose a way of representing your company and service.

Now to the details.

You know, how many gray (by the color) and grey (dull by the design concept) websites are there in the Internet? Billions. This combination of grey and dull motives makes visitor feel depressed. Look, you put dark blue on the grey. Yes, the images of the entertainments are bright, but they are little and actually they don’t really look appealing as icons for the menu items. Your image with wine glasses, street scene and Don Quixote looks not very bad, but the quality is very law. The graphics you used for different pages are of the same bad quality. You use image background and it makes it very difficult to read the text. You didn’t put any margin between the background edge and the text itself. You used at least 5 different fonts for the project instead of classic 2, maximum 3 allowed. You didn’t organize your content user-friendly, you used boring “intro” page with no content and amateur design showing that the website was created “on someone’s lap”, with very law quality of the design. You didn’t put not even valuable, but any information on the index page. Basically, you did everything to make the visitors close the window in a couple of seconds after open it. It looks like the travel agency which actually doesn’t even need any customers.

You desperately need a professional to collect all the content, edit it, create clear logical content structure and navigation. Then create nice, appealing design and good SE-friendly code. You need a totally new approach to the copy creation. And…


Good Luck!

Natalia

Dear Friends
Thanks for all the comments. So far, the consensus goes in this direction:

- The page is boring, dull and dark. Just the opposite of what Spain is supposed to be;

- The images are not meaningful enough to pass along a message of fun and life;

- The logo´s tagline "Better Spanish with fun" and the sentence under each flag are not enough to make clear in a second what is the website about;

- I understand Natalia´s comment about the prices but they are fair, as accomodation and everything is top-level quality.

Summarizing, the person who lands at the site does not find the expected Spain-related feelings and perceptions (light, color, smiles, people, fun, sun, ...), but a sad blue backround with tiny images. Not precisely exciting.

I really thank all you for your time, ideas, comments and suggestions. In the next days I´ll start putting some of them into practice.

Thanks again,
Alberto
Spain