Site Reference Forums

G'day PJ

A great little site. Very neat and tidy with clean lines and an inviting appearance.

You seem to me to be wanting to focus on the less known areas of Italy, hence Hidden Italy. But I think you may have dropped the ball a bit, although I didn't read the whole site. On the second page you refer to the "less interesting" parts, which works against your intended focus. How about "less frequented?" Maybe you could develop this theme more throughout the site.

I think your site lacks consistency. Try sticking to the layout that you started the site with. Maybe the font could be a little larger.

I understand that it's a new site and that you're still developing it. The nature of most of my sites is that they develop as time goes on. I'm on about the unfolding story of a wilderness photographer. I can't even plan what pages I'll add in a couple of weeks because it hasn't happened yet.

While there's not much you can do about the site not yet being finished, I'd avoid telling your visitors that you're still getting around to writing up the rest of the site and looking for photos.

1)  Find some photos. Just do it!

2)  Write what you can, as fast as you can, and leave it at that.

Glad your site's all in English or I'd have no hope.

Best wishes with it.

Regards,
Laurie.

First visit I clicked on the "Images" link and it took me to a page with no images. Once that happens, you've lost me.

Second visit I did find some images. Your navigation in this part is like a dogs breakfast. You might consider a text style, photo index in a sidebar on each image page or else create a thumbnail page. The "Images" page needs to be the main index for your photos. Or else delete the "Images " page and have the photo index on every page of the site.

Regards,
Laurie.

pjdscott wrote:

Website for Review
http://www.hidden-italy.com

Additional Comments
This is an independent guide to Italy, following from my successful Dublin guide. While the Dublin guide looks terrible, it is very successful regarding its search terms and, again, I would like to thank everyone on Site Reference for ideas and suggestions in the past.

I'm trying to make the Italy site look attractive and inviting; graphic design is not really my expertise! Any suggestions, positive or critical, will be most welcome.

YOU HAVE ATTACKED THE TASK OF DOING THIS WEBSITE. GO FOR IT!!JUST DO MORE PICTURES AND DISCUSS THE POSITIVE ASPECTS OF HIDDEN ITALY, SO IT WILL BE OPENED TO THE READER OF YOUR WEBSITE. 
PEOPLE WANT THE NEW FOUND AREAS OF ITALY.  THIS IS THE POSITIVE PICTURE

GOOD FOR YOU. YOU TRIED AND YOU SUCCEEDED IN MAKING A WEBSITE, WHICH WILL BECOME MORE APPEALING AS TIME GOES ON. . KEEP A STIFF UPPER LIP. THE BEST FOR YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ello PJ, im going to take a slightly less IN YOUR FACE approach than ash over there.

You have a nice concept with your site, but you are gonna havte work out the kinks now. I am guessing that one of your main goals is to generate income from the numerous ads on your site, every page is drawing people away from your site as the only thing anyone can read clearly from the get go is the ads. Somehow they just look crisper and easier to read than your actual content.

What i would suggest, start by sorting your css out, there is no need to have it all on page... ONE external css file is all you need for your entire site, your background is small enough to be one solid background, that will fix the issues with your corners not lining up, find a clean font for your entire site, if words are bolded for seo value then make then set the properties for the b tag in your css so that it looks like normal text, then it wont break the flow of content.

Your image galleries cant work, they dont really make any sense, have you considered making one gallery page and linking each thumbnail to a larger picture? Yes, you will lose the extra pages that have ads on em but at the same time you will make people consider sticking around a bit longer.

Your page layout is good, it gives people what the link says it will. I would however rethink your links on the right (above the google ad) I couldn't figure out what they linked to or why i would want to click on em, perhaps a neater more explanatory set of links would be better... more consistent from page to page as well.

Dont take this in a bad way, your site is good, all im pointing out is how easily it could be better. Good luck and hopefully we see your changes soon

I am more than happy to help someone who is honestly willing to take advice Its a pleasure really.

With having ads on your site it is always safe to assume that less can be more, from what i understand, if the people clicking through those ads have a genuine interest in whats on the other side then it improves the quality of your ads which in turn improves the chances of you earning more.  The point being, people may click the ads by accident thinking its part of your site and click straight off the site they end up at... that reduces the quality and subsequently reduces your payout - this is only what i have read here and there, i have never actually used them myself

The main reason i brought up the cornering was because it happened to me a few months ago and i couldnt find a way around it, until i got the grasp of css and realized that i can make my corners perfect by making the background one picture and my headers etc layered on top. If you study up on css it will open so many doors as far as layout and quality are concerned

I normally go with arial as the safest font, its easy on the eyes and fits with everything, verdana adds a tweak of style that may irritate some people, it is purely up to you though, if you like it, use it.

If your pictures dont change often there are some great java galleries out there, but at the same time you can use css to line up your pictures nicely and then link your images like so....

open in a new window
<a href="gallery/image1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="gallery/image1thumb.jpg" /></a>
this way you dont get people losing your site as they can just close the image window and still have your site open.

Before building a gallery you must always take into account how it will be managed, if you change a picture or two every month then go for a static simple gallery, if you change pictures weekly.. look for a system that will allow you to add and remove images easily.

Last edited by Ryan_steyn (2008-01-21 06:34:46)

Thats great, the tutorials you will find on the net are great (everything i know is learnt from scratch and the help of everyone here on SR) so i know what its like at first all i could with css was change my text properties

Ah, a trip to South Africa isnt complete without a trip further South than Pretoria, thats more industrial, the Eastern Cape is where people get to see the reason SA is so beautiful. Perhaps next ime you can convince her to take the extra trip With you by her side of course.

My gallery is actually a php gallery, it has a whole cms area in the back but i never use it because it is quite finicky when put into a frame sadly the only way i could implement it into my site was with a frame   If you squiz through the wildlife gallery on my site and pick an animal you will see what i mean by a java gallery. As a matter of fact, i did a site just the other day www.tarpaulinandcanvas.com which uses that same java gallery from the get go.

My thanks to you indeed for your time and input! I used a template and will try and replace the banner picture to something more relevant, thanks.

The fonts are clearly an issue -- I did not realise how much until all you good SR people told me. I will think about colours and try to indroduce a little variety (I don't want it to become too loud though).

I'm much obliged,

Warmest wishes,

PJD.

PS. I love your site - subtle colours, easy navigatio, yet confident.

designsconcept wrote:

I think that your topic is really interesting.  Your site is really neat and nice too, however I would make the following improvements:

- keep same font size and font family throughout the website
- enter more colours to make it attractive as since the website is all in brown it might get boring
- change the top banner of the website and put a more interesting/inviting picture of Italy.. there are many beautiful pictures of italy with sun etc... its an amazing mediterenean country.
- i would also enlarge a bit the content area so that the content would not be squashed and it would be displayed more gracefully.

Keep up the good work!

Last edited by pjdscott (2008-01-21 10:03:23)

It was a good visit, a lot more can be done... as quoted earlier even I visited the galleries first, and was not happy with the pics that are there.
add a good gallery, as the flow of the site starts from important pages. It makes the first impression.
A healthy effort but seriously you have a lot of options open for you, I have made a similar site about India you may check it out and we can share our ideas on the projects. www.chariot-tours.com
Even i am planning to embedd a huge gallery in it, I am thinking of the format.
Hope that helps,

Regards,
Cipher

hi pjdscott

i think i am very late in reviewing you site.... but its possible that a point that i discovered abt your site may not have been pointed out by anybody...

The thing that i liked about your site is that a person who comes to ur site will definitely visit all your pages as very less links are been given on the homepage so they will have to see you whole site for the purpose of finding what they are looking for...this will definitely increase your page views.

But the point I liked may not be liked by all... its possible that the people who visit your site do not have so much patience to visit all the pages of your site in order to find what they want.

In my opinion give a link to the most popular pages of your site on the homepage itself....

I don't know if  i am correct about this but people will appreciate that more....

regards,
genie

I like the URL of this site. That alone would make me want to go to the site if I was going to visit Italy.

A suggestion is that under the regions, have a map. I am unfamiliar with Italy and the names of places don't make any sense to me. I'm sure if I was researching going to Italy, I would have a better understanding of where these places are though.