Peggy, what's your website address? I'm under the gun a bit right now with a reflooring of my home and office, so don't have the attention I'd like, but I'll be glad to join Steve in comments about your site.

Hi Peggy, I got your address from the www button on your post. I took a look and here are a few things I noticed:

1. Your images are small and grainy, yet they are really not. You are taking a big image (roughly 800 x 500) but the page formatting makes the browser resize the image to 200 x 175. This is bad for a couple of reasons. First - it is visually bad because a browser doesn't rescale images as well as if you had a photo program scale the image, so the images look grainy and sometimes distorted. Second, the size you are showing is too small in my opinion. Its a good size for a thumnail that if you click on gives you the bigger version, but yours don't work that way (more on that later). Third, by making people download the big image it slows down people who are using a dial-up connection because they are downloading an image that is roughly 170K to look at a size that should only be around 15K so the site is making people wait when they shouldn't have to.

2. Your images have rollovers, which means if you hover over the image, it switches out to be a totally different image. This by itself is not a real problem, but the way your designer has implemented this is non-standard and has some problems. When you move the mouse over the image, the mouse changes to the hand and the image has a blue "link" border around it so it gives the impression you should click on it (like maybe you will get to see a bigger, clearer version) but when you click all it does is reload the page and bring you to the top of the page you are already on. Also in some cases (like in the case of the new years party guests, the image that is being replaced is not always the same size as the first image so the image gets distorted which makes the image look like a funhouse mirror. (distorted people are creepy looking)

3. Your site is using invalid code. It is missing two mandatory elements for html a doctype and a character declaration It also appears to have some badly nested tags that are causing problems. You can validate your own pages here http://validator.w3.org/ Sometimes search engine spiders have problems with invalid code.

4. Your rooster graphic at the top is again relying on the web browser to scale the image. What starts out at a nice clean HUGE graphic at 761x761 is getting scaled by the browser to 160x140 which causes it to look fuzzy and distorted. It also is a whopping 353K which means that image alone takes between 50 seconds and a minute and a half to download over a dialup connection.

5. Your view rooms page is missing the standard navigation bar that is present on the rest of your site.

6. The "home | about us | contact us" links at the top of the page get a little lost in the rest of the text and the naigation. They could be made a little more prominent or combined with the navigation bar.

7. I suggest you put your contact information and address at the bottom of every single page. (like it is on the home page) and make your email address a link so people can click on it to email you. Also if you have a non 800 number you should also include that. It will help LocalSearch verify your location.

8. I disagree with your son, you could use more pictures on your photo album page. However, I would suggest they be optimized for the web so that they don't take forever to dowload, that they are clear, that they don't do the hover /image replace, and that they be images that extoll the quality of your inn. A little family is ok, a lot of family will send people looking for another inn. Many travelers aren't always keen on the idea of staying in the eldest daughter's room or the youngest son's room... Especially since this was not originally your family home that was converted to a B&B (your about info says you just moved in) You may want to reconsider going out of your way to give the impression of your family making a mark on a specific room. Your web page may also not be the place to air family squables like your disagreement with your son. It all depends on the atmosphere you want to create. It is your inn and you can create whatever atmosphere you want, just realize that it may impact who and how many guests you attract.

9. You might have a typo on your home page (vicotoria).

10. On your directions page, bullet out your directions step by step so they are easier to read in a moving car.

11. Your site in general uses a lot of on page formating which is a nightmare for site redesign, growth, and consistency. Your designer used an external stylesheet, but then didn't really used it and instead made all kinds of on-page formatting. Encourage them to get all formatting on the stylesheet so updates and growth can be made easily.

12. Expand greatly on your attractions. Especially restaurants. Guests have to eat.

13. And finally we come to search engine optimization. Generally speaking, it is non-existent on your site. I'd suggest you start with the basics of B&B search engine optimization that I have written about in several other posts here.

In general, your site has some flaws (don't worry, none of them are permanent). If you hired someone to build your site, then they may correct some of these problems for free if you bring it to their attention. If you haven't made the final payment, you may want to hold that off until they fix their mistakes. If a close friend or family made it for you, then hug them tell them you love them, and give them a web design book...if they won't read it, go hire someone. (tongue in cheek there a bit, but seriously, the website can be your biggest and most effective advertising vehicle, giving it to someone without both marketing and web design experience is not a good business plan)

As you grow your site you will undoubtedly have more questions. Feel free to ask them here. _________________ Steve Wirt Wine Country Cabins Bed and Breakfast in the Finger Lakes and Inngenious Bed and Breakfast Website Promotion

Peggy, I'm not going to be as thorough as Steve on the sit e review, but I am going to share a few personal reactions.

* Consider using a contact form rather than contact link so you can reduce your spam.

* I personally don't like reading "centered" text, as you have on the bottom of your View Rooms page. I like my bullets and bullet points to lign up on the left, and I think many others feel the same way.

* I totally agree with Steve about the speed of the loading pages; I have a high speed connection and the pictures loaded slowly for me. You'll lose your potential guests if they have to wait very long for the site to load.

The inn looks lovely and the site is off to a good start. After you've made these changes, let us know so we can take another look.

Kit Cassingham wrote: * Consider using a contact form rather than contact link so you can reduce your spam.

You have one of these forms already on your reservations page. I understand where Kit is coming from on this and I certainly feel her pain with spam, but I have a few concerns about forms in place of email addresses.

I have several forms in various web sites and on many occasions I get people who submit the form but type their own email address into the form incorrectly and I am stuck without a way to contact them. (sometimes they fill in phone numbers, often they don't)

My other concern is that sometimes server side programing that runs the forms fails and people try to submit forms but they just don't get sent on to you. You have no way of knowing there is a problem until someone calls and says "I used your form, didn't you get my info?" You don't really notice it yourself, you just notice your stop getting requests.

The reality is that if you are advertising your site in B&B directories and local chambers of commerce and visitors guides, your email address is going to be out there and you will get spam anyway. There is no complete way to avoid it if you are running a business online.

There are a couple of tricks a good web designer can use to help stop some of the email address harvesting robots that collect email addresses off of web pages.

As a side note and something I left out of my first review. You should consider an actual online reservation system that allows people to see your availability calendar and make reservations immediately, and not have to deal with waiting for you to respond to their inquiry by email. People don't like to wait. _________________ Steve Wirt Wine Country Cabins Bed and Breakfast in the Finger Lakes and Inngenious Bed and Breakfast Website Promotion

thanks to bothof you for the input i am going to send these over the my web builder. because this is a templated website i have a 24 hour support team and an online chat i would like to be able to share some of this with them. They did not have a bandb template only a hotel motel one and so we used it. I am not sure about how to change the pictures to be bigger. I recently redecorated a couple of them and will change the pictures.

I have made a few mistakes in hiring a bad photographer and brand new web designer, and so forth but i believe it willwork out with persistence.

thanks for your input. _________________ Inn at Rooster Hill

i took your suggestion i am signing up with superinn.com i really liked the ease of their program.

Also I will go in and make changes on the family thing there. I think you are right about that. I love my family but shouldnt expect everyone else too.

what kind of pictures should i take that would be clearer. like with a digital should i make them larger?

thanks again _________________ Inn at Rooster Hill

innatroosterhill wrote: what kind of pictures should i take that would be clearer. like with a digital should i make them larger?

I think part of making them clearer is just a matter of resizing them using photo software instead of letting the browser do the resizing. Play with different lighting if you can. I find that turning on every light in the room often helps cast a nice warm glow to the room, though some of it depends on the camera too. Take lots of pictures in various lighting conditions and camera settings, then you have lots to choose from.

Many people focus too much on capturing just the bed. Do the best you can to catch as much of the room as possible too.

Cruise around a bit and look at other B&B's rooms and when you see a picture that really appeals to you, try to identify why. It usually has to do with lighting, and positioning. _________________ Steve Wirt Wine Country Cabins Bed and Breakfast in the Finger Lakes and Inngenious Bed and Breakfast Website Promotion

There are some good suggestions about the website; if I could make one about photos it would be to find a way to get professional photos on your website. My own experience is that they have made a tremendous difference in the business we receive through our website since we had professional photos put up about a year ago. Our revenue is up double digits over last year and I am sure that some of that is attributed to professional photos.

We traded a stay at our B&B for the work - it was a great deal for us. Unless you know exposures, lighting, staging, and most importantly, using the photo software to layer shots and enhance the views, it is impossible to duplicate a professional's work.

Jeanne

Great advice Jeanne. A professional is usually worth the money. Though I suggest inquiring whether the "pro" has some experience with room photography. I have seen a few done by "wedding photographers" that were not worth the money spent on them. Though most professionals do understand the essentials of lighting, exposures and composition. It is usually money well spent. _________________ Steve Wirt Wine Country Cabins Bed and Breakfast in the Finger Lakes and Inngenious Bed and Breakfast Website Promotion

as you all remember when we left off last - i was going to put into action the advise of all that replied. believe me it was great to reevaluate it all and redo.

now with the help of a freind who is a web designer a son who is a techno guy and then a professional photographer I am up and running with a new website.

I would love all of your input.

Things are doing better too - getting very good feedback from guests about my website. Bought a very good position with bedandbreakfast.com and also find our local chamber website has really paid off.

thanks to all of you for your advise and input. would love to hear back _________________ Inn at Rooster Hill

Your site has a nice new look to it. The pro photos are a big improvement. Here are a few thoughts

1) The top portion of a webpage that you see without having to scroll is the most vital. Your current design gives up this valuable real estate for weather reports on every single page. The weather report is a nice touch but it is not the thing that is going to convince people to book with you. Provide the weather report on one page, and definitely farther down.

2) That same valuable top part of the page is taken up by the rooster, your address, and the great picture of your inn. The problem is that it is the same picture on every page. Clicking the button to a different page is like changing the channel, show something different. Also the current layout forces a person to scroll down on every single page to see any real text. I would suggest merging the graphic to get the inn photo and rooster into the same image and on the same line (so it takes up less vertical space). Reserve the address for the bottom of the page and get some of the great content higher up on the page so it can be seen without scrolling.

3) Your home page has a link at the top saying "Please click here if you only see a portion of this page" This link seems to have the purpose of breaking your website out of a frame if somebody links to you inside a frame. There is code that will do this automatically. This link is kind of a weird thing to have as the very first thing people see when they come to your site. If your designer is really concerned about breaking free of frames, there are more professional ways to have it happen automatically.

4) Technically your pages are not optimized, they are missing the basics, like doc-types (a required element), meta-description, meta-keywords, and good titles. You might want to direct your designer here to help them optimize a B&B web page (disclaimer, I wrote this)

5) The photos of your rooms are great. They are a little big at over 100K each which may be annoying for people on a dialup connection. they could be compressed a bit more to get them to load faster without decreasing their quality much. The worst part though is the fade in / scroll in (repeat...repeat...repeat) of the two photos per room. The amount of time you wait for the fade scroll to work is too long, and the amount of time you actually get to see the great photo and take in all the great details is too short before the next picture comes in again. I would suggest you have them get rid of the scroll fade feature and have them display both pictures on the page, The quality of them is worth having people be able to look at them uninterupted.

Keep up the great work, it is coming along nicely. Hope this helps. _________________ Steve Wirt Wine Country Cabins Bed and Breakfast in the Finger Lakes and Inngenious Bed and Breakfast Website Promotion

The site is looking good.

I like the photos, but I'd rather see them smaller and all on the page at once, rather than moving in and out -- I hate moving things on websites. And if I'm in a hurry, I can see the two photos at once faster than if I have to wait for them to move in and out.

In the description of Jenna's room, you have a comment about a new room coming. I think that comment may either get lost at that location, or a quick glance may have people thinking that it's a description of Jenna's room. Perhaps it'd be better to move that comment to the main page, or the page about the rooms.

I'd like to see more discussion of the guest experience that you offer, especially since none of your photos have pictures of people in them. The experience is why people will come to you rather than any other inns in the area -- so help people decide you're the place for them with some active terminology descriptions.

Let us know what your next changes look like.

thanks to both of you i will be sending this info over to my web helper / designer and we will work on it.

a couple of the things that you have said are also things we have talked about so it is good to have them confirmed.

I will keep you informed. Thanks again. _________________ Inn at Rooster Hill