Spend Your Holiday in the Maldives

[Maskatay]

I need you feed back on how our agency site can be improved. As a Travel Agency we accept customers from all over the world. You are welcome to suggest good & bad..

Dream Holiday! Think www.sunandsea-maldives.com

[linnetwoods]

Full marks for appropriate presentation - the look of the site is perfectly suited to its purpose - the images are attractive, the layout is easy to navigate and the information is well written and interesting. Well done!

One tiny little 'flaw' in my view might be the 'contactus' heading on your main navigation bar - I'd be inclined to change that to 'contact us' - it just seems better to me that way, but that may just be my personal preference.

If these forums don't hear from me for a while, it may be because we've decided to haul up the anchor and head for the Maldives... you really have made them sound like the most desirable destination on Earth at the moment! Once again, congratulations and the best of luck, too.

[IanS]

I need you feed back on how our agency site can be improved. As a Travel Agency we accept customers from all over the world. You are welcome to suggest good & bad..

Dream Holiday! Think www.sunandsea-maldives.comThe link to 'map of Maldives' is broken. - comes with a 404 page not found error - I'd trap all errors and serve a custom page to your look and feel to improve the site.

[linnetwoods]

Ooh! Well spotted Sherlock!

[IanS]

Ooh! Well spotted Sherlock!I like to see maps online to see how they're done - so it isn't surprising that I spotted it. :D

[linnetwoods]

I like to see maps online to see how they're done - so it isn't surprising that I spotted it. :D
You have piqued my curiosity... any particular reason you are interested in maps or is it a state secret?

[IanS]

You have piqued my curiosity... any particular reason you are interested in maps or is it a state secret?No particular reason, I'm just curious.

[alexm1971]

I think the site is clean and easy to navigate. I work in the business and it's easy to see those who bring new (clean) ideas to the market of presenting their services versus a cluttered presentation. It works well for me.

As far as content - I would suggest making some reference as to why the Maldives have succesfully survived the Tsunami tragedy and how it is they are "open for business". There are a ton of stories to substantiate this fact instead of leaving it up to the client to find elsewhere. American clientele, if this is who you are trying to reach, are extremely resourceful when it comes to finding their travel information online... They are also extremely nervous about tragic events and handling that question with substantative evidence up front will get them closer to you. You don't want to pique their interest in the Maldives to only have them surf to another site to get information on Tsunami recovery.

And, finally - I am biased - but I think people who spend their holiday in Brazil :P

[Maskatay]

Thank you very much for your good comments. I will definately bring the necessary chages as soon as possible.

[YvetteKuhns]

The website looks great! The only thing is that it looks like it was made with Dreamweaver or another editor and does not appear to be search engine optimized. Though Google does not read META tags, several searches still do. All search engines read the text between the TITLE tags, so your best keyword phrases should appear here.

Google highly factors your link popularity in your ranking. Exchanging links with related websites would improve your ranking and web visibility. Someone may see the link to your site from another travel site, then click it to get to yours. Or a search engine robot may follow that link to your site and it can help you get listed or refreshed on other search engines.

The best way to improve search engine ranking is to include your best keyword phrases in your text. Some pages have useful text while others have little or no text. Including captions with images may help. The name of the resorts on the resorts pages are images, but should be text for search engines to read. The Reserve Now flash could simply be bold text in a contrasting color. Staring at the moving, flashing text bothers me.

Again, the site looks great. Now you have to get people to find it. Anything you can do to improve your search engine ranking will help. Optimize the site BEFORE you submit it to search engines, so you won't have to wait for the next robot visit to get the updates to appear. I have a client who would exchange links with you when you are ready.

Good luck!

[Kitchensink108]

Appearance: Great
Markup: Confusing

I know there are a lot of people that don't care about the code of a page, so long as it looks good. I'm not one of those people, unfortunately. First off, tables aren't really meant for being the backbone of a layout, but it's not that big of a deal. A couple other things:
-Use paragraph takes (<p>) instead of double <br> tags.
-And, um...
<tr>
<td height="0"></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>

The site looks really good, and appears to be cross-browser / cross-resolution compatible, so none of the code is in dire need of editing. You may consider revising it sometime, though.

[linnetwoods]

All right, Kitchensink... you've piqued my curiosity too...

a) what makes you look at the code when you can see nothing wrong with the page? and

b) what is it about messy but otherwise apparently harmless code that bothers you?

I am seriously interested to know if there is something I ought to have grasped and have somehow missed...

[YvetteKuhns]

Kitchensink108, I noticed the code which is common for people who use editors and are too lazy, afraid or unconcerned with the code to change it. This remark is not meant to be an insult. It simply shows that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". In other words, the resulted output is fine, so why change it?

That bothers me to see inefficient code, but I figure that the site is not yet completed and tweaking is inevitable. Most people are more concerned about what you see on the screen and less concerned with the code. The multiple td tags means you don't have to count for colspan or rowspan when you make changes. ;)

[bugs]

Great site! makes you want to travel! :)
Easy to navigate and good menus.

One minor comment:
The "Contact us" tab is missing a space and reads "Contactus"

Also, Where are the prices?
Because there are so many travel agency, if a site hasn't got some price indication, I usually don't bother contacting them. If have missed the prices, then sorry my mistake!

Cheers,
Sylvain.

[Kitchensink108]

a) what makes you look at the code when you can see nothing wrong with the page?
b) what is it about messy but otherwise apparently harmless code that bothers you?

It's just kind of the way I am. I like programming a lot, along with scripting and such, so to me, the code of a page is almost equally as important as the look. I'm not trying to say it should be to you, but I think if you're a webdesigner/webmaster, you should try to use the best code you can (well, up to a point, I suppose. There's really no need to go from HTML 4.01 Transitional to XHTML 1.0 Strict).

Also, just by looking at the code you can sometimes see how cross-browser compatible it is without even testing it in other browsers.

[linnetwoods]

Umm, you mean YOU can see the cross-browser compatibility! I'm not sure I could! My own methods are pretty haphazard and dreadful, compared to those of all you technocrats in here...

I usually put together a website that I feel good wandering around in and then I e-mail a bunch of people I know (in eighteen different countries and with all sorts of browsers and hardware) and ask them to take a look and e-mail me to say how the latest site grabs them - it's a bit like this forum except some of the language used in some of the replies would be unpublishable in any polite company...

[YvetteKuhns]

After you code a while and you have tested things that work or do not work, you can spot some code and know if it works or not. But with browser upgrades and AOL users out there, you can only try your best to make things look as good as possible for most situations.

The biggest problem to watch is nested tables and their attributes. You must properly declare the attributes using CSS or the nested table attributes may not be followed on some browsers. Old code with depreciated tags such as BASEFONT are another problem.

Do whatever method works best for you. :)

[linnetwoods]

FrontPage ;-) Although I tried various alternatives in the early days, I plumped for FrontPage before I had learned all that much about html.

You can make websites for years in FrontPage without ever having to bother to tackle code in html view unless the page isn't actually working... How to know whether code that isn't actually producing bad results is as neat and tidy as it could be belongs to another realm of understanding altogether...

I'm keen to discover whether visiting that realm is a necessity or a matter of choice, so I'm looking forwards to trying out the apps I've collected from around the web...

[Maskatay]

I really like your conversations.. very helpful!!!

[linnetwoods]

Having just started looking at some of these apps to tidy up html with, I am not sure I can even figure out how to use any of them. Oops...

[Kitchensink108]

Have you tried HTML Tidy?
http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/

Once you download it, c&p your code into the window, click "tidy", and it'll automatically fix up your code (to an extent).

[linnetwoods]

...I'm just about to - it sounds brilliant! Can't thank you enough for the tip... watch your reputation rise... When I tried to boost someone's reputation twice in quick succession, I was told to spread the reputation about. That hasn't been hard to do and it's a real pleasure to find so many people who deserve it!

[vrooje]

Maskatay:

I know this review is coming a bit late, but hopefully it will be useful as well.

I agree with everyone above -- the site is visually quite beautiful, and it piques my curiosity. I've never been to the Maldives and I don't know how they're doing after the tsunami, but I've always wanted to go there.

Speaking of which (the tsunami did go through the Maldives, didn't it?), you might want to include a blurb reassuring people that the resorts you represent are fully operational, if they actually are. That was the first thing I thought of -- how old are these pictures? What do these resorts look like now?

I second the desire for prices on your page. At least tell us what a room in each resort starts at for a night or a week -- without prices I'm very unlikely to inquire.

I also think you should include a short blurb on your home page describing what the site is for. You have a pretty good blurb on your "about us" page that does this, but you have to click to get there. You may be more likely to get follow-up clicks than a travel agency in, oh, anywhere else in the world. *But* the simple fact is that most people who visit a website never go beyond the front page. So you have to make them want to look further at your site. As it is now, I have a notion from your front page of what it is your site is for, but only that -- it's not completely clear.

The blurb on your front page is also a great place to insert search engine keywords. Likewise, I recommend that you revise your home page title to at least include the words "holiday" and "vacation," and maybe "resort." If any of your resorts are all-inclusive, include that too.

A beautiful site for a phenomenal place.

Cheers,
-Brooke

[Maskatay]

Vrooje: Thank you for your suggestions. With reference to keywords, I have already included "holiday" and "vacations" in meta keywods in every page. Do you think I should include such words in the title as well? What will be the result if I include them in page title? I look forward to your reply.

[YvetteKuhns]

Google doesn't read meta tags, but meta searches do. Including your keywords in your text is first priority and between your TITLE tags is second. Yes, that will definitely help. Do a search on Google and notice the keywords highlighted in the search results. They like keywords in domain names, but you have that already.