You’ve found the property, bought it, negotiated your way through the complexities of a foreign legal system, you’ve mastered the local language, turned a run down shack into a rental dream and discovered your flair for interior design, all on a miserly budget. You’re the master of your own destiny, and you can do anything!
You’re ready for your first guests, so now it’s on to the website. Surely you can build your own website right!?
Yes, you can. With enough time, effort, research, the right tools, care, attention and testing, you absolutely can build your own website, and I’ve seem some great examples in my time. But all too often, I see websites which at best let the property down, and at worst simply don’t work. So what are the 7 deadly sins (well, 9 actually, but you can’t beat a good headline eh!?), and how can you avoid them should you decide to DIY your website?
1. Using a free domain name.
Don’t. It’s looks cheap from the outset, is useful for SEO purposes, and lacks ‘memorable’ factor. And whilst we’re at it, .biz, .eu, .mobi and all other non standard forms of domain suffix just look plain weird too. Stick with your local country version, .com, or .net please.
2. Using free hosting.
Again, don’t. It doesn’t need to cost a fortune, but it’s free for a reason, usually because it’s rubbish. It will slow your website down (to the point of crashing), it will probably go down at some point, be subject to a virus attack and will definitely drive potential guests away in droves and lose you business.
3. Picking a random colour / font scheme.
Unless you really have an eye for design (here’s a hint… if you’ve ever owned an avocado bathroom suite, you don’t), leave the colour schemes to the experts. Download a free template, spend a few quid / euros / dollars on one, or, how can I say this without encouraging felony… ‘borrow’ a colour scheme from another website you like. When you’ve picked a font… stick with it…the font is as key to the design as the colours. And be careful in your use of capitalisation.
4. Having an inconsistent navigation
There’s a time when people are happy to ‘explore’ a website, but holiday-hunting mode isn’t it. Your visitor may be ploughing through hundreds of websites to find their perfect holiday, and you should make it easy for them to explore yours by having a simple, clear navigation structure. Don’t try to be clever, either along the top (preferably) or down the side please. And don’t use images, text navigation links only please.
5. Building, testing and launching on a Mac.
If you do this, chances are your website will look rubbish / won’t work on a PC. Websites render differently on PCs and Macs (also on different browsers, and different releases of browsers). At a very early stage in the build process you want to check your site is working and looking good across all of them otherwise you’re going to waste a whole lot of time. See this post on cross browser testing for how to do that. See below for the % each browser commands in the market (from W3Schools)
6. Using amateur photography on a rainy day
The photography is the most important part of your website. Poorly taken photos can ruin it by making the place look miserable, small, untidy etc. You don’t need to be a pro to DIY, but you might find a wide angle lense can ‘position your rooms in the best light’ without necessarily misleading.
7. Using uncompressed / tiny / grainy images on the website
Put them up too big, and they’ll take ages to load. Put them up too small, and they’ll look tiny or grainy. As a rule of thumb, aim for around 50k per image and you should avoid this issue. And whilst you’re at it, you might find the images look better if you slap a border round them, you can do this either in the photo manipulation package or using CSS on the actual website.
8. Cutting and pasting content from elsewhere on the web
You think your website would benefit from some information about the local area, and hey presto, you’ve found the perfect resource… Wikipedia! Don’t just cut and paste the content, it’s illegal and it will get you zapped by search engines for hosting duplicate content. Write your own (ideally) or simply link to the original resource. If you’re worried about losing visitors from your site, launch the external site in a new window ensuring yours is still there when they close it down.
9. Relying on your friends and relatives for feedback
They’re not going to tell you the truth any more than they’ll tell you they hated that jumper you bought them for Xmas. Get some impartial advice. I find it difficult giving strangers honest feedback on their home grown efforts, so it’s unlikely your nearest & dearest are going to give it to you straight. There’s a ‘website reviews’ section on the Lay My Hat holiday rental forum here in which you can ask for feedback, and the kind users in there tend to give it to you straight without completely dashing your DIY dreams.
So those are my 7 (ahem) deadly sins of DIY web design. I’m not looking to put people off, because ‘rolling your own’ can be an immensly rewarding experience if you have the time and commitment. I should know, I taught myself how to design & build websites.
What sins would you add? What do you hate most when you come across a really amateur DIY project? Or have you seen any great examples of DIY websites? What tips would you give to budding DIYers?
by
Holiday rental websites: 7 deadly sins of DIY web design
with permission http://bit.ly/nw53o
You’ve found the property, bought it, negotiated your way through the complexities of a foreign legal system, you’ve mastered the local language, turned a run down shack into a rental dream and discovered your flair for interior design, all on a miserly budget. You’re the master of your own destiny, and you can do anything!
You’re ready for your first guests, so now it’s on to the website. Surely you can build your own website right!?
Yes, you can. With enough time, effort, research, the right tools, care, attention and testing, you absolutely can build your own website, and I’ve seem some great examples in my time. But all too often, I see websites which at best let the property down, and at worst simply don’t work. So what are the 7 deadly sins (well, 9 actually, but you can’t beat a good headline eh!?), and how can you avoid them should you decide to DIY your website?
1. Using a free domain name.
Don’t. It’s looks cheap from the outset, is useful for SEO purposes, and lacks ‘memorable’ factor. And whilst we’re at it, .biz, .eu, .mobi and all other non standard forms of domain suffix just look plain weird too. Stick with your local country version, .com, or .net please.
2. Using free hosting.
Again, don’t. It doesn’t need to cost a fortune, but it’s free for a reason, usually because it’s rubbish. It will slow your website down (to the point of crashing), it will probably go down at some point, be subject to a virus attack and will definitely drive potential guests away in droves and lose you business.
3. Picking a random colour / font scheme.
Unless you really have an eye for design (here’s a hint… if you’ve ever owned an avocado bathroom suite, you don’t), leave the colour schemes to the experts. Download a free template, spend a few quid / euros / dollars on one, or, how can I say this without encouraging felony… ‘borrow’ a colour scheme from another website you like. When you’ve picked a font… stick with it…the font is as key to the design as the colours. And be careful in your use of capitalisation.
4. Having an inconsistent navigation
There’s a time when people are happy to ‘explore’ a website, but holiday-hunting mode isn’t it. Your visitor may be ploughing through hundreds of websites to find their perfect holiday, and you should make it easy for them to explore yours by having a simple, clear navigation structure. Don’t try to be clever, either along the top (preferably) or down the side please. And don’t use images, text navigation links only please.
5. Building, testing and launching on a Mac.
If you do this, chances are your website will look rubbish / won’t work on a PC. Websites render differently on PCs and Macs (also on different browsers, and different releases of browsers). At a very early stage in the build process you want to check your site is working and looking good across all of them otherwise you’re going to waste a whole lot of time. See this post on cross browser testing for how to do that. See below for the % each browser commands in the market (from W3Schools)
6. Using amateur photography on a rainy day
The photography is the most important part of your website. Poorly taken photos can ruin it by making the place look miserable, small, untidy etc. You don’t need to be a pro to DIY, but you might find a wide angle lense can ‘position your rooms in the best light’ without necessarily misleading.
7. Using uncompressed / tiny / grainy images on the website
Put them up too big, and they’ll take ages to load. Put them up too small, and they’ll look tiny or grainy. As a rule of thumb, aim for around 50k per image and you should avoid this issue. And whilst you’re at it, you might find the images look better if you slap a border round them, you can do this either in the photo manipulation package or using CSS on the actual website.
8. Cutting and pasting content from elsewhere on the web
You think your website would benefit from some information about the local area, and hey presto, you’ve found the perfect resource… Wikipedia! Don’t just cut and paste the content, it’s illegal and it will get you zapped by search engines for hosting duplicate content. Write your own (ideally) or simply link to the original resource. If you’re worried about losing visitors from your site, launch the external site in a new window ensuring yours is still there when they close it down.
9. Relying on your friends and relatives for feedback
They’re not going to tell you the truth any more than they’ll tell you they hated that jumper you bought them for Xmas. Get some impartial advice. I find it difficult giving strangers honest feedback on their home grown efforts, so it’s unlikely your nearest & dearest are going to give it to you straight. There’s a ‘website reviews’ section on the Lay My Hat holiday rental forum here in which you can ask for feedback, and the kind users in there tend to give it to you straight without completely dashing your DIY dreams.
So those are my 7 (ahem) deadly sins of DIY web design. I’m not looking to put people off, because ‘rolling your own’ can be an immensly rewarding experience if you have the time and commitment. I should know, I taught myself how to design & build websites.
What sins would you add? What do you hate most when you come across a really amateur DIY project? Or have you seen any great examples of DIY websites? What tips would you give to budding DIYers?
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