Thoughts please on my property listing.

[Nerja]

Hi All

I'm new to the forum and was wondering if anyone could give me some feedback on the listing I have for our property:-

http://mynerja.com/view/property/3-bed- ... -of-nerja/

We have also just started advertising on ebay, but no enquiries from ebay as yet. From what I have read on here ebay can generate bookings, but it seems hit and miss.

Everyone I speak to here in Nerja says that bookings are quiet at the moment, so any other suggestions as to where to advertise or any other tips would be gratefully received.

Thanks

Tony

[ThaiCharles]

I have just had a look at your holiday home page.
The main site is more or less unknown by the major search engines, so a dedicated website may well be a thing to consider. I honestly feel that relying on this page alone will bring you few, if any, enquiries (sorry!)
I think the description could me a lot more detailed and "seductive", to paint a fuller picture of the property, area and experience for potential renters.
I would be tempted to add an online availability calendar - or at least a link to one on a site such as homeawayconnect - so potential guests do not feel they have to waste time asking about possible dates.
I hope this helps!

[CSE]

I agree this website is not well known. I would go down either having your own website plus some listing ones or a a few very good listing websites.
Which listing websites you use will be determined by which market you are aiming at. What is that?

Edit: PS I have seen that the company that you are listed on says they develop websites. My personal advice is that if you choose to go down the route of your own website you do not use this company. There are 10 errors and 89 warnings when I look at the code on your page. That does not give me much confidence in them.

[Nerja]

I have just had a look at your holiday home page.
The main site is more or less unknown by the major search engines, so a dedicated website may well be a thing to consider. I honestly feel that relying on this page alone will bring you few, if any, enquiries (sorry!)
I think the description could me a lot more detailed and "seductive", to paint a fuller picture of the property, area and experience for potential renters.
I would be tempted to add an online availability calendar - or at least a link to one on a site such as homeawayconnect - so potential guests do not feel they have to waste time asking about possible dates.
I hope this helps!

Thanks very much for the feedback - much appreciated.

One question; why do you think a dedicated website would be better for bringing enquiries? The mynerja.com website is reasonably well publicised locally in Nerja, whereas a personal site would rely entirely on search engine traffic. As you know the volume of competition for search results is huge, so getting anywhere near the top would be very difficult. Surely more difficult for a site with just one property?

An online availability calendar is a good idea - I will look into getting that added.

Thanks again for your comments.

[Nerja]

I agree this website is not well known. I would go down either having your own website plus some listing ones or a a few very good listing websites.
Which listing websites you use will be determined by which market you are aiming at. What is that?

Edit: PS I have seen that the company that you are listed on says they develop websites. My personal advice is that if you choose to go down the route of your own website you do not use this company. There are 10 errors and 89 warnings when I look at the code on your page. That does not give me much confidence in them.

Again, thanks very much for your comments. Again my question would be why would an individual website get more traffic?

I am aiming at people who already know Nerja and want to have a holiday there. I am considering using other listing sites also, but they are expensive, compared to using adwords to direct searches to the listing I have on mynerja.com (btw the listing on mynerja cost me €10, which is a lot cheaper than getting an individual site built) and I think it makes a lot of sense for tageting holiday makers who already know they want to come to Nerja.

Re your comments on the website errors. I ran a test using the W3.org validator (http://validator.w3.org/) and that gave just 2 errors and 0 warnings.

As a comparison I ran the same test on your site and got 2 errors and 3 warnings.

When I ran the test on this forum I got 40 errors and 177 warnings.

Out of interest I ran it on ebay.co.uk and got 356 Errors, 28 warning(s).

Just because you have errors doesn't mean the site won't display properly in a browser, so I don't see that means I shouldn't trust the website developer, given they are doing better than ebay.

Thanks again for the feedback, much appreciated.

[CSE]

I know the errors my website throws up. My website is not written by a professional and the errors are down to the book marking widget I have; the widget was not written by me. I don’t consider these results so bad.
The other websites you are testing are pages with active input (sorry forget the technical term) they should not be constrained by simple HTML coding.
I use a web browser add on to view coding and this is where I get the errors shown on your listing. I get the feeling you feel a personally attacked by this comment, sorry it is not meant to be that way. I just advised you not to use them.
The reason why I suggested your own site is that you can control how it works and the design. You are not hidden behind some low performing site like the one you are on now. But that is down to how you want to advertise. Like I said you can obviously pay to list on a performing website too. These have been discussed on this forum many times so I think you will find loads of information to help make up your own mind as to which is the best for you.

[Nerja]

To be honest I think you are worrying about nothing with regard to the validation errors. I have checked my page on Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer and the page displays fine on all three.

For me at least, the most important aspects of a website are:-

1) It looks good
2) It has all the features I want (eg youtube, streetmap etc)
3) It works on all the major browsers
4) Its search engine friendly

If a developer can provide that to me at low cost, I don't really care about "validation errors".

Its all very well for companies like the BBC to spend a fortune ensuring their websites are 100% perfect, but I will go with the ebay approach to errors - as long as it works who cares?

[Nerja]

I've just got a reply from the website developer with regard to the errors. He says that the website is using some HTML 5 features that will generate errors in a validator. The HTML 5 features (such as the email address checker on the contact form) are backwards compatible with non-HTML 5 browsers, so the website will still work on older browsers.

He also said that using embed code for things like Youtube videos and flicker galleries produce validation errors, but they still work. Its the price you pay for having features like that.

I tried running the validation tool on youtube.com to see if what he was saying is true, that came up with:-

74 Errors, 2 warnings

Shock horror - I won't be using Youtube then.

[cleanforum]

I may getting blinder than I think quicker than I thought but .. I dont see any currency. Are those prices in pounds or Euros??

[CSE]

I've just got a reply from the website developer with regard to the errors. He says that the website is using some HTML 5 features that will generate errors in a validator. The HTML 5 features (such as the email address checker on the contact form) are backwards compatible with non-HTML 5 browsers, so the website will still work on older browsers.

He also said that using embed code for things like Youtube videos and flicker galleries produce validation errors, but they still work. Its the price you pay for having features like that.

I tried running the validation tool on youtube.com to see if what he was saying is true, that came up with:-

74 Errors, 2 warnings

Shock horror - I won't be using Youtube then.

Like I said before when you have a website which allows active content (like forums or Youtube etc) you cannot use any validator service.
Something is not quite right with what you are being told. I cannot see any coding which allows older browsers to read the website.
Using the Validator with HTML5 I get
http://j.mp/jfgBLY This shows up a lot of errors, (80 Errors, 3 warnings)
When I allow the same service to ascertain the doc type it assumes the web page is
XHTML 1.0 Transitional (the coding states this is the doc type) http://j.mp/iEWINN then is shows up a lot less errors.

Your defence of the web master is admiring. But the facts are as written; I am sorry I cannot change the facts (or code) only the web master can! Hopefully you can take on board these comments after all it was you looking for advice.

[Nerja]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I made a few changes to the listing as suggested and we have had over 2000 views of the listing and it is fully booked through the summer.

We are still getting enquiries for the 1st week of UK school holidays and the 1st week after the school holidays (could have rented both 10 times over) plus a 6 week booking in February, so overall pretty pleased.