Hotel Website Makeover: Whale Cottage Guest Houses

Our next hotel website makeover comes from Chris, a reader from South Africa, and owner of the Whale Cottage Guest Houses. First, a little background information:

  • Location:  South Africa
  • Property Type: Guest houses
  • Number of rooms: 33 rooms across 4 properties
  • Price range: R 300-450 pppn (winter); R 490-650 pppn (summer)
  • Typical Guests: From the UK, Germany, and South Africa

Website analysis

(Click image for full size review)

(Click image for full size review)

What I would change

Unlike the Apple Tree Inn last week, the Whale Cottage Guest Houses have started to build their web presence with a blog and Twitter account. For this reason, my review focused on their homepage – where a makeover is most likely to provide positive results.

Here’s what I recommend changing:

  • The heading area – to focus on more useful content
  • The navigation – to be simple and intuitive
  • The page structure – to eliminate duplication
  • The body copy – to explain the benefits of the cottages
  • The call to action – to encourage more bookings

It all comes down to two words

Simplify and focus.

Take-away questions for anyone:

  1. Is my website concise & intuitive?
  2. Is the navigation simple?
  3. Is important content “above the fold”?

How would you optimize the Whale Cottage website?

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Article by Josiah Mackenzie // June 17, 2009 Josiah spends pretty much all day, every day looking for ways you can use new media and the social web to improve your business. To bring him on your team, you should look at our Insider's Circle program here.

Comments

 
  • Josiah,
    As far as helping themselves with Google, I notice that they don’t have Contact/Privacy Policy/Terms and Conditions/Site Map pages, all of which Google likes to see.

    Thanks for your post.

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