Hooray! Another small travel business owner has been a fresh, fun, and friendly website to promote their special offering. This week we’re featuring The Urban Oasis:
Why I Love Their Site
Go and have a look at their site. Here’s what I love about it:
- They have priorities. The things that take primary position on the website are contact details (of course!), events (whooohoo – profits), reviews (all positive), and of course practical information.
- Simple, Fun, Fresh. When I look at the photos of this establishment and I look at the website, I feel like they belong to the same person. The website isn’t this cold, harsh place where dirty money is exchanged under the table. It’s a fun and funky cafe – pull up a chair, there’s an empty one right there in the header graphic.
- It has personality. My favourite feature is the ‘house recipes’ – what better way to get to know a venue than by looking at what they cook? It’s totally transparency that is effortless.
- There are pictures of the people who own it. How refreshing to actually see the people you are staying with, versus a blank webpage.
Tips and Tweaks
This site is built with TOP’s content management system of choice, WordPress. It’s also built on the Thesis theme, which is a fantastic theme for anyone considering WordPress for their website. But I do, as always, have a few tweaks
- Jargon Alert!: Get rid of the word ‘blogroll’ in the sidebar. Most people don’t know what that is, and those of us who do have no idea why we called it that anyway.
- Jumping Alert!: There are lots of links that take me to another website unexpectedly. Flickr is one example, and I had a few others as well. Be sure to warn me if I’m going somewhere unexpected.
- Bigger Photos: The photos of the rooms are tiny – which makes no sense, considering the Flickr images of the same thing are huge. Show us what you got – because it looks good!
- Drop Down Alert!: I don’t mind drop-down menus, but some users completely miss them (in other words, do not see them). Thesis unfortunately doesn’t have fold-out menus, which would make this a lot nicer. (Like here, on TOP, see how you can see the menu you’re on under ‘Articles’.) This isn’t a huge problem, just make sure that you link on the page to any important subpages, or nobody will find them.
To Learn More
Do you want a more effective website? Why not consider our website review service? It could transform your website from a cold, empty cafe to a buzzing marketing channel where all the action is at.
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
That was a cool review Andy. I like how you gave both positive and negative..a good honest web site critique is can be a useful tool to making a good website great.
Oh, and one last thing, I wanted to stop in and say hello, but you must be logged in to comment, but they don’t allow you to register..they should disable commenting.