sinéad's lifestream

There’s nothing more powerful than asking your users what they think.

With that in mind the Kilkenny Pembroke Hotel are running an iPad competition – for every person that gives them suggestions for their upcoming website redesign they get their name entered into a draw for an iPad and a stay at the hotel. Pretty clever, right?

You’re supposed to come up with 2 suggestions, but seeing as website optimisation and landing pages are of particular interest to me I accidentally ran away with my entry, so much so that Facebook refused to let me post it due to it’s length. Hence it now has a home here.

Some of the suggestions I’ve outlined below can be summarised into the following tips for commercial websites.

6 Basic Tips For Good Website Design

1. Make every call to action as obvious as possible.
2. Don’t give the user too many choices.
3. Never ask for too much information.
4. Don’t have too much text.
5. Remove any visual distractions from the calls to action.
6. Build trust by adding credibility logos.

Pembroke Hotel Website Redesign Suggestions

Everyone else seems to have covered most of the internal issues/suggestions for the site (based on the entries on the hotel’s Facebook page), so here are some that are based on the homepage only (the main landing page for most of your visitors, and possibly the most important).

1. The check availability section should be moved to the lower right hand corner of the page (swap with the email newsletter), you could test this change using Google Website Optimizer, and see where on the page it would fit best. Also, there should be more contrast between this section and the rest of the page, less grey and more colour. The “check now” button should be much bigger and with a clearer call to action such as “Check Dates”, this button should also be a striking colour such as red, so it stands out far more.

2. The email newsletter “Sign Up” button, it needs to be bigger, bolder and more colour contrast between it’s box and the rest of the site design. The sign-up section here asks for a full name and for you to pick an “Area of Interest”, these are unnecessary pieces of information – change this so all you need to do is enter your email address and click sign-up. This should increase newsletter subscriptions.

3. The image/link (on the right hand side of the page) to the specials you offer does not stand out enough. The “Book Now” button is not a clear call to action when it follows the text. The text description needs to be more obvious, far more literal. “Midweek Shopping Treat” as an example would be better described as “Special Offer: Midweek Shopping Treat”. Or “Girls Getways” could be expanded to “Take The Girls Away For a Pampering Weekend”.

4. There is too much text on the page. The section “Luxury and comfort re-invented in Kilkenny” has too much text and is difficult to read on the colour scheme chosen. Splitting up the text would be better, or even highlighting in bold the most important information so it is scanable. Or making the background of this text box white, and the text black.

5. Add any trust/credibility logos to this page (credit card security logos etc). Also include other badges of trust – you could mention your excellent review status on Trip Advisor (No 2 hotel in Killkenny) and Booking.com (9.2 out of 10, after 221 reviews), and link to these pages. Trip Advisor even has a badge you can put on your site that links to it’s review page.

Even if I don’t win the much lusted after iPad, hopefully these suggestions will help, and I look forward to seeing the future redesign of the site.