Sitecritic.net Website Reviews – You Be The Judge

www.hotelstobuy.co.uk

Introduction

Hotels to buy is a business that provides useful information in buying hotels, guesthouses, bed and breakfasts in England, Wales and Scotland. The design, usuability and coding of the site probably need some extra work.

Form

My first impression of the website was not good. Though the images look good, the design is not pleasing to the eye and the color scheme does not work for me. The purple and the blue in the site does not blend or contrast properly. I could hardly find any branding or logo in the site. A logo is important for a business. Though there is a URL on top of the site, it is not a logo. The website needs to work harder on its brand and design so that it can leave a more lasting impression on its visitors.

Function

The menu in the home page is hard to find, almost non- existent . I found two links at the bottom right corner which are the “links” and “home”. There is a not so nice “register for free” purple with red border button in the main content column and one link for users who forgot their password. There are also links for advertising and buyers down the bottom of the home page. Another weird thing about this website is that when I clicked on the link “Links”, a whole new navigation on the top appears. That is confusing because the navigation is not consistent.

The author might consider centering the layout and perhaps provide a menu near the header (like the links page) in the index page. The cluttered content can also be split up into more pages.

The content appears to be messy and once again does not sit right with the colors that the designer chose. The registration page is not much better as all the fields have a yellow background that does not complement the colors of the website. The input fields should also be aligned instead of centered. I must admin that the images used in the home page are of good quality. However, it seems like they are glued on the screen and do not blend into the website.

I was a bit surprised that the site is CSS validated. However the HTML is not valid and there are various errors. The javascript appears to be heavy as well.

Conclusion

I can see that the website is designed just for the purpose of encouraging people to register as a member. Everyone can receive that message easily as they will not have any problem finding that big register button. It that sense, you can call the website a success if you want to. But I think that we can all agree that more work could be done to make the site look better and more user friendly.

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