Hotel Website

[bigalc]

Hi guys

I'd love to know what you think of this, and if you can see any errors or problems. It's about to go live and doesn't yet have 100% of the text content added.

I've been very nervous about posting it here because a lot of hours have gone into it...please be gentle!

Link (http://www.dialhousehotel.com/flash/index.html)

[Cabezon]

Nice website, i can imagine how many hours you have spent in this. (forgive my grammar i don't speak english very well).
First thegood thigs: I really liked te navigation. the treatment of the images is also nice and ite intuitive enough.
Now the suggestions...
1.- you really should optimize the size of the page, 2.8 MB of data on a slow connection can be painful. Maybe you could load some of the iages dynamicly or something like that.
2.- think the interface is a little cluttered, if you could collapse the info panels, the menus and other things it'd be perfect.
3.- the text over the images in the menu distract the user from the rest of the page (maybe to big or something else)...
Well thats all for now... if you have any questions or anything else ill be arround

Cabezon
Graphic designer - Mancha design

[lelales]

that is totally incredible.:o I wouldn't change a thing.

[bigalc]

Thank you both for your feedback - Cabezon, your English is fine!

I had worried about the size of it - as you say 2.8 mb is a lot, but I don't think I can optimize it much more than I already have without spoiling the quality of the graphics or the user's overall experience. On all the connections I've tried it on, it seems ok, the slowest was about 30-40 secs, on mine it's less than 10, and I've seen a lot worse than that on some other sites. Plus once it's done the initial load there isn't any more loading to be done, other than a little wait for the photographs in each section, which to me is a bonus.

I don't think I can load any of the graphics dynamically as this would slow down the movement between sections and it's already quite close to being jerky. I take your comment on board though, and will have a think about other ways to make it smaller. I didn't post it here but the opening page to the site offers the user an alternative html site to visit, so people on very slow connections can use that one.

I accept also that the interface is a bit cluttered but at the same time this is part of the site's personality and was vaguely intentional. The client wanted there to be a lot of things to click on and for the user to want to explore. I'm not sure if I agree that the link icons at the bottom are distracting, although I'm not 100% happy with the way they look and may change them. It was also pointed out to me recently that 'Tarrifs' should be spelt 'Tariffs'....woops....

Please keep your comments coming, it's great to hear the feedback.