citycentrehotels.com

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PhilipT

Joined: Dec 26, 2000

# Posts: 95

Posted: 04/16/2008 06:02 am

Name of Site/Business: City Centre Hotels

Site's Main Purpose: Ecommerce/Sales

Please Review the following:
Does the home page sufficiently convince people to go further into the site?

Does/can the site achieve its main purpose?

Additional Comments/Notes
This site is live since August 2007 and the conversion rate in terms of visitors per booking has not been as high as I would have liked.

We have recently updated the availability search & booking process and I would appreciate feedback as to whether there is anything about the booking process which you feel is likely to turn you off making a booking thru it.

Obviously any comments on the site would be much appreciated.

Thanks philip

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Insider

Joined: Mar 11, 2001

# Posts: 2670

Website

Posted: 04/16/2008 01:18 pm

Hi, Philip, thanks for jumping in and giving some reviews of your own.

I ran into a couple problems. In IE6, the form input on the home page does not display at all. In FF, it's a mess with overlapping text because of my default font settings. I had to set the text to the smallest setting for it to display properly.

You are not taking good advantage of page titles and have no meta tags.

As far as the booking process, I noticed that you require two phone numbers, including a mobile. Believe it or not, not everyone has a mobile phone.

"Your requests / comments will be passed on to the hotel, however these are requests only and are not guaranteed."

This is a big turnoff for me. I noticed that a lot of the hotels said "1 X Double/ Twin Standard". So, I might get a room with one double bed or two twin beds? I wouldn't want to save for a dream vacation with my spouse and then have to sleep in separate beds. Or what if I need a wheelchair-accessible room and there's no guarantee I can get one when I book the hotel? (I'm just thinking of some scenarios that might cause someone to not want to use your booking process.) Perhaps I would use your site to find a hotel and then contact the hotel directly to make a reservation.

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PhilipT

Joined: Dec 26, 2000

# Posts: 95

Posted: 04/19/2008 09:38 am

JQ
Thanks very much for your feedback.

I am probably asking for a lot - but is there any chance of sending me a screengrab of how the site looks for you thru IE6 / FF and/ or giving details of the screen size and resolution settings?

The issue regarding the page titles & metatags will be resolved next week.

We are probably shooting ourselves in the foot unneccessarily by creating doubts about whether the customer will get the room type that he/she has requested. From the initial search where the customer specifies a twin or double, we know what they want and ensure that they get what is requested. In the very rare instance that the required room type is unavailable, we contact them pretty quickly.

On a more general basis, it is not possible to guarantee that all customer requests will be guaranteed when operating an automated system although it might be appropriate to word this differently - perhaps

"We always do our utmost to ensure that customer requests are satisfied but this is sometimes not possible. As such, if you have a specific, non standard, requirement which is critical to your stay please contact one of our repesentatives who will be pleased to investigate your request and ensure that we can meet your needs"

Philip

[ Message was edited by: PhilipT 04/19/2008 10:03 am ]

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chang001

Joined: Jul 21, 2007

# Posts: 4

Posted: 04/23/2008 08:21 am

I really liked yous ite layout. Looks good both in Firefox and IE. Looks liek you are using Ajax and it works good. However, as JQ sugested you are not taking full advantage or meta tag. Overall the site looks good to me.

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dannykastelijn

Joined: Apr 29, 2008

# Posts: 14

Posted: 04/29/2008 06:11 am

Hi,

I looked for a Hotel in Eindhoven (the Netherlands, i live there).

I like the looks of the site, pretty clear. When I searched for a hotel in Eindhoven I got 3 options; "Eindhoven", "Eindhoven city" and "Eindhoven Geldrop".

Compared to US cities, Dutch cities are small so whether you are looking for a hotel in the city centre, or outside the city centre they are always close to each other (not more than 5 miles away). So instead of 3 options, make one; "Eindhoven".

I compared your results with a Dutch book site (hotels.nl), the dutch site gives me a lot more choice in hotels and rooms.

I do not know to much about SEO (that's why I joined smile

.

Good luck

Danny

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PhilipT

Joined: Dec 26, 2000

# Posts: 95

Posted: 04/30/2008 08:14 am

I edited the destinations to just have 1 Eindhoven! Unfortunately the site you mentioned still have more availability than us.

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dannykastelijn

Joined: Apr 29, 2008

# Posts: 14

Posted: 04/30/2008 09:20 am

Hi Philip,

for your info:

Eindhoven is the big city

Geldrop, Mierlo, Waalre, Valkenswaard, Best, Nuenen, Veldhoven are the little villages around eindhoven, never furter away then 15 mins by car.

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