Why All Hotel Web Sites Look Alike and Why That Is a Bad Marketing Move

Did you ever go online to try to find a nice guesthouse in Marrakech? Or in Fiji for that matter, because the problem is not just a Moroccan one. It is not the fault of the country or guesthouse, but just an intrinsic characteristic of all locations that have a strong cultural identity. It is only normal that a guesthouse in Marrakech would wish to present itself in brown or sepia colours. That it likes to add fairy tale like traditional music of the region, or have a flash element unfolding one beautiful photo of the interior decoration after the other.

It goes without saying: that is what Morocco or the life in a riad or guesthouse are about. So a hotel is only right in wishing to transmit that feel or atmosphere. For a traveler however this makes the process of finding the right hotel a rather difficult one. You can click and click and click... but every hotel looks exactly like the last one. Just about every website welcomes you to true authenticity or a haven of peace and calm in the same sepia or burgundy and refined graphical touches and... With as a result that, should you happen to suddenly stumble over something that is completely different... your index finger is much more eager to stop for a moment. And that is a very important moment.

If a hotel website is able to make a visitor stop, if only for a few seconds, the chances are that this visitor will also have read the first titles, or have truly concentrated on a photo, or map, or perhaps even have 'skimmingly' gone through the whole text.

In my experience, standing out in design, feel and look, is a very important element in both the time any visitor stays on a website as well as in the forthcoming results in the search engine listings. We are only human, and it does not apply to hotels only: in every market and industry we like to compare ourselves with the competition, and sometimes we are far too eager to amend our own tastes to what we think the market demands. But does the market really demands one single trend? Is it not so that we all wish to be surprised too, to be really interested in what a website has to tell, or what it transmits?

Already in Marrakech alone there are 800 guesthouses. True, that does make online competition very hard. But if all guesthouses go for the same website style and feel, nobody really stands out, and nobody really advances. In a very first instance, the hotel is not the product you sell online. It is a website. In the very first place it is important that your website is sold, that many of the literally thousands and thousands of 'Internauts' clicking the day away can suddenly withdraw their index finger from the key board and think... something is happening here! Make your website visitor stop. And then you can start selling your hotel.

What You Need to Know About Website Design

So you want to have the best website possible, right? Then you need to understand the basic concepts of website design. Unless your website is simply for fun - or a hobby site - you want to entice your visitors to do something while they are surfing through your pages. Good website design will lay out your site so that it is easy to navigate through, is attractive, and provides you with functionality. In order to help you get your website up and running with the best possible results, you need to understand the concepts behind good website design.

The first key to a productive website is understanding the content that you include in the website. You want to make sure the information you use is reliable and accurate. If you are promoting a product or a business, you need to ensure that it is reputable and that all of your facts are right. You need to make sure that your website is presented as a credible source of information or else your visitors will go find the information somewhere else. Additionally, good website design includes making sure that the text is spelled properly and the grammar is correct. Misspelled words and improper grammar will make your visitors run away.

The next key to website design is making sure your website is compatible with the most popular and most widely used web browsers used today. In order to do that you need use text, graphics, and effects that are recognized and supported by these browsers. If you do not, then your website will not display properly for your visitors and that is another reason why they will move on to someone else's website. Always make sure that your website displays properly in Firefox, Opera, Safari, Netscape - yes, there are still some people using this browser - and, of course, Microsoft Internet Explorer. Always view your website in these platforms before letting it go live to make sure your HTML coding is correct.

What other things do you need to know about good website design? Graphics and photos in your website are great, but unless they have been optimized to a small size without sacrificing the quality of the picture, they are detrimental to your site and not an asset. Not everyone has switched over to broadband or DSL and they are still using dial up to access the Internet. Photos and graphics take time to load, and if yours takes longer than 10 seconds to load then you could lose a visitor. Keep the pictures small and to a minimum, and always use an ALT HTML tag that allows people to turn off the graphics if they need to.

The same goes for background colours, multimedia, frames, and links. A good website design uses colours that all browsers can read. Multimedia - such as flash movies, video clips, and background music - should come with the ability to start and stop as the visitor sees fit, or if they are flash components, visitors should have the option to skip them. Frames are not always supported by your visitor's web browser version, making them frustrating to view. Does this mean that you shouldn't include these items? No. It just means that a good website design will limit how they are used. Only you can decide whether or not these items are integral to your website.

The last key to a good website design is making sure that all of the links you use throughout your site should work and not be broken. You will need to check them every so often to make sure they work and update them as needed. If you follow these suggestions for a good website design, then your website will be the best it can be.

Fixing Those Annoying CSS Bugs

There are a number of different browsers that you must compensate for when designing your webpage's in any format (CSS, tables etc.), some of the most common browsers are : Internet Explorer 6/ 7, Firefox and Safari. The main issues that arise with CSS design is that all browsers interpret CSS differently, for example Firefox does not understand some of the CSS commands that Internet Explorer does and vice-verse

One of the main issues I have found when designing with CSS is a problem with margins in Internet Explorer 6. I found that when using a float on a div tag that also had a margin set, the margin would actually double and then knock the whole pages layout out. After numerous late nights and an insane amount of coffee I finally found a solution to this double margin bug. By inserting a simple line of code the double margin no longer double ! That solution is as follows, by adding this line of code to your CSS div tag 'display: inline'.

Another problem I have found with CSS in Internet Explorer 6 is a problem when trying to define a div tag that has a smaller size than the base font size. This problem again can be fixed with a simple line of code this time all we need to add is the following line of code to the div tag: 'font-size:0px'. There is also another solution to this problem that should have the same effect, because the div tag auto stretches to compensate for content overflow adding 'overflow: hidden' should also resolve the problem.

Top 8 Reasons to use CSS for Formatting

CSS is a new option for website designers that have been using HTML and tables for most of their web designing careers. Without doubt this is a huge change and requires learning a new language and skill, however most people are saying CSS is worth it and it will give you more control, options, and is lots easier to edit. Consider the following top 8 reasons why using CSS is a must and see if it convinces you to change your method of web design.

1) Present Data Logically

When you use CSS in the layout of your website you can present your data in a logical way and CSS can then manage how the information appears. This is significantly easier than other methods.

2) More Options

With CSS you have more options for changing the location of information on your screen. This is important for a variety of reasons, especially if you anticipate the need to change columns or links at some time.

3) Complements HTML

Another reason CSS is a must is because it complements HTML. HTML and CSS alone both have weaknesses, but when used together your website design will be significantly stronger.

4) Editing

You can edit your website design if you need to for whatever reason without that much hassle if you are using CSS. All you do is go in and edit the definition. This is a lot easier than searching and replacing of years past.

5) Faster

When you use CSS your pages not only load faster but they also can be scrolled quicker than ever before. This is a huge deal to most web surfers as well as webmasters because speed is a huge implication in whether someone stays on your page or moves on. CSS increases speed, and as a result is a tool you must learn how to use.

6) Print

When you use CSS you can also include a printer friendly version of the website that makes it easier to print and can eliminate color, images, and other things that do not print easily.

7) Control

If you have been working with tables for layouts you are probably tired of the guessing that goes on. However, with CSS you have more control and can issues commands and know exactly where the result will appear, rather than guessing.

8) Fast Loading web page

Working with tables make a web page more heavy, when you use css as your designing method it makes your web page less heavy as compared to their tables counter part, thereby making web page load more faster.

Why to use CSS for formatting your layout?

The old ways of changing how your text looks in HTML has been outdated. The new way to do it is by using style sheets. Learning CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is really worth the efforts involved. One of the reasons is for consistency - you don't have to remember every single detail for each font, alignment and other details. There is also a factor of readability when you are looking at the raw code. It also saves a lot of work. Instead of having to type all the font attributes each time you need to change the formatting, all you have to do is define a simple rule for the concerned tag and it will take care of all your formatting needs.

You can easily make the changes site-wise or for particular place, just by using CSS properly. CSS can be added in a web page as embedded style sheet or as a link for an external sheet. Depending on your use you can utilize any of the two methods. For external style sheet you have to place all the rules in a file with ".css" extension and then you have to link the style sheet to your web page like:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" type="text/css" />

And for internal styles you need to add the rules between <style> tag, like:
<style type="text/css">
.links {
font-family:Arial;
font-size:12px;
color:gray;
}
</style>

If you require the changes for your whole site then define the specific rule for the concerned tags, for example if you want to change the text for whole site then define a <p> tag for the specific rules that you want your whole site to follow. Say if you require your font family to be Arial, and your font size to be 12 pixel, your font color to be say gray then you should define a rule in your style sheet as following:
p {
font-family:Arial;
font-size:12px;
color:gray;
}

The above rule will be the same for all the <p> tags in your site. If you want to change the formatting of your text any time in the future, then you will only require to modify the above defined lines for your <p> tag.

If you want to make the changes for one place, say one page in your site you can define an id or a class for that specific page or place and make the changes for it in the style sheet. Class or Id is an attribute that you can add to any of your tags, to give them a specific group; just to make your task easy to modify your design and formatting. Class is defined in a style sheet with a preceding dot (.) like:
.leftfont{
font-family:Arial;
}

An Id is defined with preceding # like:
#rightfont{
font-family:Arial;
}

To use any of these ids or class you will have to call them for the respective tag like for <p> you will use <p class="leftfont"> or <p id="rightfont">. You can use a class rule any number of time in a web page, but (to make the markup valid) you can use id only once in a single page. If you want to use same set of use again and again then its better to define it in a class rule.