Web Design Example - Whistler Digs
November 17, 2003 | 
15 Comments
Over the last few weeks I’ve been looking for a vacation rental house in Whistler. I’ve taken a fairly usual (I think) tact of searching for a good rental online and quickly discovered that most of the sites out there, both individual and/or hosted via a rental service, are very hard to use.
The biggest problem being that the important information like e-mail, phone numbers, available dates and rates are hidden deep within these sites and at times can’t be found at all.
Most of the sites looked like hell as well, but that was less important to me.
I’ve had a bit of time (some of my freelance clients have been incommunicado the last few weeks) and so I decided to design my own vacation rental site. Actually it’s just the home page and it’s not the best or most original design, but my goal was to place as much important information as I could onto the homepage while at the same time giving it a clean, pleasant look.
Please, take a look. Let me know what you think and what you may have done differently. Remember this is an example site, think glorified screenshot somewhat like the 37 Signals “better” project. I’ve got only my experience as a user to go by as far as goals and the like, it’s not meant to work and the information isn’t “real”.
Filed under: Web Design
Comments
1. patrick h. lauke said:
very slick and functional indeed.
Posted on November 17, 2003 12:17 PM | #
2. Keith said:
Haha…it’s actually not “functional” at all. But I get what you mean. Thanks Patrick.
Posted on November 17, 2003 12:25 PM | #
3. patrick h. lauke said:
damn…you mean my reservation didn’t get through to ya ? :-P
Posted on November 17, 2003 01:22 PM | #
4. zlog said:
Very, very, very nice ;-)
Having used a few similar sites (in function) to this I agree that most of them are, as you say, “very hard to use”.
If you are interested, easycar.com is one of the best, commercial attempts at getting it right; and who would have thought that someone, other than Zeldman, could get away with using orange for a design?
Posted on November 17, 2003 01:59 PM | #
5. Paul Tacci said:
I was sitting there looking at the demo page wishing it was a real site. Very nice, very cool design.
I am an aspiring web designer right now(I actually have a site, www.travelsmiths.net, but wouldn’t even dare classify it as professional) and hope that some day I can make pages as simple-yet professional looking as asterisk and the demo one I just saw.
Two things. One, how did you master the web-design basics and to use CSS?
Two, If you really ARE looking for a vacation house at Whistler, the site I made is for a travel agency. While it does not have anything about whistler or ski vacations, you can call the office toll-free at 1(800) 915-1109 and someone there can look up all sorts of rates and rentals availible.
Posted on November 17, 2003 03:22 PM | #
6. Keith said:
Paul, thanks for the kind words.
As to your question. There are times when I feel like I still haven’t mastered the basics of Web Design and I’ve been doing this for almost 9 years now.
My advice is to keep working and learning. Design and build sites, take some classes, learn by following others examples and taking apart their code (this can be really helpful when learning CSS) and examining it.
Always keep in mind there is much more to designing a successful Web site than simply knowing the technology. Understanding users, knowing the goals of a site, having proper content – the list goes on and on.
It’s can be a hard job at times. Things change so fast, and there is so much information out there to keep track of. It seems like a new technique pops up every week. Sometimes it’s like serious information overload – trying to keep up with the Jones’ of Web design – but in the end it’s a very rewarding career. One that I think has potential for much growth, despite some recent history and the state of the economy.
Hope that helps.
Also – thanks for the tip, I may do that. I still haven’t found a good place, but I have a few “feelers” out. And, in case you are wondering, I eventually gave up my Web search and turned to something tried and true.
The telephone.
Posted on November 17, 2003 04:16 PM | #
7. Bob said:
Dude, that’s just gorgeous.
Posted on November 17, 2003 09:05 PM | #
8. Pat said:
First off, I’d like to say that its a very nice looking page. I just have two suggestions for it.
On this type of site it seems like there ought to be a “Contact” page listed with the rest of the site navigation. Where you show a map of the location, telephone # email, etc.
I noticed some of that information is at the bottom of the “Reservations” paragraph but for someone scanning the site for that data it’d be more helpful to have it all listed on one page.
The other suggestion is more of a minor nitpick. The “Availability Calendar” would be a great feature for this type of site, but maybe you should do more to hilite the available dates. When I glanced over at that column none of the available dates really jumped out at me, I had to take my time focus on spotting the hyper links. This could just be due to my dark monitor. But a tweak to the CSS giving the links a bolder appearance could be beneficial for everyone.
Posted on November 18, 2003 03:11 AM | #
9. Keith said:
Good ideas both Pat. I had actually thought of those issues at one point. I’m pretty sure if this had been a “real” project I might have picked those up as they make perfect sense. I didn’t do as much browser testing on this as I normally do.
I did notice on my PC those calendar links didn’t show up as nice as the do on my Mac.
But then again. Everything seems to look better and more clear on my Mac.
Thanks again for the input.
Posted on November 18, 2003 09:14 AM | #
10. Christian said:
Nice job Keith! Here’s my 2c:
* I usually look for rates in the navigation and you might well find that it warrants its own page.
* I would probably add a footer to the site with contact info, etc there.
* It might be cool/useful to display current weather or snow conditions, or maybe a five day forecast? This could be a useful tool for people who’ve booked and are about to come and stay and might also help to attract potential customers who are thinking about booking.
Posted on November 20, 2003 05:30 PM | #
11. Keith said:
Thanks Christian. I did think of those things and here is why they’re not in there.
Rates for most places I looked at were very hard to find and for the most part were pretty simple. So I wanted this to be part of the main content. Depending on what you had there I guess you could have a separate page as well, but for 4-5 lines I think this fits better on the home page and really doesn’t need to be repeated on it’s own page.
It would be repeated on the “Reservations” page.
I don’t think it warrants a footer, as it’s so simple, but in a real site I’m sure it would have one. It actually had one and I pulled it.
As far as the weather, that I’m going to have to strongly disagree with you. If I was looking for Whistler weather, which I wasn’t, I was looking for rental info, I’d look elsewhere.
I was trying to eliminate as much irrelevant information as possible. I noticed when searching for a place this kind of info was very prominent on many sites, sometimes easier to find than the important stuff like rates.
I wouldn’t be opposed to adding this to the “Whistler Activities” page (which I almost didn’t want to add either), maybe an “About Whistler” page instead with typical weather and such would be helpful and serve this purpose, but I’d definitely not put this on the homepage.
I was going for as much info and pointers “at a glance” (with a clean, inviting look) as possible. This kind of info is really not important to the site at all, so if on there it would have to be on a separate page.
Keep in mind this “mock” was born out of hours on frustration during which weather was something that was almost always just in my way of finding the information I needed. I’ll get my weather from a weather site or some such thanks.
This is something that bothers me about all kinds of sites. You can only have so many portals. I have enough information overload as it is and I’m probably way more comfortable with it than most Web users.
Posted on November 20, 2003 07:57 PM | #
12. Christian said:
Good points Keith. I understand that this page was designed around your own preferences to reflect your needs. As for your comment about the weather, I, personally, would find that quite useful and would be happy not to have to go to another site; as for other visitors to the site, well, who can say? I would say that a lot would depend on how well it is implemented.
Posted on November 21, 2003 07:11 AM | #
13. Keith said:
True, I’m sure some users would find it useful. But not as useful as the calendar, etc. I wouldn’t be opposed to having it, just not on the front page.
Then again, I’ve never user tested this kind of page, unless you count my own experiences.
Posted on November 21, 2003 09:14 AM | #
14. Shawn said:
Love the interface. I’d vote for keeping weather off the main page and only maybe tucking it on a “Whistler Activites” page. Better yet I’d make two sites, one that was just reservations, another that is just “What’s Up with Whistler” style page.
Having just booked flights and hotels for a London\Ireland trip I completely sympathize with you. My only suggestion would be to offer a way to figure out exactly where it is located. When I was booking for Ireland I wanted to easily see where the hotel was in relation to the places I wanted to go. I didn’t go with a few places because all I had was an address and since I’ve never been to Dublin that information was useless.
I want to see it on a map, in relation to other landmarks. How do I get there from the airport? Driving directions? How close is it to other amenities?
The is the only glaring hole, it isn’t obvious where I’d find such information from the nav or main page. Other than that I think it looks great.
Posted on May 28, 2004 08:50 AM | #
15. Aby Rao said:
Nice and Slick. Just couple of pointers. The Headers like Reservation could have been more prominent not just in font size but also in terms of style like an underline or something. Also Since the website requires scrolling would have been useful too.
Posted on January 19, 2005 01:24 PM | #
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