Foreign Perspectives

One thing that constantly surprises me with the adverts that we get for the listings sites is how poor some of them are.

Whilst most people will write two or three paragraphs to describe their place and some even run to quite extensive descriptions of both their property and the local attractions, others put as little as one sentence on and don’t bother with a photo either.

Now, it’s possible to get some hits with a one sentence description but realistically the number of hits you’ll get with one sentence is tiny as it just isn’t enough for the search engines to work with. And the search engines do matter because even with listings sites, the majority of hits are generally on the pages generated for individual properties rather than the home page of the listings site. Therefore if your entry is very short then you’re going to get a good deal less business than if your entry is above average in length.

Photos are a different matter. They’re usually not important in bringing people to your place although there’s been a recent trend towards people using image search to find properties so they are more important than they were. However, many people book directly from the advert so it’s a good idea to load as many good photos as you can with any adverts that you place. Make sure that the photo used on your summary page is eye-catching too or your place will get skipped.

In fact, rather than spending time to get the “perfect wording” for your ad, it’s much better to spend the time in making it longer.

Popularity: 2% [?]

We’ve been looking around for a new template for this blog but haven’t really seen anything that really catches our eye and is broadly in tune with the themes that we talk about here.

However, there’s loads of people out there who run up custom templates and we’re toying with the idea of getting one done for the site. Well, depending on the charge for it that is as I can certainly live with the free ones if the charge is over the top and if really pushed could run up one ourselves I suppose.

I think we’ll have a look round some more but that custom template is getting to be quite tempting.

Popularity: 2% [?]

If you’re thinking of a visit to the Uffizi in Florence then you’ll find it worthwhile to have a look at the virtual Uffizi before you go.

The Uffizi is, like most major European museums, just too large to take in with a single trip and this site will help you to concentrate your visit on the works which most interest you rather than ending up trying to run around all over the museum and ending up taking nothing in properly (a trap that’s surprisingly easy to fall into).

Although the site contains photos of most of the works in the museum, you’ll still want to see the originals which are very, very different than looking at a photograph of them, no matter how well it might have been taken. If you’re aiming to see specific paintings, do bear in mind that the museum change the exhibitions from time to time so you’re not necessarily guaranteed to see all of the works that are shown on the site (although, obviously really major works are permanently on display).

To help you in planning your visit the site follows the plan of the galleries themselves but, of course, with a number of search options that you can use. In addition to that you can buy museum tickets and there’s information on a range of tours that you can take of Florence.

This is one of the most complete museum sites that I’ve come across with an almost comprehensive set of photos of the works and lots of information about each one.

Popularity: 4% [?]