Villa rental website

[Datienshi]

Hi guys,

I'm in need of feedback.

Together with some partners I built a rental website. The market in this niche is very fragmented but the websites ranking for villas in Bali are providing a poor user experience.

Do you feel our website is on the right path to fix this? The address is: vilondo.com

What's missing or in need of improvement from your point of view?


Thanks

 

[CanonMan]

The first thing that slaps me are the rates. Based on what? Per day, per week, per hour?? Site wide I think you need to make that clear. It may appear in your TOS but it should, imho, also appear on each individual price mention.

That's my only real negative, the positives are huge:
The slider features to set price and number of bedrooms with the villa options changing to suit the settings is a cool feature.
The map feature is a massive potential. Thought of getting shops, clubs, bars and restaurants to sponsor/advertise their 'spot'on it?

Clean and easy to navigate.

Cheers,
mark.

 

[balibule]

Nice job

My input; the chatting is clever and is the first time I see it integrated the way you have done. Nicolas with picture asking me whether this was my first visit to Bali gives it a personal touch. However, I gave up after 10 minutes of waiting. Nicolas asks a casual question whether this is my first to Bali. I reply that I am looking for a villa this December.

If you want to add chatting, and you fire of first question, you need to reply when visitor reply with a question. If you don't bother replying, especially after initiating the conversation yourself, it is better not to add this gimmick.

Otherwise, after my brief visit, nice website comparing with others

 

[Datienshi]

Thanks!

Thanks a lot CanonMan and Balibule,

@balibule I'm sorry I didn't responded to your chat. I thought the feature was off while I was away for a moment. I just started using the chat today as it was previously my other partners taking charge of that. I can confirm its a real thing, with real people behind. If your trip is real, you can send me your villa preferences for December to nicolas (at) vilondo.com and i'll reply to you with our best options.


@CanonMan Thank for that comment, you're right about the rates: there's no mention of the duration on the home page and near the rates table. There's a subtle mention one on the search result and on the villa page, but it's very small.I'll make it easier to see. I'd love to make a human friendly TOS too. Law stuff is so counter intuitive.

We have a collection system to get virtually every point of interest in bali. It takes time, but I believe there's great value in there. Didn't thought about monetizing that part tho; it's a great idea


I appreciate your replies very much. I hope to make the site amazingly useful.

 

[CanonMan]

No worries.

For the advertisers I'd show them the villas you have online and they can add their little hotlinked advertisement. Would be a great interactive element for the site in general. No limit to the ways you could branch that off into additional revenue streams.

Cheers,
mark.

 

[hermit]

unwanted ads

For the advertisers I'd show them the villas you have online and they can add their little hotlinked advertisement. Would be a great interactive element for the site in general. No limit to the ways you could branch that off into additional revenue streams.

That might be so from a commercial point of view.Personally i log off if all kind of unwanted advertisements start flashing and are slowing down the site.

 

[hermit]

location,location,location

And after checking the site:
I do not think it is a good idea to list villas in Sukawati under Ubud and in Canggu under Seminyak.(just two examples)
Give adequate info about where things are.Most people renting a villa have no idea of the distances or actual place when seeing a map with a blue dot.
The description of the villas should be more factual and less pompous,and include specific whereabouts.

 

[CanonMan]

That might be so from a commercial point of view.Personally i log off if all kind of unwanted advertisements start flashing and are slowing down the site.

I hate nothing more than that exact scenario. Far be it for me to say how best to display this information, online directories can be as trashy as they can be elegant, it's all down to the developer. I would simply suggest on the page detailed for each villa a 'Local Restaurants' tab with link to the map and even an included menu could all be a part of the displayed info. Just an idea, one of many.

Cheers,
Mark.

 

[Datienshi]

@hermit yes, locations are a problem right now. When data-entry was made there was a lack of guidelines for the staff and we'll have to cleanup all our information to get more consistency. Most descriptions are mere copies from the owner website, so we want to make our own too.

We also thought about giving relative distance to the nearest beach, atm, restaurant and so forth. Your mention confirms me that we should put it up on the priorities list.


Love your feedback guys.

 

[jokko]

prices....

what crazy prices , site for fools

 

[Datienshi]

what crazy prices , site for fools

I agree it's not in everyone's budget.

However, there's a market for these villas and I assure you those who rent them are no fool.

Do you have suggestions to improve the site or some villas you'd recommend adding in there?

 

[balibule]

what crazy prices , site for fools

If you think those are expensive try booking a room at the Bulgari. They have a villa that goes at US$ 8,500 a night.

No fools staying at the Bulgari though.

 

[CanonMan]

Hint: With the popularity of SMART phones why not include the GPS coordinates of the Villas? That way when people are here and on a day when they may not have a driver they can easily get back from a day trip or walk.

Cheers,
Mark.

 

[Markit]

Hi and good luck with the new site. First impressions are generally good but have to say nothing jumped out at me to seperate you from the 1000s of other similar sites and your apostrophes are getting eaten too - It’s and you’re

Nice looking site with great colors, not cluttered and not much information.

Question if I can't find out directly if the villa of my choice is available for the dates I want why should I wait for the owner to reply in a couple of days? Most such sites have an occupancy calendar (whether the punters use them or not...).

Why do you restrict yourselves to just the 4 usual suspects? Kunta, Semenyuk, Snore and UButt?

And as has been said the price or better "who pays, where" should be up front.

Pretty cool - out of 10 I give it a 7+

 

[Datienshi]

@CanonMan yes, we would like to make the map available on phones. We already have an app for ordering juices, taxis, massages and other services, but for the map we are limited by Bing as it doesn't work offline yet.

@Markit Thanks, we'll need plenty. It's a though game out there. I totally agree we'll need to be much more different if we want to have an edge.

Thanks for mentioning the apostrophes encoding mess, I couldn't see them on a mac. I will fix it.

The availability question is excellent. It's a pain in the industry unless you find a villa with an up-to-date calendar. And I'd rather do an instant booking than having to wait for someone confirming or giving bad news. So there's definitively an opportunity here. The difficult part is building a system where you can get the owner to participate actively even if we are a fresh newcomer.

We support any location in bali, but do not promote them yet. They are accesible from the map, but we want to fix our quality issues first before promoting them (ie: we have villas categorized in Kuta that are in Canggu!)



...Plenty of work to do. Thanks for the support.

 

[gilbert de jong]

20% commision...:highly_amused:

 

[Datienshi]

@Markit
I had a look on Internet Explorer and firefox on a window computer, but couldn't find theses apostrophes issue. Can you tell me where I should look for?

@Gil yes, we are transparent about that.

 

[Markit]

firefox somewhere... Seek and ye shall find Wouldnt it be easier to add all the places now rather than pull it apart later?

 

[gilbert de jong]

yeah transparent and expensive :icon_wink:

 

[BKT]

What I don't understand is there are hundreds of villa websites out there offering the same Villas at the same rates, you guys are given a %20 discount on these places, surely you'd attract more customers by giving them a cheaper price.