Sparkle Site for Holiday Cottages - still learning!

Made by a complete amateur and tech numpty so your reactions would be greatly appreciated.

https://www.domainelavie.com

This is an updated version of our original website, that was made with Sparkle 1, to comply with GDPR etc. It’s very clunky, with too many separate pages needing action to access rather than simply scrolling, so phase 2 of the upgrade is a redesign for a more modern and mobile friendly feel. This one a desktop version,

I also want to add a booking engine (I’m favouring freetobook) and the ability to take credit card payments (via Stripe) - is there any reason why this wouldn’t be possible? Freetobook would provide a calendar for all four properties to replace the current individual ones.

My intention is to duplicate the website as it stands and redesign the new copy so that I can test it while still having a fully functional website.

With regards to the privacy banner, this works when I open the site in Chrome but it doesn’t appear in Safari - any suggestions?

Many thanks for your time.

@JulesD, Welcome onboard! That is strange about the privacy banner not appearing in Safari. Maybe trying clearing Safari’s cache and see if that helps.

Two suggestions I can give you for your site is just work a bit more with your main navigation - overall it seems too tight. Maybe a bit more height allowing for a slightly larger font and use the “line-height” to vertically centre the text in its container.

With all your images you can give them all “titles” so when a user mouses over them they get to read what the image is suppose to be about.

Hi @JulesD,

I am not familiar with freetobook, looks legitimate. It’s unclear how integration would work in Sparkle, beyond a “Book now” button. I had looked at http://houfy.com and it would allow for an embeddable calendar and reservation form.

Stripe is going to require coding for embedding, so I guess it depends on what you need to sell.

The cookie banner works in all browsers, it just doesn’t show again for a year (via a cookie). You can clear the Safari cache for your site only, or open a private mode window, and it will show up again.

@FlaminFig and @duncan, Thank you both for your input. I can see the privacy banner working in Safari now I’ve cleared the cache (rookie mistake!). I have also implemented your suggestions regarding the menu bar and giving the images Titles and I’m pleased with the results. Further investigation shows that I can get Stripe with Freetobook so there would be no need embed this separately, which would give me a calendar, reservation form and payment, but as I will be listing on Houfy soon, that could also be an option. Many thanks again!

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