David Fiske A subtle blend of affiliate marketing and web development

This is my last post about my Orlando Florida holiday and it's purpose is to show the transformation between information site and holiday snaps site!

Here's the old site:
 


Here's the new one:



The Changes

The first noticeable change is the header. A picture of SeaWorld's killer whale "Shamu" has been replaced with a photo of the same whale in a different pose. The blues are deeper and more intense giving an air of sophistication somewhat.

A few Polaroid style photos now overlay the left hand side of the header image to fill up a blank space. They are of the 3 main parks we visited.

The menu has also changed. I ditched the 468x60 Sunshine banners at the top and bottom of the page and converted the vertical search tool into a horizontal tool. It's located right next to the text so it should catch most people's eyes, especially given the contrasting colour.

The menu has been split into two as well. I didn't want to lose the content I had written (that we didn't do on holiday) nor did I want duplicate content about the parks we did visit. I edited the pages for the parks we did visit (adding fresh content and pictures).

I got rid of the "tickets" adverts opting to promote only the companies we used for our trip - Sunshine, Virgin Atlantic, Resorthoppa, 365 Tickets, and Amazon for our Orlando guide book. 365 Tickets are therefore linked to via in-text hyperlinks on relevant pages.

The weather widget has been moved to the bottom of the page to make more space available for the menu, whilst the current time in Orlando now sits beneath the header text.

What Next?

Video is on my to-do list. I made a holiday DVD yesterday so it's just a case of editing clips and posting them on YouTube.

Then it's a case of working on building decent inbound links, building the relevant traffic and monetising said traffic.

UPDATE: First Video!