Found a great site today. While it may not be the cheapest, it is sure to be a trip to remember. The Bora Bora Lagoon Resort and Spa is part of the Orient Express franchise and radiates luxury and sophistication.

At first glance their web site seems to match their level of sophistication, but spending more than a passing glance on the site you start to notice some deficiencies. Two of the most important items to have easily available is the booking form on the primary and secondary screens and to have the photo gallery as readily accessible. Overall from my T1 connection here in the U.S. the site seems a bit slow to access their booking engine one click away. Also they have the obligatory flash photo stream on the front page that goes no where when you click it. What an opportunity is missed to send people to a nice photo gallery.

They show 56 html errors on the first page with a valid css style sheet. Diving into their source code reveals many opportunities to clean up their code and speed up their overall design. In their code you’ll find:

• deprecated tags
• Bloated internal JavaScript
• in-line styles
• deprecated attributes
• table-based layout
• overall poorly laid out source code

All this shows why their YSlow score is an F (56). I would expect a bit more from such a reputable company as the Orient Express. It also fails the section 508 usability tests for patrons with disabilities.

Overall I would give the site a C and possibly a B just because of an impeccable product and brand. However I would love to give this site a makeover to increase the speed, accessibility and usability.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Accessibility, CSS, Design, HTML, Hotels, Reviews, Standards, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.