East Site top ten website mistakes

Disclaimer: Dear owners of the website i hope you will find this info very useful. It is really meant to have some good laugh and help you fix things you did not notice for whatever reason. You are doing great job and i do not want to put you down for it.

1) http://www.east-site.com/kazakhstan_cent_tour Good laugh one - Day 18 - Tashkent departure next to it is a picture of camels caravan presumebly should show how tourists travel to airport in Tashkent.

2) http://www.east-site.com/kazakhstan_cent_tour Next to Day 8 - Tashkent - Samarkand there is a picture of Tash-Rabat, very good place not far from Kyrgyz-Chinese border - which is definetly not Tashkent or Samarkand and it's not even in the program there.

3) http://www.east-site.com/central-asia-kyrgyzstan-issyk-kul - this picture is not of Issyk-Kul, this is Sary-Chelek lake.

4) Again this is not Issyk-Kul lake - this is Son-Kul lake http://www.east-site.com/images/kyrgyzstan/small/kyrgyzstan_issyk_kul_lake2.jpg

5) On menu - Centra Asia Travel, which i think should be CentraL Asia Travel - In case you did mean centra here is some definition for it http://www.answers.com/centra and also http://www.answers.com/topic/centrum

6) Pictures of Central Asia link sends you to pictures of Samarkand only. http://www.east-site.com/central-asia-travel-guide

7) Good laugh one Picture of kyrgyz girl http://www.east-site.com/images/kyrgyzstan/small/kyrgyzstan_girl.jpg has a nice background of a kyrgyz guy

8) I think this is a really good picture of kyrgyz women http://www.east-site.com/images/kyrgyzstan/kyrgyzstan_people.jpg yet this is not quite the picture of PEOPLE of kyrgyzstan.

9) http://www.east-site.com/kazakhstan_cent_tour - one not full day in Tajikistan, it's like visit some piece of this country and run away asap.

10) Hm, by the way i think all posts in the forum of the site were made by company staff just quoting feedbacks of clients. I do not doubt the authenticity of clients' feedback yet the way they appear on site is a bit misleading.

Central Asia Travel http://www.east-site.com/

So, first of all i work on screen with 1024x768 pixels resolution and you can notice if you enlarge image on the left that this site is too big for my screen.
Secondly, this company appears to be working from US. See their contact us page.
Thirldy, i like when company talks to its clients or at least offers them some place to express themselves. This is what East Site did. (by the way this is a bit strange name for company that works only on post USSR central asia countries - i mean East is kinda bigger) They have very well integrated phpbb forum software to create such place. There is a problem here though. Forum was created on 18 Feb 2007 and since that moment there are 9 registered users. One gets the impression that company's site is dead and no one visits them. This is always a dilemma with forums - you want to create it for people to hang out and yet it appears that they do not want to.
Fourthly, it appears that East Site is a specialist in Uzbekistan as shows their tours page review. They have 10 tours for uzbekistan and maximum 3 tours for one other country in CA.
Fifthly, they offer hotel list only for three countries - Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. I am sure they offer services of hotel booking for other countries but for whatever reason they are not online.
Sixthly, their US passport service is a great thing. It also points out to specialization of site on US clients.
Company is really a US-Uzbekistan specialist even though it claims Central Asia presence.
My grade - 4 out of 5

Key websites for central asia tours

Here is the list of the first 10 results for "central asia tours"

www.east-site.com
www.silkroadandbeyond.co.uk/central-asia.html
www.advantour.com
www.bestway.com/central_asia.html
www.roxanatour.com
www.regent-holidays.co.uk/centralasiaitin.htm
www.asia-travel.uz
www.silktour.uz
www.worldexpeditions.com

here are 3 more to this list - central asia tour
www.fantasticasia.net/
www.orexca.com/
www.stantours.com/

Keywords for Central Asia travel agencies

So as usually i start with google :) to find travel agencies that work in central asia. I probably will stay with google but might switch to yandex or mail.ru at some point. Here are the keywords

central asia tour/s
kyrgyzstan tour/s
uzbekistan tour/s
kazakhstan tour/s
silk road tour/s

I have to say that as i work as a tour guide i know some of the companies mentioned in my blog. But i will do my best not to be bias.

First post

So, let's get started. This blog is about websites of travel agencies that work in central asia. I will review their websites and services. If you have any experience working with them feel free to post.