Real Estate Website

[homes]

Hi All,

We're currently in the process of developing a realestate/property investors website and we're seeking some feedback and ideas of what the people want. Your input would be invaluable and much appreciated. We should have a live Beta version running of homes247.com.au early March 2010. I myself, are a property investor and I find the current major real estate websites are packed with too many ads, are over-priced when listing and not that user friendly.

We're quiet aware it will be a tough market to break into, but we're up for the pepsi challenge. We have a comprehensive business and marketing plan, a skilled development team and interested investors ready to commit. If you frequent these real estate websites, we'd like to get your feedback on what information you'd like to see, or not see, when your looking up real estate online.

Thanking you in anticipation

Mick

[vxd]

Looks professional. It's pretty much identical to the other real estate websites like domain.com.au and realestate.com.au but I guess that's format that works. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Is there a reason why the footer is so big? It would look better a third of the current size.

From a branding point of view, it needs a definitive colour palette as it's a bit of a fruit salad now. I'd also cut back on the use of gradients. Too many and it starts to look 'soft'.

[homes]

Thanks for the comments. I agree with both of you and hope to fix these issues before the launch. Sorry I should have made my post a little clearer... At this stage I'm more interested in feedback regarding the functionality of a website of this type, i.e. we're planning to have a free property analysis form for every property listed on the site; this will be unique to us. Or maybe a user would like to see property historial data as a potential buyer, or what you think would be a reasonable price to list a property as a private seller and/or an agent (bulk sales). Domain charge nearly $500 for a 28 day listing as a private seller, and I understand realestate.com.au charge about $400 per month to agencies and will not allow listing from private sellers. What do you expect to see as important functions. If you have a new idea, I'd love to hear it.

[JohnSheppard]

Looks pretty good to me...

In my opinion domain.com.au and realestate.com.au are both crap websites in terms of usability. (Domain being the better of the two)

Problem is, I'm sure realestate.com.au already know their search is tedious and cumbersome...wouldn't suprise me if it was that way to get extra ad impressions...

They will fix it as soon as they start losing market share though...the value of that domain alone would pay for 20 different cutting edge websites built over.

Hope you got a lot of capital behind you

[JohnSheppard]

Sorry...perhaps my previous post wasn't helpful...(ie wasn't the feedback you were after)

What I mean to say is that as a person who occasionally, once a month or so browses the property market, I find the search on both those sites tedious.

For one, realestate.com.au doesn't sort by price by default, and for extended search options to change it you have to click and go through an extra page

I do however use realestate.com.au as it has the most properties, despite domain being a better website.

I'd imagine that will still be the case no matter how good competing websites are...until the property count exceeds realestate.com.au I won't move over....

[virtualnev]

Originally Posted by getfiles

Hi All,

We're currently in the process of developing a realestate/property investors website and we're seeking some feedback and ideas of what the people want. Your input would be invaluable and much appreciated. We should have a live Beta version running of homes247.com.au early March 2010. I myself, are a property investor and I find the current major real estate websites are packed with too many ads, are over-priced when listing and not that user friendly.

We're quiet aware it will be a tough market to break into, but we're up for the pepsi challenge. We have a comprehensive business and marketing plan, a skilled development team and interested investors ready to commit. If you frequent these real estate websites, we'd like to get your feedback on what information you'd like to see, or not see, when your looking up real estate online.

Thanking you in anticipation

Mick

A few suggestions:

1) Perhaps in the search section at the top also have an easy section where you can specify the price at the same time as the search via postcode.

2) A feature I would like to see for investors is a section where you can buy suburb reports at the same time as searching for properties.

These are just a couple of things. Overall I like the concept, all the best with your new business, you are going up against a couple of giants, but I guess that is half the fun!

Kind regards,
Nevenka
www.servcorp.com.au

[homes]

Thank you John and nevenkas5, great feedback... it's remains consistant with our current market and design research. nevenkas5, you have touched on an area that will be one of the main features of the website. We have put a lot of time, effort and research into our demographic data. We intend taking things one step further from the suburb profile by providing the viewer/user with a wider range of free property data at the touch of a button, this feature is not seen on any other website. It's all very exciting and I hope this will give us the edge over our competitors. Any other comments are most welcome.

[virtualnev]

Originally Posted by getfiles

Thank you John and nevenkas5, great feedback... it's remains consistant with our current market and design research. nevenkas5, you have touched on an area that will be one of the main features of the website. We have put a lot of time, effort and research into our demographic data. We intend taking things one step further from the suburb profile by providing the viewer/user with a wider range of free property data at the touch of a button, this feature is not seen on any other website. It's all very exciting and I hope this will give us the edge over our competitors. Any other comments are most welcome.

Wow that's great, if this is what your offering is, I will definitely use your site when it is up and running (we are looking for another investment property now and this would definitely be helpful!).

Nevenka

[Heidi Price]

Hmmm.....

1) Three different search areas, yet when I scroll to the bottom of the page NONE can be seen

2) I'm running a screen res of 1024x786 and I have to scroll sideways in Chrome - WTF? That's a big mental cue for me to bounce immediately

3) Too many 'landing spots' for the eye - another bounce cue

4) Woah, since when has the ACT been round? Yep it's a pain to do the map (yes I HAVE and done it well ) but that one gave me a good chuckle, and will stick in my brain

and MOST IMPORTANTLY

5) I go "ho hum another real estate site" Sorry but I'm just not seeing anything that makes me want to swap from using realestate.com.au even though their site is a pain to use.

Which leads me to the question: What can you do differently to the established sites, and how are you going to tell me that when I first land on your site?


Heidi