Please review our real estate site

[homes]

Hi Everyone,

This is still a work in progress but I would appreciate some comments on our recent project.

www.homes247.com.au

Thanks again

[FS Concierge]

Hi Homes,

To help potential reviewers do the best job they can for you, could I please ask you to provide the answers to these questions for us?

1. What needs reviewing? (i.e. logo, website, idea etc…)
2. What does your business do?
3. Who is your target market?
4. What specific concerns do you have?

Thanks very much,
Jayne

[MatthewKeath]

G'day Holmes,

First impressions, not too bad.

Two points I noticed:

One: The 'Potential Property Hotspots' banner in the middle of the page means nothing to me. I am from Victoria, and are not really interested in Canberra Real estate or I would search for it. It's taking up valuable real estate on your page, if you would pardon the pun

Second: The large banner about not wasting paper is not a great look because you can't click on it for more information, or it's not from any sort of accredited association that gives it creditability. Cynically trying to tap into the green market can backfire.

Ditto- the calculator and the middle link section with the property investor logo. Can't see a reason for that. Calculator could be used one the individual property pages where people may actually want to use such a tool. (ie to see if they can afford a house.

I would focus much more on the search function. Really that is all people will care about. Puff the page out with a few real estate articles.

Good luck mate,

Matt

[homes]

Hi Jayne,

We are a real estate agency portal, advertising property from various estate agencies. The project is a work in progress and we'd appreciate some general comments on usability, speed in loading pages and layout.

Regards

Homes

[homes]

Hi Matthew

I think some of your comments are valid and I'll look at tidying up a few items, thanks.

We're working on importing a lot more content, so you will see an increase in properties from other States over the next few days.

Regards

Homes

[FS Concierge]

Thanks for the info Homes. That will help you get the best feedback

Good luck with your review,
Jayne

[JohnW]

Originally Posted by homes

Hi Jayne,

We are a real estate agency portal, advertising property from various estate agencies. The project is a work in progress and we'd appreciate some general comments on usability, speed in loading pages and layout.

Regards

Homes

Hi Homes,
Your site is in one of the most competitive search markets. Perhaps your post is hiding some important facts from us.

First question, how are people going to find your portal?

From the quick look I had, you will not get many search engine referrals. Is your plan to buy sponsored links?

You say you are importing content. Does that mean there will be other websites carying identical descriptions of the same properties? If so, this will hurt you in attracting visitors to your site from the search engines.

If you want to rank #1 for the phrase "real estate Sydney" in the organic search results, I can get you there. One small problem, you will need a six figure budget per year to enable me to achieve it as I will need to employ a large team of people to implement this objective.

Before you request feed back on usabilty, speed and layout issues, you need to consider how you will attract visitors to your site. If you don't attract visitors, no one will see your graphics.

As things stand, your portal looks like it could have major financial problems looming.

Regs,

JohnW

[leisadent]

Hi Holmes, I'm a graphic designer so the first thing I notices as that the logo is too low resolution for the size, or improperly optimized for web - ask your logo designer to give you a new file created by opening the ai file in photoshop rather than "save for web" in illustrator.