Re: Critique Real Estate Site..

At 08:02 AM 11/2/98 -0800, Catherine Nielsen wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I'm in the final stages of developing a real estate site and would like
>some feedback - the site http://www.barbaracouch.com/test1 is pretty
>much finished there are still a few changes required to the content but
>all the links are working.
>
>I'm interested in feedback from people with different platforms and
>browsers, load time, layout, etc...Any comments good or bad would be
>appreciated...
>
>Thanks in advance for your feedback...
>
>Catherine
>
>

This is a subjective review. Opinions are my own and not necessarily
representative of the entire race!

MY DETAILS:
Platform - WinNT
Browser - Netscape 4.05
Connection - 10Mb

SPEED:
Reasonable, perhaps could be speeded up a little. Java slows it down a bit
Subsequent pages took quite a while to download

ASTHETICS & USABILITY:
- Not sure if I like the top bit. I think you need something a little more
striking and elegant. This just doesn't work for me
- Please don't take offence, but I really am not interested in "discovering
barbara" I'd move that to a link under the welcome section instead of
giving it so much prominence
- Likewise, McCarten House is of interest, but I felt it was in the wrong
spot. I thought it was for sale. On reading the page, I don't understand -
is this the office? 
- The Country Living area is a great idea. I like the idea of telling
people about the towns.
- The listing area is good - well laid out. I would think about putting the
general listing details in there instead of just the address and prices and
spread it out so that there are 5-10 to a page. This would remove some
extraneous javascript and be helpful if people are specifically looking for
X bedrooms etc It seems to me that most people would not bother with the
general info button but would move straight on to the detailed info
- The link "New Homes" was confusing after "Listings" I thought 'didn't I
already look there?' I would suggest cahnging it to Custom HOmes, or
Building or something along those lines
- Wish List seems a bit airy, I would perhaps change it's title to
something along the lines of register 

I felt that there was no clear line between learning about the company and
getting to the services that are offered. Do you do rentals and property
management? Perhaps you could have a definate area that talks about how
wonderful you are and another area that just gets down to business. For
someone who is familiar with the company, there is an awful lot of
introductory stuff to wade through before you get to the goodies. I would
honestly consider a link to "Who we are" or "About us" where you talk about
how great you do in each area and where you have links to the house etc etc 

The term "listings" is very utilitarian (which I like, I know what to
expect here) and yet the other links have names that can be confusing.

Overall look and feel - there is some good corporate branding here and
colours and look are consistent throughout, although I always have a
problem with a face as a logo (that's just me) if you're going for the
personal approach that's fine but if you're going for the "we mean
business" approach, that is frivolous. Personally, I like strong branding -
maybe that's my Sagitarian nature....

Gee, I hope you don't take offence to any of this... feel free to write
privately if you do

Regards

Kersti

HTML: hwg-critique mailing list archives, maintained by Webmaster @ IWA