OPINION WANTED! If you were looking for a house online...

[nkuvu]

Originally posted by Jadey
Wow! Homes are cheap in the U.S./that part of the U.S.? Anyway, I have 2 big recommendations:

1. Floor plans
2. Interior photos

Uh, most of the listings did have interior photos, at least the ones that I saw...

[BlingBling 3k12]

floor plans would be difficult to get (except on some newer houses) and about the interior photos, it's up to the realtor to take them...

[Jadey]

None of the ones I looked at had interior photos. Judging from Bling's response, I'd have to say that I'm correct that some do not. If that is up to the realtor, I would recommend to him to add both of these things.

[nkuvu]

Just luck on my part, I guess. Each house I clicked on had interior pictures (I went to about four or five listings).

[edX]

wow, is this bringing back memories. When we moved to CA from Ohio 4 and a half yrs ago, we spent considerable time 'shopping' online. We even tried to line up a realtor. the whole thing was a huge waste of time and very dissapointing. We ended up in a completely different area than the one we were looking at. I could say more but let me tell you how your site compares to others i have looked at some reasons i would be unlikely to choose one of your realtors. the only thing that might interest me might be one of the houses, but the ones i looked at were neither appealing nor well described.

1st - a list of names on the intial 'Our Realtors' page. This was always the first clue that it was an impersonal office. Whether people like it or not, we make judgements based on 1st impresions of how people look. I don;'t want to click thru 30 names to see the people. the first page should have pics and names with links to individual pages. In fact the whole site is too much text and not enough pics. I want to see houses from page one. Most realtors have anywhere from 1 to 10 'featured homes' on their opening page. (ok, i figured out you have such a thing but i can't see it. bad form BB. Believe me good static pics of nice houses are going to count for more than that little area you have devoted to it now. Your home page really looks more like a second page or stand alone page. It is not inspiring to go inside.)

but on the other hand, there is not enough description of any of the homes i looked at. the abbrevitions aren't even newspaper standard and require reading your codes to understand. Too much work for too little infol.

2nd - about 'the agency' - is there any aspect of real estate they don't specialize in? really , either narrow the field to what they really specialize in or list them as 'available services' or some such. nobody "specializes" in every aspect of their business. That would be another clue to me to avoid this realtor - full of BS.

3rd - feedback - poor choice of words. should be 'contact us' or something more general. feedback is a response. it sounds like you are asking for critique of the site.

4th - on the relocation page - do you really have house with more than one garage? it is how many cars a garage will hold that people are concerned with. reword this info somehow.

on the whole i am left with a very impersonal feel from the site. and John Goodman would scare small children with the poor quality of his pic. BB, i know you are a friendly guy. think friendly and not techie as you work on this site.

good maps of all the areas would be a big help though.

and i had to wonder, is there an OU extension in St. Clairsville? I didn't realize OU had anything but their main campus in Athens.

hope i don't sound too critical. i wouldn't even bother if i didn't like you as i consider realtors to be about a half spot above bill collecters and would never do anything to help them. I am only helping you Casey.

[BlingBling 3k12]

you called me casey!

lol... thanks ed for the incredible advice...

and yes, we have an OU extension... Ohio University Eastern (which is about 1 mile from where I am typing right now)

featured homes: not my idea... theirs... i do what they tell me to do and that's what they wanted and where they wanted it.

realtor page: getting revamped! i was already planning on doing this, but now since i have a 2nd person that agrees with me, i will definitely do it!

not enough description: up to the realtors... if I wrote them, they would be longer and more in-depth... i would also have lots of interior photos

about the agency: also getting revamped, but not quite sure what to do with it... i just copied what they had on their old site, added some design to it, and haven't touched it since January 2001!

feedback: i know, i know... but it was set up when I got here... all i did was change the design...

maps: when i get everything changed over, we'll include maps with the houses (thanks to mapquest... not that new Maps .net(No!!!! .net is taking over maps!) thing from microsoft

and ed, i thank you very much once more for giving me such great feedback!

p.s. how much was your house?! looking at prices around your area, my parents would have fainted!

[BlingBling 3k12]

ED!

what do you think of the new Our Realtors page?

http://www.goodmanrealtor.com/realtors.htm

[edX]

wow, it looks great! BIG improvement !!

couple of little things - Diane Onorato has a pic on her page and not on the main page. David Major's photo doesn't load on his page for some reason. I just get a little marker. I didn't go thru and check them all but you should.

one little pet peeve - opening a new window for each realtor's page. I went to switch over to reply and still keep the page for reference and discovered i had about 8 windows of 'Our Realtors'. I think this goes to the navigation things that other people were talking about earlier. keep the site in one window and either provide navigation links on every page or be consistent about the back button and give directions to use it.

But yes, the redone page is much friendlier and inviting. and perhaps it would motivate those who don't have pics and or bios to get them.

And about the way they do features - it is your job to convince them it could be done better. i suggest you look at some other sites and show them how much nicer it could look. You might also point out to them that the formats they are using are not universally compatible with all browsers and it is better to accomadate to the differences than expect others to do what they dictate. Being exclusive to m$ would have kept me from using them. I can tell you that plenty of realtors treated us like second class in one way or the other but the realtor who believed in us got a nice commission as you might guess from the prices in our area. Keeping in mind that mac users are willing to pay more as a rule, we make good consumers. Remember, most realtors are basically educated idiots whose only real skills are talking to people. (notice i said most, not all. I know there are some good realtors. most every office has at least one)

sorry, i don't really want to discuss what we paid for our house. i will say it was less than what it would sell for today. and yes, prices in our area are outrageous. but saleries are pretty dam good so it all evens out. And Casey, where we live is one of the less expensive areas on the peninsula. Because the coast here is so foggy, it is not "the place to be" like in southern cal.