PDA

View Full Version : I need some feed back on layout, colors and function of the main page



nealrm
04-09-2012, 07:27 PM
Please review the front page and let me know what you think about the colors, layout and function. Both positive and negative feedback is welcome.

KristineS
04-10-2012, 11:55 AM
I've never been a huge fan of the red color for the buttons and the header. I'd like to see a title at the top, or, ideally, a logo. I like the photos and the just added section. Those are nice. I'm not wild about the links at the bottom advertising real estate for the various locations. It looks like you just put them there mostly for keyword placement. You can search listings for a specific area, so those links on the bottom don't seem necessary to me. I also have to ask, in the top bar, what is that little house with the word over it supposed to say? I can't make it out, and I have a pretty big monitor. Upon looking at it more closely, I see it's a logo, but it's really hard to read the name. You might want to consider making a change there.

Also, since you didn't specify what front page you wanted reviewed, I just went to the link in your signature. If that wasn't what you wanted, let me know.

cbscreative
04-10-2012, 12:06 PM
Normally, so much bright red would be inadvisable, but for a RE site you can get away with that so the colors are okay (I'd tone it down some though). I don't care for the paid ads at all. The continuous movement is very distracting and the placement and layout are a bad choice. What would be better is one banner on top (and/or the right side) that displays only one ad but cycles through ads. What I mean is each time a new page is loaded a different ad is displayed, but only one ad. You can also have it where two different visitors would see different ads on the same page (randomized).

Due to the layout, I pretty much ignored the right side which is an important feature. Had I not been looking for the purpose of a review, I most likely would not have noticed it at all before leaving. If you research "banner blindness" you'll find out why this is a problem.

I was wondering if the weird layout was just a problem with my Opera browser so I checked in in IE and it looks about the same. One issue I found by checking with IE is that you don't have a border="0" in the image tag for your logo. I didn't look at your code to determine this, but because IE displays a border, I didn't have to see your code to know the cause.

FYI: IE also choked on your RightSideBar.js file too. You may want to troubleshoot that since so many people still use IE.

Sorry to point out so many problems and sound so negative, but since I do this for a living, I'm just sharing from what I know.

lucas.bowser
04-10-2012, 12:54 PM
I would say get rid of the two boxes that flip between ads and realtor cards. I found the motion distracting.

When you get a list of properties, the buttons for viewing the information and emailing are old-style windows buttons, which look nothing like the sleek rounded color buttons on the rest of your site.

The 3/4 in 3/4 bath is tiny on my screen compared to the rest of the text (most recent version of Chrome).

I would round the corners in the popup for the email form to fit with the rounded corners on the rest of the site. I also prefer the striped diagonal background effect on those jquery popups. It gives a little more contrast. I also think that i would change the border to the red that you have featured on your site to offer a little more contrast with the grayed out background.

I like to control how things pop up in my browser. I prefer default functionality of loading within same window when I click on something with the option to throw it into a separate tab or browser instance. Can't do this with your buttons. Consider links instead.

One thing to consider, and this may be a by-product on my part of having lived in larger urban areas, but I really dislike the lack of MLS information on the site. I'm used to getting information about number of rooms, sizes, school districts, taxes, etc... I wouldn't want to deal with a real estate site that doesn't give me that functionality. That was really important to me when I was buying, selling and renting investment properties. Here's the link to the broker I used in Indianapolis: F.C. Tucker Company, Inc. (http://www.talktotucker.com). If you do a real estate search on their site, you can get a feel for what I was used to.

nealrm
04-10-2012, 12:55 PM
Should never type to post and watch the kids.

The URL to review is HouseViewOnline, Real estate for Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Sikeston, Festus and St. Louis (http://www.gohvol.com). (www . gohvol . com)

lucas.bowser
04-10-2012, 01:01 PM
OK. I like the front page much better without the ad boxes.

You have the default button functionality I like, but I would still like the option to open in new browser session or tab.

I think my other commentary still stands.

KristineS
04-11-2012, 01:25 PM
The red color is more toned down, which I think is a better color choice. The Houseview logo is bigger. Still don't like the color choice or font choice on Houseview as I think it is hard to read, but a bigger logo at least makes the word more evident. I still would do something else with the name of the site. Also, in Firefox 11.0, which is what I'm using, the quotation from Gertrude Stein is underneath the name of the site. I think your spacing is off somewhere. You also, in my version of Firefox, have a lot of space between the bottom of your text and the bar with the advertisers under it. That needs to be tightened up.

I'm not sure I like this version better, it seems kind of bland. I guess I'm also habituated to the standard real estate search bar set - up and it seems odd that it's missing. That might just be me though.

Watchdog
04-28-2012, 06:11 PM
Sorry if this has been mentioned, but it is not formatted for firefox.

billbenson
04-28-2012, 07:37 PM
Ya, I just looked on FF 10.0.2 on Linux and the layout fails. Looks good on Chrome.

krymson
04-30-2012, 05:09 AM
yeah the site in FF is trash. When viewed in Chrome i still see problems...

"We need your feedback to improve the site. Tell us how, Click Here" is hiding under "Real Estate Advertisements and Sponsors" so you can only see the to... the design has a metric ton of flaws and I'm sure it's not your fault maybe the type of software program that you are using. It is optimized for IE 9 as stated in the <head> section with this <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9">. But if this is all custom script i would advise you not to code for one particular browser...