Hello everyone. I'm excited about joining this forum and learning from other real estate webmasters and agents across the country who are tech-savvy.

Along those lines, I've just spent a little over $20,000 on a new website that has custom-IDX and some other cool features. As I spent more than 6 months in development, I am totally biased at this point and can't tell what needs improvement or could be added to make the website a better experience for the user.

If you have a free moment and could offer your two cents, I'd really appreciate it! The website is http://www.ocrealestateadvisors.com . Also, if you have a cool website I should check out, please send me a PM with the URL.

Many thanks!

Easy to ready, easy find your way around, clean with a white background and plenty of white space for easier reading.

Question: who is Cinch2Sell?

They are mentioned in your client testimonials, doesn't match the company name, so may be confusing to people as to who the real estate company is.

Question: if Costa Mesa is next door to Newport, how come your company doesn't cover Costa Mesa?

In my opinion, if you are going to name your company after a region or county, then the whole area should be included because it implies that you do cover it. It looks more like you are covering the southern part of OC. If this is true, I believe it should be clarified clearly on your landing page, otherwise links to the other city's in the area should be included.

Other than that I like the layout and colors.

Very nice website.
It is user friendly and easy to navigate through the iavailable information.

Good luck

Where the heck were people like you when I was designing websites? My former clients were shocked when I wanted $800 - $1000 for designing their websites.

$20,000? Holy guacamole...

It looks like a fantastic site.

I will say this, if they charged you big bucks for that custom header, I think you got ripped off. Those houses are nothing more than an enlarged font character (can't remember if it's a Wingdings font or a Webdings font, but I have about 5 different sets of Wingdings and Webdings fonts and that set of houses is one of them...I've used it myself in graphics.)

At that price they should have created a custom graphic from scratch. Just my opinion....

It looks like you have quite a nice site there. I would have to agree with Perky about the header... you should have really gotten something that doesn't look stretched for $20k.

It's also good to see that it works in FireFox and IE. One thing you might want to check is FireFox 3 comes out June 17th, so I would download that when the time comes and browse your site to make sure everything is still working properly.

Looks like a nice site - but 20K seems really high for it to me...

did they write all the content? or did you provide it?

Site looks really great, very professional and clean. Nice integration of listings. I think the only thing wrong with this picture is the $20,000. Next time try Elance. Our last site make over cost us $700 including a short flash intro.

This is a nice site...functionality is great!

i like your site but you paid too much. especially since mike only paid 700 bucks and his looks equally great. one question mike are you able to make changes to your site or do you have to hire the developer to make them for you. also can you add pages if you like? i am interested in this concept since you can get hosting for like 20 bucks a month with go daddy.

There is no comparison between these 2 sites. The $700 site sends you to another site to search for homes while the more expensive site has an on site page for each individual listing.

A site consists of more than the looks of the homepage.

It's true, listings are the most important part of the site and we pay another company for access to the listings. We're working right now to have the listings upgraded with a better look and more search features, but its only $50 a month for that service and all the listings come up with our contact information.

This site is definitly the nicer site, just not sure its worth 25x what we spent. Guess it depends on what the average comission is and how far ahead of other realtors in the area it puts you.

My view is that your website has to be completely revamped every 2 years to keep ahead, or at least keep up with people in your market place and I can't imagine spending that kind of money every couple years... although if this is that advanced I guess you could just change the look and keep the back end.

Luckily we have it easier here in Ontario since realtor sites are not as advanced as they are in much of the US.

To GetSmart: The company that did this for $700 was pretty no frills, they did everything we asked, but there is no upkeep service included. Once the project is done you're on your own unless you want to pay them by the hour for additional work. I know just enough of dreamweaver that I can make smaller changes and add pages myself in necessary.

thats your opinion and i have mine, from a standpoint of someone that is browsing through both sites, i would be stuck trying to decide which one i would go with. i would probably submit my informatin to both sites and let the best person win.

thats all i am saying, you can get technical but from an average joe, i don't see the difference. you do because you know about idx and all that stuff, i don't so i just stated my opinion.

Thank you for all of the feedback! Very helpful.

JBT4RE: My previous dba was Cinch2Sell, which I obviously needed to change to reflect current market conditions. The search engines recently got the update to my site, so it reflects my current dba, O.C. Real Estate Advisors.

JBT4RE: I didn't include Costa Mesa in my coverage area because I am less familiar with that area personally and don't currently have an agent who works in that area. I agree though that the company name implies that I cover the entire county. One of the thoughts I had about dealing with this situation is to expand my site to cover all of the cities and establish referral agreements with agents who work for other companies and want the leads my site will generate. I have done that in the past, but so much of it depends on finding the right agent to send the referrals to!

dresden: Thanks for the tip about Firefox 3. I'll have to check it out and see whether it causes any problems for the site.

ManFromTheBand: I wrote all of the content myself and provided it to the developer.

Very nice site, but 20k is waaayyy too much. Recouping that will take a while. I hope you don't have to pay for maintenance.