I've been updating, adding, removing, etc. from my website for the past year or so. It's pretty close to what I want. My SOI mostly has high speed internet, but I fear it may load slowly on dial-up connections.

Regardless, I was wondering if I could get feedback on the functionality, load time, design, layout, etc. People tell me it provides a lot of information, but they never say if it's too many links or too much info.I also think it's not optimized for search engines.

Any help is appreciated and I have thick skin!

http://www.AustinHomeNews.com

Dee,
All I can say is WOH, BABY. The info on your site is awesome. You've got one stop shopping for anybody interested in buying, or selling in Austin. With your site they're not going to have to roam the 'net looking for City info and so forth. I think you hit it right on the money. My only suggestion would be the background color. White's really not bad, but I tend to like a soft background like tannish, or something. I'm one of the few still stuck in the stone age with dial up, and it didn't really take a long time to load at all for me.

Thank you very much! I've been working hard on the site, but am not sure if people really like it or are just being nice. I posted in another forum about using Realtivity. They are the ones that provide the login feature and mortgage calculators. It also provides a backend intranet, so I'm testing it right now.

So far, Realtivity been flaky, but the admin they assigned to me has been working hard to get it up and running. They have a cool tool that provides neighborhood information and I'd definitely like to use it.

Thanks again for the feedback. I think I chose white as a background initially because it's easier matching pictures.

IMHO, the whitespace on your intro could be more inviting, I need to do a lot of scrolling. I think your menu tries to do too much. I tree'd structure might have better organization. Your ahead of my site, so I need to be humble in my offerings.

Nice site. I to have been working on my site
LoveTampaBay.com
I have found from experience that it’s very good to have smaller pages with many links. The smaller pages load faster. With your site I see you used Dreamweaver to make this and you used css. If you want it a little more search friendly I would recommend getting rid of the frames and use their template feature and place your links on every page. If you do this right then you can make one change to your master page and then every page in your site will have the same changes. In addition write a different title and description Meta tags for each. Search engines do not like frames as well. But if you get rid of the frames the robots will eventually all your links and index all of them. After a while you will find many of your sub pages will be indexed.

That sounds good. I definitely need to do meta tags and page titles, but I haven't had time. I hate the frames, but it seems like it would cost a lot to get rid of them.

PS

I'm working on some 301 redirects, so some pages may not load until Advanced Access updates.

Alan,
Your website is dynomite!! The best I have seen, it really fits my taste. What program did you build it with, costs involved, and all that if you don't mind sharing.

Thanks,

Fran White, Realtor
Kansas City, Missouri

Hi Dee this is Dee from CT. I just chedcked out your site and was VERY IMPRESSED. I have a question. I am thinking of providing the home management club to my clients ( past, present and hopefully future. What is your feedback on this service. From what I have investigated it looks good, but I would like other opinions. Thanks

Dee Pizzoferrato
ERA Realty Pros
www.ctonlinerealty.com

PS This web site is unbranded for a reason...I will be getting my brokers license soon and will switch over then:)

Hey how much did it cost? What is home management club?

Dee, I'm not sure how much you did, and how much came with the Advanced Access template. But so many people work so hard on their websites... and I may get a lot of flack for this, BUT STOP SPENDING SO MUCH TIME ON THE CONTENT!

The reason I say this:
You say you've spent about a year or so on it.

YIKES! Over a year and it's not even indexed by the serch engines??? My advice is, STOP WORKING ON THE CONTENT! 99.999% of the people only want to search the MLS anyway! My advice is throw up a site and have a nice MLS search. Our experience is our website with ONLY a MLS search work as well if not better then our websites with a bunch of information on it. (of course then go back and add some regional related information for those that may want it)

Please stop working on the content, and search engine optimize it, and swap links with other website, (and start getting leads and making money). If you've had your website for over a year, you should have closed at LEAST 2 or 3 transactions by now from your website.

To search engine optimize your website:
1) Do keyword research (find out what search terms people are using and the competition for those terms)
2) Edit your home page and using the "top" search phrases from step one, change your title contents, your keywords and descriptions meta tags, add a H1 tag, links with your keywords, bolded keywords, and such in your index page content.
3) Do reciprocal linking with other websites. Contact other non-competing but related website and ask then to put a link on their website to your website. (first put their link on your links webpage on your site) This will build your page rank and get your site indexed fast. I bet if I put your link on one of my websites, your website will be indexed within a week or two. Then the spiders will have your whole site indexed within a few months. (do NOT submit to search engines, but DO submit your website to directories, especially DMOZ.org)

You can find all sorts of information on the Internet about search engine optimizing your website and reciprocal linking. If you need some personal tutoring, please contact me off-list.

I spent a year because I was also choosing tools. The website is part of my business plan and marketing strategy, which I'd spent about 18 months developing. I use the website as a tool for clients, so have not focused on SEO, but that's the next step.

You can get the Home Management Club on discount at http://www.agenttools.net/followup.htm#mhoc. I think it's $120 setup fee and $30/month. I made up some flyers and have been advertising for more people to join.

P.S.

I still "work on my website". It's always being updated and streamlined, so don't be surprised it took so long to get it where I am satisfied. I finished the bulk of it in a few months.

Greg, your website is not optimized for Firefox. The front page is shifted, so I'm wondering if your site is not W3C compliant. I'm on a mac, so it also does not work in Safari.

Hello,
I like the header image on the intro page and the information supplied on the site.

Why is the header not identical on the other pages to give it a consistent look and feel ?
Frames: True search engine robot spoilers; try to avoid whenever possible.
.. and the scrollbar beside the left navigation does not look that nice.

Sincerely

Helmut P. Fleischhauer
http://www.globalrealtyforsale.com

Dee in Austin

I don't doubt that it doesn't work in Foxfire, as foxfire don't do CSS correctly. But even so, so many people have had their hands in it over the past years, it's not even close to compliant anymore. It works in 96% of the browsers (IE has a 96% browser share), so that's good enough for us for now... we get about 500 to 700 unique visitors a day, close about 3 deals a month from it, so right now, making it compliant is WAY down on our list of things to do.

I know some web masters build for just the 97% of PC users, but one SEO person told me that if a site is W3C compliant (which they should be), it should work in all browsers. The SEO person could be wrong, but Apple Safari is relatively new and 98% of the websites I go to work in it...except yours and the other small percentage.

If a site is W3C compliant, and the browser you are using is W3C compliant (and no bugs like foxfire has), all should work as planned. We used to make sure our site worked in IE and Netscape, but we only test that it works in IE now since IE has the majority market share. Someday we have to bite the bullet and re-write our website, and then it will be compliant to that days standards, but of course within a few years, some new standard will be out and we won't be compliant with that new brain-stem implant browser...

Dee,

You're experiencing the first "law" of web development: A website is never truly finished.

I'm doing a complete rebuild myself and hope to have it finished by the end of the month. Like you, I'm never satisfied with my site and always looking for ways to improve the visitor's experience.

I like the "Featured Homes" page on your site because it gets right to it. Give 'em what they want, as the expression goes.

On the home page, you have a nice collection of graphic links representing key sections of your site. But then underneath that, there are a lot more graphics / links that don't seem to be arranged in any particular way. Are those advertising links? Can they all be grouped together in a particular section somewhere?

If you'd like, I can take a screen shot and do a Photoshop mockup of how you might organize that section a little better. I love doing mockups, so it's no bother at all. Just let me know! (brandon@armingyourfarming.com)

Good luck!

I thought there were too many graphics

Yea...I hate the graphics at the bottom. It's not as clean as it used to be. My mortgage guy wanted to stand out and I need to clean it up now.

I wouldn't worry about anything "below the fold". Most people won't scroll down, they'll just use the links on the left side and go where they want to... there's no reason really to scroll down.

blah blah blah...spam

Chris, Make this the last post I have to delete or go somewhere else. There are 2 specific product forums for this type of stuff.