I have just finished a site for my Grandpa and wanted to get everyone's input on what they thought as well as some improvements to the site:

http://www.alanforyourhome.com


Also, if you want to exchange links with this site, you can do so here: http://www.alanforyourhome.com/addsite.htm

Blatant remarks are welcome!!!

<Mod edit to comply with Site Review Rule #1 - Masterpeace>

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Site looks very nice, can't say much for the frames pages but understand why you have to use them. Don't like the fact that I can't go back on the search homes page - very annoying!

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Ken

a bit slow to load, probably the images.

I clicked on a home in the scrollingsection (nice feature) but it did not take me to that home. In fact the home I clicked on 2.2acres... wasnt even on the next page. Not good. In fact the other one I liked (with wrap around porch) wasnt there either. Which starts me thinking about a misleading scrolling section. Even worse it starts me thinking about the reliability and honesty of the agent. You can say im jumping to conclusions, but it all sinks into the sub-concious to build a preconcieved notion or a feeling.

The contact me about this listing links do not automatically include the MLS or other reference number. And I think they should.

moving the cursor over the menu causes a strange flicker of the scroll bar at the bottom of the page.

whats the point of the communities, they are clearly important somehow, because you gave them space on the left and in the footer, but there is no indication of why.

most of the items at the bottom are not links, so why are they there (if its future use, i suggest remove until ready).

leave home sellers out if it does nothing.

your keywords include both sprinfield and springfield, is this correct or a typo?

I personally would avoid the fish logo. I have had more bad business experiences with people who announce their religious orientation, than with those who say nothing, it has become a warning sign to me of trouble ahead. But thats a very personal perference. The text ".. church.." is subtle enough not to trigger the same bells.

check the grammar in "I enjoy..." it sounds like he plays the radio controlled airplane (perhaps it revs in C#)

I would consider style sheets for ease of maintenance, but they do take a bit of getting used to.

I like the look and feel of the site. To me its a really good balance of info, and visual appeal.

Ric and Ken,

Thank you both for your responses.

I tried to optimize the pictures and everything else to load as quickly as possible, but I'm sure the Javascript Scroller doesn't help though.

The homes are being continually added into the "Featured Listings" area, so that is the reason some of the homes in the scroller aren't there...yet! :) They should be there though today or tomorrow. I wanted to get the site up and running so it could get indexed by SE's while I'm adding pages, rather than having the complete site and whating for all the pages to get indexed.

That is a great idea and I had thought of that but just hadn't implemented it.

They provide good anchor text for my interior pages. That is the main reason.

Ric, where do you see this? I would be curious to know because that does need to be fixed...:) oops!

Thank you guys so much for the critique...kinda just threw this site together in about 3 days for my Grandpa and he loves it! I thought I would help him out considering 90% of home buyers start on the Internet!!!!

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oh man! house prices in the US are so cheap!

pretty good site, i like the colour scheme - though the menu doesn't seem to be updated throughout the site - i understand you're working on it still, but thought i'd mention it.

you might find using some kind of server side includes for the menus would help the updating process of your site.

The search homes page wasn't working when i looked either, be careful of bad links, search engines don't like them very much!

Overall a good start, but i think there's quite a bit of work still to do.

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View the source of the page and search for sprinfield. I saw it in the keywords meta tag

meta NAME="keywords" CONTENT="...Sprinfield Real Estate, Sprinfield Illinois Real Estate, ... Springfield Homes, Sprinfield Properties, Springfield Realtor, Springfield Real Estate Agent, Springfield, Springfield Illinois...

Thanks Graf and Ric! :)

Not entirely sure how to use server side...if you can give me some reference and how to implement to my site that would be great. I feel I'm updating this page the old fashioned way, by going to every page and adding changes to navigation or new pages. Some help in that arena would be great!!

Was this on the homepage? As far as I knew, that button worked on every page...???

Thanks Ric, I'll make those changes to to meta tags.

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