I am a real estate agent in Maryland, who has some computer experience. Got some help from a friend, but did 90% of the work myself. Please give me some feedback.

All critisicm is welcome!

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Silver Spring Real Estate | Southern Maryland Real Estate | Military Relocation Specialist

Hi, here are my comments...

Your homepage took a long time to load in comparison to other sites and I think is far too big. Too much to read and scroll around. I think your homepage should be shorter and more hard hitting with most of the other comments on a different page...

I know the page is about you and you have to sell yourself but there is a bit too much 'I am this' etc on the home page. Again more hard hitting and less words I think...

Your pages open in different windows which I had to resize to read properly. Why open in different windows? By the time I had clicked a few pages on yoru home page I had loads of windows up. Just open it in the main window..

Without all the wordiness I like the simple design of the site though. Easy to read (without so many words) and navigate. Clean and crisp.

The biggest problem with your home page is the size of the page and the graphics combined. I tested this on dial-up and the page never did load. Consider speed when attracting visitors, not to mention getting them to stay so they become customers / clients.

It's a good idea to keep your page load time around 10 or 15 seconds. Your web page alone is clocked at 84.35 seconds on a 28 kb modem with a total page size of 260 KB. Your graphics for your 42 images total an additional 230 KB - yikes!

The only thing I could see was your text while I was waiting and the formatting uses one of my pet peeves - paragraphs of text that are centered, not left justified. Justify all of your text in a paragraph; consider a full justify to make it a clean block style.

Be sure to use your spell check (ie. "Lisenced").

Again, the page never did load for me so I can't comment on graphics and other content.

Good luck with your online venture!

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Marcie Wolf
AlphaGeek Web Design | MarcieWolf.com

you have a good start but you need some work done..
your site is not user friendly.... your focus should be on the "you" (the client) and not "I". Rather than what you (kay) have done, can do, will do... focus on the benefit to the viewer/client... what benefits they will derive, etc.

your link structure.... everything that is part of your site should open in your own site... the only time you should have a page open in a new window, is if you are sending your viewer to an external site and you don't want to lose them. YOur real estate news simply goes to the bottom of your index page... which could be good if you didn't have so much on the index page... since you do, make that a separate page.

Your site is slightly too large to view in 800X600 (index page only), but it's too minor to worry about.

What you should worry about is the size of your photos... I downloaded the picture of the house under new listings... the size was 640x480 and 60.9kb.. I compressed it to 448X336 and 27kb... that's a big difference when your page is loading. If you do not have any kind of photo editor that can compress the photos for you, I would suggest you try the following site: www.ejrs.com
he is a member of webworld and he offers free optimization for jpegs and gifs....

Your index page is much too long... you need to get rid of the "stuff" on the bottom of the page.. put your affiliations elsewhere, put your weather elsewhere and concentrate on grabbing your viewer in the first 5-10 seconds....I know you want people to think you are friendly and approachable, but no one cares about your parents, son, etc... most people only want to know what benefits them. If you want to put personal info on the site, put it on a separate page that people can read if they choose. Make your index page professional, and concentrate of providing the best service for your client.

I checked out your virtual tour.... it's nice, but you need to put some text in there, explaining how to use it... I like to think of myself as observant and intelligent, and it took me a minute to finally see the top of the screen. I initially focused on the photo (which is what you want you viewer to focus on), therefore, the usage instructions should be where the eye first focuses.

Hope this helps.

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Mary Ann
Affordable Websites Designed - www.m-goret.com

Well we all have to start somewhere and I think you definitely have a "good start" - and along with what the others suggested......

Work on the logo so that it can be made visible. I can't read it. White text might work better.

I LIKE your colors and how you carry that throughout the pages - makes it look "crisp", however some of the graphics do not look right - some of the table corners are fuzzy....

I like your 2 nav bars, I think they work. But the rest of the page needs some organization. You should be able to know what your looking at immediately and how to get to where you want to go without thinking.

I think you should have your All My Listings flash movie at the top and make the top flash (the text that is part of your logo/header) be stagnant. 2 flash movies on one page makes for a super large download. It's not necessary in your heading and actually a little distracting.

Definitely left justify everything - centered text is considered a "no-no" in web design for the most part. Don't "fully" justify it though, because that doesn't look right on webpages either, only in books.

You must have a 1024 screen size. Take a look in the 1152 size and you'll see that things don't quite match up and some of the graphics in your tables don't connect.

Good luck with your changes! I think you have a good start here. It's a lot of material to organize, and that is a challenge for everyone.

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Kristin

I will start working on all of your suggestions immediately. I will make another post when the changes are made and see what you think then.

Thanks again!

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Silver Spring Real Estate | Southern Maryland Real Estate | Military Relocation Specialist

I made some of the changes that we talked about in this post. Please, if you have the time, check them out and let me know if I missed something.

Also, I though that search engines rank your site based on, one: the text you have on your page. I didn't want to put that much text but that was my understanding.

Nitsirk wrote
"Work on the logo so that it can be made visible. I can't read it. White text might work better.

I LIKE your colors and how you carry that throughout the pages - makes it look "crisp", however some of the graphics do not look right - some of the table corners are fuzzy...."

Thanks.

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Silver Spring Real Estate | Southern Maryland Real Estate | Military Relocation Specialist