Just want to ask if anyone thinks I have too many images on this site.

Also, should I change the first part of the page from an image to a 2 cell table with text in the first column, and smaller image in the second column?

And, generally what feel does the site give you?

http://www.homesearch-md.com

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

It wouldn't be my choice of colour scheme, but that is something very personal. But three points -

1) Most people go to real estate sites to search for properties, but your [search] button is hidden in with all the others.
2) There is nothing on this page for the search engines to really get their teeth into.
3) If you had the buttons as CSS backgrounds, it would load faster.

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Pete Clark
Got any spare time? Anything you need? Barter in Spain at http://BarterWithBart.com

First of all you hav a massive jpg as the header. Not only should this be a gif, as that will stop the distortion around the text, but you could also break this up into fewer gifs, perhaps have the purple as a background and the text in the top left as html. This would help the page load a lot faster and look better.

From a personal point of view, I like buttons to do something when I rollover them - even if it is just a change of text colour. As said above your buttons can all be done in css which will also ease up the loading time.

The top menu changes as you navigat through the site wich I found confusing. I agree that your search should be more prominent.

Most web users (IMO) are used to seeing a generic top menu with 'home' 'about' 'contact' and 'search', and specific menus for your site on the left.

Finally, again from a personal design point of view, I don't like having a mixture of serif and sans serif fonts on a page - I like consistency throughout the design styles.

The colours are nice bold and it can help to have a bold color associated with your company. Maybe keep the text and links to a black/grey though as the bright blue and purple text makes the colour a bit much for me overall.

Hope this was of any help, soryy I can't comment on the content - I have very little experience of US real estate! Good luck with it all

Good rule of thumb with images: If your graphic contains text or line art, save it as a GIF. Your JPEG header with your logo and tagline is very "halo-ed" and fuzzy.

The curve in the header graphic doesn't really blend well with the other components, it looks kind of pieced together instead of blending...

Your round 3D navigation buttons lend an "outdated" feel to your site. Create buttons that take up less space on your site using CSS and look a little more trendy and clean. I agree with pagetta on rollovers - add some kind of mouseover effect on links.

Add a stylesheet and move all of your font style formatting there to clean up your page code.

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Marcie Wolf
AlphaGeek Web Design | MarcieWolf.com

I have made the changes to the navigation and the page layout in general. I do have to agree with you all on those factors. They needed some help.

Thanks! How does it look now?

http://www.homesearch-md.com

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

So far I don't get such a good feeling about it. It's not saying to me what's all about from a graphical pov too. Your header image could be gone .. it doesn't serve any purpose there. Try to put some pictures in it so that people would know from the start what's all about.
You should have a logo too.
You've got too many font sizes and styles. Get rid of Times NEw toman for ever and try to have 2 fontsizes not more. Try an effect on links .. make them change colour on mouse hover and decrease font size. Don't use italic .. and perhaps get rid of the buttons and use text links instead.

You got yellow and violet. They are great together .. complementary colours, so from first step you made a good pick, still they look kinda dirty. The whole site has a not so clean and crisp look.

Sorry if I have offended in any way .. not my intention. I think you should really work the site a bit more ;)

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No offense taken, thanks for the input. What header image are you referring to, I took off the old ugly one from all the pages - I think. What page did you see the image on?

I will work on the fonts thing next, thanks again.

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

the gradient one. and the text is cluttered in the header animation ... Don't use italic. You need to redo the header ;)

Glad you didn't mind :) We're here to offer our best advice and not to make anyone feel bad. I'm anxious to see the changes ;)

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