New Franchise Site - Comments?

[RonnieG]

The "beta" version of our new Colorado Metro Brokers franchise site, for which I was on the IT Steering Committee, finally went live on 1/8. re: http://www.ColoradoHomeStop.com. It has a long way to go yet, and is being released a little bit at a time, so as to not get penalized by Google for too many pages all at once. Before anyone mentions that "stop" has kind of a negative connotation, please note that our initial URL was to be http://www.ColoradoHomePlace.com, which is now 301'd to the final url, but we were overruled by our advertising committee, because of the stop sign that is our main logo, and is used in a lot of our other media advertising.

Our committee was pretty happy with the initial release, and Google indexed a few pages of the site within just a few days. However, I am interested in what this group thinks about the site, especially the map based home search and property details presentation. Franchise listings can be enhanced by the office or by the listing agent, to include multiple agent branded virtual tours, unlimited high res photos, and more descriptive information than what is available from the IDX feeds. Franchise listings are highlighted on the map display.

The final site will have IDX feeds from every Colorado MLS, and will also have agent sub-sites that will use the same search technologies, and will be somewhat agent customizable "template" sites that we will be able to assign our own domain names to and market as our own. I wouldn't do that as my main or sole web site, but as a supplement to my other sites. The agent back end includes integrated activity calendaring for the agent and for transactions, team scheduling, comprehensive prospect management/CRM, agent customizable drip email system, a company store for logo branded supplies and marketing materials, and team and office prospect and client management and performance tracking functions.

This site was custom built for us by a 3rd party vendor, so I have no personal interest or investment in the site, other than helping write the high level specs we submitted to multiple vendors for proposals and bids.

[ColoradoHomeHelper]

Hi Ronnie,
Being a Metro broker I appreciate the "stop" although I think coloradohomeplace is better.

In any case on to the site.

It has an incredible map search like nothing I have seen, but its rather complicated and hard to maneuver. I feel like for the not so tech savvy this site might be hard to navigate. The search is confusing.

Personally I don't like just the picture of the listings at the bottom of the page, I feel there should be some small description and a details button. Once again just having pictures there is confusing.

Overall the site looks nice, love the idea, I think it has great potential I just believe it needs to be toned down, theres to much going on making it hard to navigate.

[webmaster]

Its funny Greg Eckler and I were looking at that site today, and I have to agree, as a developer I am very impressed by the map search, but as a user looking for an easy way to access inventory, I would have moved on quite quickly.

[webmaster]

Incidentally, I tried to click on a house icon when I zoomed in (Using firefox) and I was not shown any information. Users of map searches are programmed to click those icons for more info, if it doesn't do anything, it falls short IMO

[judyo]

You would definitely lose me with that map search. I have to use talking gps because I hate maps. Before gps I would type out actual driving directions & had a "fun" argument with a client who used a normal mapquest map teasing a "woman" (me) who didn't like reading maps. Guess who got lost (not me)?

Anyway, at first I thought I could only search using the map (didn't notice the search parameters at the top). The property details took too long to load IMO but at least it got rid of that dang map taking up most of my screen.

If I weren't reviewing the site I probably would have moved on to find an easier to use IDX/VOW solution.

[drewnick]

I looked at your site a few weeks back after someone blogged about it. Like everyone else, I think the map navigation is "really cool" but not functional.

I do think you will attract the Digg-types to this site (tech folks) for sure.

This is definitely a step in the right direction compared to the old tables-based IDX feeds we see everywhere.