Need Review to test usability

[jdayen]

Hey guys,

I have this site, www.HomeIntheWoodlands.com. It is doing pretty well and people sign in from time to time to view properties for sale in the area, but I have a feeling that it is not as user friendly as I think it is. If you guys could just check it out and try to do some things (ie. search for homes) and just try to get around as best as you can. Also, everytime I get someone who signs in, they sign in twice. Now I don't know if somehow it is just duplicating the form or what but just take a look. Thanks a lot guys!

[rmalm]

I like the cloud shadows, very nice. What is that streaming code in the upper left corner?

[Boston Condo Guy]

On your homepage, under the 'Find a Home' section on the right, I went to search for a home based on a particular dollar value in the drop down menu shown, and the entire search is a graphic, which led me to a sign in form - I felt a little "tricked" by this - that's just me.

From a coding perspective, I think your title tag is a little bloated, and I would suggest moving the javascript in your head tag to an external file.

[webmaster]

Very deceptive, if you did that to me, I would leave the site. What is your phone number? A lot of the time, if I am interested the next thing I do is pick up the phone (I would rather ask someone who knows rather than go looking for it on a website, ironic I know)

Actually just looked again, and it is white on grey and very small (All of your sites text is large, and then your phone number is small) that makes no sense. It should stand out.

I think the flash takes up way to much of the site: it is nice when used sparingly but that is a little to much for me.

[Saodavi]

That's a LOT of stuff on the first page. Could you trim it down some? It's like ... 4+ screens or something.

Ditto on the "tricked" commend and the font comment and the phone number comment.

When I work on a site, I try to operate it from the users perspective. Instead of what _I_ want, I try to create what _they_ want. Not that it's working for me but I'm hoping that at the very least, people don't run away.

[chiara]

Hm..with me it took a lot to load the home page..is that because of the flash? Honetsly I don't see why you need this flash on top, you can have this image and menu with an image as well..

- generally it's not good that the main part of the user screen is taken by your top graphics. This is not a design site, but a site where users will seek information. Try to make it more straightforward, redice the top part, move your main content upwards
- on Home there's too much text, and the most important info (home listings, e.g the newest listings on top offers) are completely missing
- the image on the right (find a home) is very bad quality, looks too blurred for a 32K jpg?
- what is the weather info doing on Home? I think you should really filter out all less important info and show on Home the information the users came for - your offers. Move the articles, need help, etc as a link in the navigation
- I also don't like the box requesting to fill in email. The least you can do is explain to the user what do you need this email for..
- once I 'logged' with my email - I shouldn't be asked to login again while I browse the site. You can keep the login info in a cookie, etc
- the email format validation in the email field is not correct. I can enter sdfsdf@sdas which is not a valid email address
- after I search for some home - the title 'search homes in XX price range' is again very blurred..why don't you make this with text?
- when I browse the enlarged views of the gallery I don't see a 'next' link, just 'back' which closes the zoomed version? Better allow the user to see all zoomed photos without having to open and close windows..

That's from me..good luck!

[jdayen]

Thanks guys, this was all awesome information! I've taken the last couple hours and took a lot of your advice:

* I took the scrolling words out of the flash header.
* I made all of the home search tools free without signup.
* I tried to make the page a little shorter and took out some news feeds that did not really go well with the page.
* I made the text a little smaller.
* I also tried to condense the size by making most of the images into actual text which should shorten the load time.

If you wouldn't mind, please take a look one more time to see if anything else needs changed. Again, thank you so much for your input! I love this site.

Jeremy

[BrandonSternfield]

The changes you made have improved.

The text on the about page is still a bit large. Looks 14-16 pt to me.

You could probably get by, if you made the flash about 50-100 pixels smaller in the height department.

[jdayen]

Hey Brandon,

Thanks a lot for the idea, I took the height down 80 px, but that's about all I can do. How does it look now?

[jdayen]

Hey, I also changed the about me page, is this what you were thinking? http://www.homeinthewoodlands.com/HTML/aboutme.html