Site redesign

[guz843]

Hi everyone.

We have updated our site (still tweaking) but for the most part would like your reviews.

http://charlestonrealestatenews.com/

We have added Video throughout the site and would be particularly interested in load times and general UI thoughts.

Thanks everybody.

[Dan Connolly]

Well I am looking at it while I sit in an open house on my laptop with a Verizon air card, not the fastest connection, about like DSL. The video on page one starts and stops and the audio is breaking up. the header at the top of the page didn't load at all.

After it played sporadically and I replayed the video it worked at normal speed.

[Lydia]

On my home broadband it loads fine. The site looks wonderful to me. Very well done.

YouTube tends to choke every now and then; I guess that's the risk you take by hot-linking to content on a server out of your control.

(Edit: hey 200th post!)

[webmaster]

I really like the colors and use of whitespace, the design is very "clean" - I am on broadband (Quite a fast connection) at home on my laptop and looking at the site in firefox. The video does not display properly at all in FF, it seems to be be coming out of it's div, and it doesn't even try to load, instead it gives me a message that my connection is not adequate to view the video.

[Lydia]

Wow, might be a browser version problem. I looked at the site earlier in firefox and it looked fine to me. If IE would get 'standard' then we wouldn't have these problems, grr.

[thegoheens.com]

Very nice design! Clean and simple - I like it. Personally I'm not a fan of having audio or video automatically start, sometimes I listen to music loud and forget to turn the volume down so it's too loud. Plus for people with dial-up it can take too long to load and they might hit the back button. Otherwise very nicely done.

[Smuck]

Overall, looks good. I would recommend allowing the visitor the option of turning the video off or on. Having the video automatically play will become annoying to repeat visitors (your bread and butter).

[Saodavi]

I think the video should be "off" by default. People should have to start it if they're interested. Something like this could get REALLY annoying if a person visits your site frequently. It's worse than a splash screen.

Also, the photo album is a little inconsistent. Some albums (FSBO, Land, etc) have albums for specific properties inside each category. It makes sense ... even if it takes a while to get to where I want to be. However, some albums (Hidden Lakes) go directly into the house photos. I think the albums should be consistent across the board.

Also, I would recommend having a flat file for the photos. They layered approach is tedious. Navigating to a house and then to some land takes WAY more clicks than it should. You don't have that many listings. If you had everything on one level, it'd be easier to navigate. Maybe you could still categorize them if you wanted too. Maybe something like ...

-----------------
For Sale By Owner
------------------
Album Album Album Album Album
Album Album

----
Land
----
Album Album Album

---------------
Featured Homes
---------------
Album Album Album Album Album
Album Album Album Album Album
Album Album Album Album Album


Other than that, it's a pretty good looking site. I like the layout and colors. Good job!

[Saodavi]

On more thing .... I would change the "FIND" tab to say something more descriptive ... like "Search the MLS". I realize that's a bit long for a tab but "Find" wasn't very intuitive to me.

[NealRM]

I like the general layout and colors. To help the users still not using broadband, I would suggest leaving the video off. Those wanting to see it can click it start.

Let us know when you have some listing on the site. I would like to see how well the video shows off the home.