Site is getting a little long in the tooth.

[Orlando Real Estate Agent]

I've had my site (www.cflcommercialre.com) for about five years now and have made only minor changes here and there. From an aesthetic standpoint, is it time for a major makeover or will a minor facelift suffice? Any specific suggestions?

Thanks for reading

[zcoplan]

I think overall your site is aesthetically pleasing. I would focus on functionality and converting the traffic more so than revamping the entire site.

[jducey1234]

I agree. I don't think it is cluttered at all. You are targeting a very specific market, so I would assume that you are pretty close to the top on long-tail keywords. I wouldn't do much. Perhaps some pictures of listings of recently leased?

[Orlando Real Estate Agent]

zcoplan, jducey1234
Thanks for the feedback. The rankings and traffic are OK but the conversion from visitor to new lead is where it is lacking - roughly 1-3% conversion ratio. Not sure what the "norm" is for conversion on real estate sites, particularly specific niche sites like this.

Also, the Google Analytics stats for the past 30 days is shown below. There is a fairly high bounce rate of 65% but I don't know what to make of that. Unqualified traffic or poor functionality?


334 Absolute Unique Visitors
907 Pageviews
2.22 Average Pageviews
00:02:00 Time on Site
65.69% Bounce Rate
75.25% New Visits

[Omaxx]

Yes I would agree although it is functional the style is very old and the left nav bar is dated.. also there is not a lot of white space as the text has not much padding in each section.

Also the form at the bottom of your home page is really spread out so it looks like a bigger form than it is.. I would shrink that down to one column and throw in an easy as 1, 2, 3 tag line.. to give it a nice call to action that will get people typing.

Also you could use targeted text on a few more internal links to build up your SERP ranking also.

Hope I have been constructive enough to help you going forward.. usability is very important to get the conversion and the ROI.

Cheers

[Orlando Real Estate Agent]

Yes I would agree although it is functional the style is very old and the left nav bar is dated.. also there is not a lot of white space as the text has not much padding in each section.

Also the form at the bottom of your home page is really spread out so it looks like a bigger form than it is.. I would shrink that down to one column and throw in an easy as 1, 2, 3 tag line.. to give it a nice call to action that will get people typing.

Also you could use targeted text on a few more internal links to build up your SERP ranking also.

Hope I have been constructive enough to help you going forward.. usability is very important to get the conversion and the ROI.

Cheers

Omaxx,
Thank you for your honest feedback. I'm not a designer but I just had a sense that the home page needed some improvement but it is hard to be objective when it is your own site.

By the way, do you work for REW?

[MillerREALTOR]

I think you need to be clear on what you offer. I assumed a listings site but I guess you just do rentals. I would add listing pages rentals or not you should be able to see photos.

[Omaxx]

No I don't work for REW.. but they have a great site. Bennet you are so right when it comes to your own work. Because you spend more time with it and have a particular direction it is sometimes hard to see what would provide the greatest boost. My suggestion to you is to use Google Opitimizer (it is free) and then run some trials with 3 options including your own site. That way the feet will do the talking for you. Just make sure you get at least a thousand or two people go through to get a good track.

This is an older video but it can give you a good rule of thumb with Optimizer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNaKaPt71kQ


Good luck my friend.

[Orlando Real Estate Agent]

Thanks again for the helpful suggestions. Unfortunately I dont generate enough traffic on this site to generate any solid analysis from Optimizer. I had a web designer friend of mine also look at the site and he posed the following questions and feedback:

some things i ask every client:

- who is the audience of your site?
- why would they come to your site (what are they looking for?)
- what is the purpose of your site? (information? interaction? selling? ect.)
- what is the call to action? (what do you want the person to do when they visit your site?)

At first glance your site is very text heavy. (referring to the home page) this is good and bad. good in that google has a chance to grab key words and validate the authenticity of the content to the meta key words and description. bad in the sense that you present what we call at our a company, a "wall of text" to the user when they visit your site. the home page is the most important page on the site and it needs to effectively funnel users to where you want them to go.

I considered these questions and comments and revised the home page to where I think it is much more functional. I added buttons at the top of the page to take visitors where they need to go and also removed "the wall of text" and replaced it with a sprinking of property listings. Please let me know what you think ... www.sebastianhr.com

I will have to run the analytics a month from now to see if I'm right.

Thanks again

[Mark Washburn]

I don't think your site looks overly dated. If it was me, I would invest my resources in adding a blog to this site and creating regular fresh new content. You could also benefit from adding additional community pages in your service area.