[Dwell Atlanta]

I have had the worst experience with Agent Image. They didn't listen to anything I stated in our design meeting, took 2 months past our completion date, and still got it wrong. I never received the site and demanded a full refund. I disputed the charge with the credit card company because they didn't want to return my money. Buyer beware

[TwoMoores]

I haven't personally used Agent Image or Advanced Access but I do have an opinion. All of the Advanced Access sites that I have seen look very unprofessional. They look like someone took a bunch of text and images and threw them at the screen and wherever they landed, they landed. The school report image is just horrible. As you can tell, I'm not a big fan of their websites.

I have noticed one thing though, many of them seem to rank fairly high in the search engines. They must have some built in SEO is my guess.

[Dwell Atlanta]

both are terrible!!! Agent image will try to rob you blind, buyer beware.

[MikeNY]

Originally Posted by mooverealestatefirm

both are terrible!!! Agent image will try to rob you blind, buyer beware.

I don't know much about Agent Image but know plenty about Advanced Access, normally I would tell everyone to try AA but their reliability and company as whole has fallen apart so I do not refer people to them any more. If there were no outages (a few times a year) and they knew how the heck to upgrade everyone to 4.0 and most important gave us honest answers to our questions (most questions go unanswered) then they would still be the great company there were. The product is great if it wasn't for the outages and the ugly urls but I have yet to see any template site come close to the search engine rankings us AA users get.

It is sort of like my Nextel phone, I have had it for 10 years and I hate Nextel but can't seem to get rid of it (no other company has the free incoming calls plan I have had for 10 yrs).

AA has lost a LOT of customers to P2A and other companies because of the problems AA has had in the past 12+ months. I really wish I knew what happened to this company, but again, get rid of those problems, no template site gets the rankings AA users do. I even have these cheesy little interior pages all over 1st page results beating out all these big company sites and custom sites.

I still plan to get a REW site though in addition to my site now...

[webmaster]

I beg to differ - AA sites SUCK to have to rank, the reason why so many AA templates have rankings, is because of all the hard work and / or money the users have put into ranking them, it has nothing to do with AA at all (In fact their sites are incredibly difficult to rank "Compared" to other platforms) - it's a huge misnomer - give credit to AA, instead of the customers - I see hundreds of AA users switch platforms every year, and they almost never lose their rankings, as long as they choose the right company to switch to.

Originally Posted by MikeNY

No template site gets the rankings AA users do.

[MikeNY]

Originally Posted by webmaster

I beg to differ - AA sites SUCK to have to rank, the reason why so many AA templates have rankings, is because of all the hard work and / or money the users have put into ranking them, it has nothing to do with AA at all (In fact their sites are incredibly difficult to rank "Compared" to other platforms) - it's a huge misnomer - give credit to AA, instead of the customers - I see hundreds of AA users switch platforms every year, and they almost never lose their rankings, as long as they choose the right company to switch to.

That is true, I did all the work to my AA site so yeah makes sense.

[OCTeam]

MikeNY,

Your site is hardly a template AA site! Like you, I had a highly ranked AA site because of my own continual efforts working it..nothing AA did to it other then them getting it deindexed in Google and Yahoo. AA will never rebound as they appeal to the masses of agents who have no clue, unlike you... and now with new owners, they don't care.

Even though I made somewhat of an impulsive decision to pull the plug on my AA site and switching over to REW before I was really ready to do it, the new site is doing well. The only positions I lost are the URL's I did not redirect, but those pages come to the new site via 404, so not all is lost.

Once you pull the plug (should you decide to do that), you'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner. AA seems to be lost in the OC Fog. Just the improved bounce rate and increase in page views should result in better conversions for you.

My AA site was a great education....REW is like getting a PhD.

[MikeNY]

Originally Posted by OCTeam

MikeNY,

Your site is hardly a template AA site! Like you, I had a highly ranked AA site because of my own continual efforts working it..nothing AA did to it other then them getting it deindexed in Google and Yahoo. AA will never rebound as they appeal to the masses of agents who have no clue, unlike you... and now with new owners, they don't care.

Even though I made somewhat of an impulsive decision to pull the plug on my AA site and switching over to REW before I was really ready to do it, the new site is doing well. The only positions I lost are the URL's I did not redirect, but those pages come to the new site via 404, so not all is lost.

Once you pull the plug (should you decide to do that), you'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner. AA seems to be lost in the OC Fog. Just the improved bounce rate and increase in page views should result in better conversions for you.

My AA site was a great education....REW is like getting a PhD.

Thanks and you are right.

I will end up keeping the AA site, at $40/month it just doesn't make sense to get rid of it and it allows me to keep my control because that is my fear with custom sites and I am a control freak, especially those 2am changes and crap I am always doing!!! .

A site like REW designs is something that I and beginning to see as inevitable, so both sites can co-exist and bring me business.

I own a bunch of domain names so the hardest part is figuring out which one to use for a custom site.

I know what I like. I like your sites, I like www.nashvillebuyers.com sites and Josh's site: http://www.realsourcebrokers.com.

www.nashvillebuyers.com is sort of the way I designed my site, to give the buyers access to everything right there on the front page, right to the point and it works well. I can only imagine how well that site must do especially in this buyers market.

[Discover Davis Homes]

Originally Posted by MikeNY

I own a bunch of domain names so the hardest part is figuring out which one to use for a custom site.

If it were me I would use what ever domain name has aged and has some strength to it, if that's the one on the AA site I would seriously consider pulling the plug and switching over completely. If you really wanted to keep the AA site, maybe you could use one of your other domain names on that page.

[MikeNY]

Originally Posted by Discover Davis Homes

If it were me I would use what ever domain name has aged and has some strength to it, if that's the one on the AA site I would seriously consider pulling the plug and switching over completely. If you really wanted to keep the AA site, maybe you could use one of your other domain names on that page.

Morgan convinced me the best way is to keep the same domain name and make it custom since it is already a site that produces and has a PR3 so I agree. I was concerned because it is basically my nick name and not the name of any sort of real estate related url but EBAY does well and who would have thought EBAY is where you go for auctions..