As the owner of my website I think my site is just perfect in every way . Obviously, I'm a little biased and have trouble seeing it from a user's perspective. I've recently had some non-Realtor friends mention that it was not as intuitive as it could be. Also, I sometimes get the weirdest contacts from it. Like just now, I had a lady fill out my "Seller contact" form to find out about a new condo community in my market. Most visitors who fill out my "Buyer contact" forms rarely leave any comments so this leads me to believe that they are filling out these forms thinking that its a pre-requisite to viewing MLS listings which its not.

Is my website truly flawed in its design and layout? Is it difficult to navigate and make sense of? Please be as bruttally honest as you can be and any suggestions you might have for improvement would be appreciated. Here is the site:

www.bennetsebastian.com

Thanks in advance

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Bennet Sebastian
Principal, Broker
Central Florida Commercial Brokers
301 E. Pine St, Ste 150
Orlando, FL 32801

Specializing in central Florida commercial real estate sales and leasing. Helping companies and individuals alike invest in central Florida commercial properties . Contact us for more information about commercial real estate in central Florida.

Honestly, your site is one of my favorites out of all of our clients. It's easy to navigate, it looks nice, and I love the color scheme. I couldn't think of much to change.

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Dave Friday
Creative Link Management
dave@realestatewebmasters.com

Looks great, pleasing to the eye, easy to navigate!

I would take the contact form off the homepage. That may be why you are getting people filling in the forms in an effort to view your MLS. When I've had contact forms on my homepage it would almost always be fake email addresses that people would leave.
I think the navigation is intuitive, but since you have a lot of content on your homepage people may get lost with all the information. Something that I am experimenting on is just putting enough information on the homepage to effectively place some on page optimization and so that it doesn't require any scrolling/scroll bar. You could achieve this by slimming down your title down a bit so that you don't have to get so many keywords jammed in there and therefore cleaning up your homepage.
I think that REW achieved this very well on this site: http://www.kristafracke.com/ (although this site uses a different type of scrolling, the user doesn't get lost)
and this is my site http://www.mybrevardrealestate.com/ (I am trying to add some more content in the interior pages but just haven't had time yet.)
By the way, I am a moderator of this forum but I don't work for REW, so my comments are unbiased.

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Brevard MLS
Satellite Beach Real Estate Brevard MLS
Advanced Brevard MLS

Hey Bennet,

That site looks familiar - LOL! I ended changing my original background as I just wasn't 100% happy with what we came up with at first. Took a bit of experimenting.

I agree with Kyle that I don't like a full form on a homepage. That's why I chose the Quick Contact Form on the side menu. It doesn't look as ominous (like it's a requirement), but it's there if someone has a quick question.

I had the same small font when I started & requested a change as I couldn't read my own site without my reading glasses. (My site is the Cook County link below).

I would love to pare down my home page (I still think I have too much stuff). However, I believe I'm ranking well for some inidividual towns (mainly in MSN, but it's still nice being #1 for towns I haven't really optimized for yet) because of the specific town links on the home page.

I really don't know if you need to give a paragraph for each of the areas you serve on your home page. Maybe just a one line intro with a link to each area page. Maybe give a summary paragraph first and follow it with an unordered list of a quick area explanation with the link.

Also, I think your form looks so official because you don't have a header stating Contact Form. Your last paragraph should maybe have a "Contact Bennet Sebastian" or some kind of title whether you still feel the need for the form or not. Right now it seems to just be a part of Winter Garden Real Estate paragraphs.

As far as your header, I had mine reduced but I personally think yours looks nice. I recently had a prospect tell me that she had a difficult time reading my phone # on my header so I might have to enlarge it.

Let's face it, with our header & photo slideshow (mine seems to go much faster than yours-I might need to have it slowed down a notch) scrolling is going to be needed on our sites.

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Southwest Chicago Suburbs Real Estate is an affordable area with close access to downtown Chicago. Money Magazine says that Orland Park real estate is one of the best places to live in the U.S.

You might consider changint eh txt Buyers to "Find a home?" or something simalar and the text Sellers to "Selling a home?" or something simalar. While you know what is behind those buttons/links new visitors may/will not.

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Not really a website use ability issue, from an seo perspective this might be something to consider.
http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/...16&postcount=2
Although you can iframe the idx pages in.

I have the contact form on my home page as well. I don't like the looks of it but I do get more leads with it there. To me that is more valuable than having a better looking website.

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Marc Rasmussen
Michael Saunders and Company

Sarasota Real Estate

Thank you all very much. That information is priceless and I will implement most of it immediately.

Happy New Year!!!

Bennet

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Bennet Sebastian
Principal, Broker
Central Florida Commercial Brokers
301 E. Pine St, Ste 150
Orlando, FL 32801

Specializing in central Florida commercial real estate sales and leasing. Helping companies and individuals alike invest in central Florida commercial properties . Contact us for more information about commercial real estate in central Florida.