Need Critique of Just This One Page

najiboutros

New Member
Background: I'm a licensed real estate agent and I'm building out my own website because most of these cookie cutter websites are a waste of time and money. I plan on building out a page for each community in my service area.

I did some surveys about what information people want to research before buying into an area (crime, schools, etc). It's a lot of content. I'm trying to squeeze it all into a digestible layout.

Here is the first draft:

https://www.najiboutros.com/califor...y/santa-clarita/valencia/bridgeport-valencia/

GOAL: The idea is that they can do 90% of the research that is important to them, then see what is available for sale in this specific community. If there is nothing for sale, but they really want to live here, they can make a request and I'll see what I can do.

Thanks in advance for your help.
 
Honest opinion, ignoring the fact that this is a UK forum and you're offering US locations, is that it looks like an incredibly dated template, it's got random zooming background (which actually just looks blue on loading the page) when you click on the expanding bits (which I missed the first time I looked). From a usability stand point it's pretty bad too, like I said I didn't even see the expanding bits first time I looked at the page and this is entirely down to the design decisions you've made for the layout.

I don't want to come across harsh or anything here but imo you need to hire a designer/developer, just because you can't find a 'pre designed' site to suit your needs doesn't mean that you can build it yourself. It's like some random person putting valuations on a house without any training and after just seeing the prices online of other houses. While they can give you a price it doesn't mean it will be the right price.
 
Honest opinion, ignoring the fact that this is a UK forum and you're offering US locations, is that it looks like an incredibly dated template, it's got random zooming background (which actually just looks blue on loading the page) when you click on the expanding bits (which I missed the first time I looked). From a usability stand point it's pretty bad too, like I said I didn't even see the expanding bits first time I looked at the page and this is entirely down to the design decisions you've made for the layout.

I don't want to come across harsh or anything here but imo you need to hire a designer/developer, just because you can't find a 'pre designed' site to suit your needs doesn't mean that you can build it yourself. It's like some random person putting valuations on a house without any training and after just seeing the prices online of other houses. While they can give you a price it doesn't mean it will be the right price.

I get where you're coming from. It's probably frustrating watching someone from a completely different industry cobble together something you do for a living at no where near the quality. I see it all the time in my industry with For Sale By Owner property listings.

Truth is I simply can't afford a professional of your caliber.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. I'll address the background and the expanding bits.
 
Look at that page on your cell phone. It’s not good.

Paying a developer/designer to help you with this will be far more effective than trying to do it yourself. You would easily recover the costs with your first sale. Going it alone means you are less likely to make a sale (because the page isn’t good).

You seem to have thrown everything you can think of in the page with no consideration on how people view and access information.
 
Now had a look at your site on a desktop and I can see what @Levi means. It is very dated and also very slow. Mainly because of the theme you are using and the zillions of plugins you have installed.

You are using wordpress and there are plenty of really good real estate themes you can use. The overall look isn't important, the key to your success are the images of the properties and the descriptions you write. Adding schools, facilities and crime figures is great but this is secondary to the actual properties.

Focus all your efforts on the properties - that's what people want to see.
 
I get where you're coming from. It's probably frustrating watching someone from a completely different industry cobble together something you do for a living at no where near the quality. I see it all the time in my industry with For Sale By Owner property listings.

Truth is I simply can't afford a professional of your caliber.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. I'll address the background and the expanding bits.
If the site isn't financially viable enough to invest in a professional is it really needed or worth doing?
 
Look at that page on your cell phone. It’s not good.

Paying a developer/designer to help you with this will be far more effective than trying to do it yourself. You would easily recover the costs with your first sale. Going it alone means you are less likely to make a sale (because the page isn’t good).

You seem to have thrown everything you can think of in the page with no consideration on how people view and access information.
I took a survey and this is all the kind of info people requested. Yes it is a lot of content. Which is why I'm struggling with the design. I thought the drop downs would help it look less cluttered, and allow visitors to see only what they want to see.
 
I took a survey and this is all the kind of info people requested.
Nothing wrong with putting the info on the site. But it needs to be in the right place. Each topic ideally on its own page not on your landing page.
Yes it is a lot of content. Which is why I'm struggling with the design. I thought the drop downs would help it look less cluttered, and allow visitors to see only what they want to see.
Like I said, it looks as if you have just put everything on the page with no real plan.

Decide what you want the site to achieve. Determine a marketing strategy that will help acheive what you want. Create content that supports your strategy. Organise the content to provide the best information flows.

This planning process is the most difficult part of creating a website and can take weeks for a complex site. The actual layout you use is unimportant until the site structure is finished and populated with the content, the images added, the navigation fixed, calls to action positioned and trustmarks in place. Once all this is done you can then source a suitable theme or have one created for you.
 
Now had a look at your site on a desktop and I can see what @Levi means. It is very dated and also very slow. Mainly because of the theme you are using and the zillions of plugins you have installed.

You are using WordPress and there are plenty of really good real estate themes you can use. The overall look isn't important, the key to your success are the images of the properties and the descriptions you write. Adding schools, facilities and crime figures is great but this is secondary to the actual properties.

Focus all your efforts on the properties - that's what people want to see.

I'm happy to look at other theme suggestions, but I doubt they'd be compatible with IDX Broker. IDX Broker is the data link to the database with all the real estate listing information.

Because of IDX Broker, there isn't much I can do with the property pages themselves. It's a highly protected data feed that auto produces the property listing pages on a subdomain. Properties are also being bought and sold a lot so these pages don't last very long. All my research pointed to creating more static content about the area, cities, communities, etc to get more traffic/rankings.
 
Idx broker is independent of the theme. Some integration may be required but it’s nothing complicated. And you can do a lot of customisation to the feed. I’ve built a couple of sites with IDX broker and we managed to do all sorts of clever things.

Adding local information to the site won’t help your ranking, there is too much competition.

What is your marketing strategy? How do you plan to get people on the site? Forget ranking for local searches, you need to find another method of generating leads.
 
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