Finally finished, new site

[r2d2]

Well, its been months in the making (dont think Ill be making an interactive kinda site again soon!). But its pretty much done now: House-Shop (www.house-shop.co.uk) .

If you try a search do the links work for you ok?

When people search, I am also searching another site too and returning the results - is this ok do you think? Sure hope so.

Anyway, let me have it, what do you think?

[shim]

When people search, I am also searching another site too and returning the results - is this ok do you think? Sure hope so.

Yes, I think the search works smoothly with fish4. Good idea to use a variety of sources.


Anyway, let me have it, what do you think?

It looks really nice, neat, and well thoughout. The only thing I noticed is that the orange is very intense, and is therefore a bit distracting. I know you are using that color in order to match fish4, though.

I bet that site took a LOOONG time to research and put together. Good job.

[Chris]

can't say I'm wild about the design. But I hope it works for you. This type of site has the potential to be huge if you can make it popular. Is houseshop.co.uk available? You might want to nab it just to stifle the competition.

[shim]

Is houseshop.co.uk available? You might want to nab it just to stifle the competition.

Excellent point, Chris!

[r2d2]

Unfortunately not, as with so many times though when a domains not available, no ones actually using it, it just redirects to another site - annoying, maybe they might sell it?

Thanks for the complimets though, the search was quite time consuming, fish4 require you to have a cookie, which means sending a request to the site, grabbing the cookie variables, and sending those back with the search request. rightmove.co.uk search was even harder, might work on that a bit more.

Chris - Hope the layout didnt offend you, I just thought the other day its kinda similar to some of your sites, its not meant to be though, it was an evolution of the design at house buying guide, i.e. just losing the right hand border.

The colour is a bit intense, guess I kept it because I was quite pleased with it :) Its not actually supposed to look like fish4, I did the color quite early, and was fiddling around with colour wheel software, and quite liked it.

[incka]

Only design thing I can say is the orange is a bit too bright.

I really like the idea, if you got hundreds of thousands of visitors you could make money off charging £5 for listings, or £5 for extra photos or something.

Very impressive.

[Mike]

Great idea r2 :)

In my opinion the design is fine, I'd be happy with it. The only thing I'd reccomend is putting a top border on the login box maybe? Just think it'll look better.

Also when I move to a new page some text (looks like a php error?) flashes at the top. Don't know what it is, but thought I'd let you know.

I like it, what a good idea :)

[chromate]

Awsome! I really like it. I have done a couple of searches and it works well. The colour's a bit "hard" as has been said. Perhaps use some additional softer tones in the content to balance it a bit? It's alright anyway though.

Great thing about this site is I'm sure you could promote it well through offline advertisements. You could do all sorts of promotion stuff with it. I'm sure it'll work out for you if you continue to put in the same amount of effort that you clearly already have. Nice one!

[r2d2]

Cheers guys :)

Looks like I might tone down the orange then :)

Plan on driving traffic to it from House Buying Guide, house buyers can use the search, and a lot will be selling houses at the same time too.

What exactly do you mean about the top border on the login box Mike? Currently there should be a 2 pixel black border at the top, just like the sides and bottom of both of the boxes.

Yep, potential for offline advertising too - I hope to offer 'For Sale' boards for ~£30 sometime soon, nice income and free advertising! Sweet!

Hope to get £1billion worth of property on the site, sounds crazy but its only 4000 £250,000 houses.

Fish4 currently have ~200,000 houses on there I think, if I could get anywhere near that and charged £5 per house, thats a lot of cash :)

[chromate]

Is that 200,000 current houses? At £5 a house, that'd make you an internet millionaire before long :)

[Chris]

The design just doesn't seem to be at the level of other housing sites out there. And it seem almost hodge-podge put together to me (a combination of different elements).

Compare it with say, any of the templates from Template Monster's real estate category.

[r2d2]

Just from fish4: "We have 323,848 homes for sale or rent"...

Something to work towards I think though :) Not sure my $10/m hosting would cope too well :)

Yeah, I agree though Chris, I think the design could do with a bit of 'optimizing' perhaps, think I have too many pictures on the homepage to start with. When you've been working on something for months though, you get a bit blind to obvious things, it sure helps to have outside comment!

[chromate]

That's so true. It gets to the point where you've looked at something for so long you just can't see it objectively anymore. I sometimes find that I'll leave something after being happy with it and then say a week later I'll come back to it and find that it's absolutely terrible.

[incka]

Me too, today hopefully my dvd player reviews site will get it's new design uploaded...

[Blue Cat Buxton]

Nice site idea, some comments on useability rather than design:

You might be in the process of updating, but I get a page of white (inside the orange border) and the text after the fold.

Also can you include pictures in the results. Whe I was using these portals (rightmove et al) to look for a house it was the ones that looked right that I investigated further - Otherwise the search works nicely)

Also, I think you need to make more of the benefite to buyers (at the end of the day sellers will only list if they think the listing will get seen and acted upon) - can you say that this is a 'one stop shop' combining results from various other property websites? If it saves buyers time then they will make your site a preferred search option.

just my thoughts anyway.

[r2d2]

Ok thanks for those thoughts Blue Cat, can I ask which browser you are using? Its no doubt a cross browser CSS issue...

Not too sure about including pictures in search results, would love to, but I think having them on my site, when they are not mine wouldnt be a good plan.

Good thinking about promoting it as a full house moving package - will work on that.

[Mike]

I mean the border on the login box doesn't go right around. It's everywhere apart from on the top.

r2, how are you going to get traffic to the site can I ask?

[r2d2]

Which browser are you using Mike? Sounds like it might be a CSS issue... Does it just go orange to white?

Gonna start by driving traffic from house buying guide, take it from there...

[Blue Cat Buxton]

I was using IE 6 - I also got a problem on the border - top right hand corner - where there was a white chunk cut out of the orange both top and bottom of the border

[Mike]

Yup, using IE6.

[r2d2]

Hmm, will have to check that out later, but sure it looked ok when I checked it in IE...

[Mike]

What terms you going for in the search engines r2?

[r2d2]

Not really sorted the primary terms yet, gonna have to work on that...

The border should be sorted now...

[Blue Cat Buxton]

The border should be sorted now...

'fraid not....

[r2d2]

Ah, have managed to replicate that problem now,

You're not supposed to look at it with a browser window that thin!

Thanks for putting up a screenshot of that, will have to work on that :)

[Mike]

Yup, border problem sorted :)

[incka]

How's it got PR2 already?

[r2d2]

Two random sites are/were linking to it. No idea why, they both have a completely random description of my site...

"house shop
... own home Shopping uk Internet deal Free rebate ... request Future shop Horse cart Carving Price ... Escrow Online loan calculator Real estate ... Buying home in foreclosure Government foreclosure ... estate Office lease Modular office building ... Remax realty Time share property Time share ...
http://www.house-shop.co.uk/"

that one is from search results for "horse in lease loan share uk" which is in my backlinks... strange...

On another note, I think I'm gonna have to email Bill and ask him to sort out IEs CSS behaviours... Why oh why cant browsers just be standards compliant!

[Blue Cat Buxton]

You're not supposed to look at it with a browser window that thin!

Its a lousy pc at work (only a 14 inch monitor)

I only started there a few weeks ago.

(I thought 14 inch monitors were obsolete now.)

(They do have broadband access though so not all bad :D )

[incka]

My cell phone reviews domain was pr3 when I bought it... Also even the .ws, .us and .biz were gone so I've no idea why that .info was available... All I can think it I am not the first to own it...