Hey guys, I just set up my new website, and I’m looking for some feedback. I realize it isn’t complete, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
You’re the second person to ask for a site critique in the last week… :beer
Here’s some suggestions in no particular order…
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Reduce the height of your header; too big, eats up to much “real estate” The surfer needs to see the meat at first glance, not be forced to scroll through a branding image. Unnecessary.
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Remove the “who we are” text at the beginning. You’re just stating the obvious. Forget that.
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Frame and place the “pain” issues, that you offer to relieve, at the top of the page. You want the surfer to see these first.
Being behind on Payments
Job relocation
Estate Sale
Fire Damage
Water Damage
Bad tenants
Family obligations
Little to no equity
Divorce
Vacant property
Repairs needed
Structural issues
Retirement
…and many more. -
Instead of:
“We Will Buy Your House CASH, FAST!”, perhaps say, “We Pay Cash For Houses… FAST…!” -
Move input boxes to the right at the top with some benefit laden reason to fill in the information. “Let’s Get Started Selling Your House”, or “Sell Your House Fast by Filling In The Boxes Below.” or ???
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Place your phone/email/contact information inside the header on the right. Replace the cartoon house with something more compelling. Happy couple holding cash is a common theme and I believe it resonates with a lot of prospects.
Otherwise, it appears somewhat corny. Corny is OK, if that’s the branding you want. But the header is just too high and offers only the website url. Surfers don’t need that. They’re ALREADY on your site.
The rest of the text is too wordy, and needs a severe cropping and cleaning. Eliminate as much text as you can, and distill it down to the most essential.
Here’s an example using your text:
CG Homes buys houses fast! We buy in the greater San Diego areas.
We pay fair prices.
We buy houses in any condition.
We can close on your schedule.
We save you time and money.
We solve problems and relieve pain.
We offer you better options than selling yourself, when you need a quick solution.
[Insert Testimonial Here] CG Homes bought my house for a fair price and now I can afford breast implants. Thank you CG Homes — Grandma Moses.
[Insert Testimonial Here] “Gabe gave me an equity stripping like I’ve never enjoyed better. Thank you, Gabe!: — Deb D. Dallas
Sell to CG Homes Today! Here’s why…
We do all the paperwork for you…!
Pay No commissions…!
Pay No closing costs…!
Pay No fees…!
No obligation…!
Confidential…!
Try to focus on easy to grasp bullet points and images when possible. It allows the reader to move through more information in less time, and it keeps the surfer’s attention.
Here’s a sample of how the bottom half might look:
Here is a great example of a We Buy Houses site – http://www.webuyuglyhouses.com/
These guys have gone through extensive testing and they know what works. Try to emulate your site after them.
The site have bold colors, 6 categories, the form is on every page same location, simple & consistent layout, pictures and videos.
You don’t need your Articles section (motivated sellers don’t have time to read them). For Buy a house and Investors page, create a separate website for these two. You don’t need to buy a new URL you can just create sub-domain, like Investors.webuysandiegohouses.net
If you had this site built, show your web designer the site above and try to emulate it.
I think the site looks good. It is not too fancy and hits the top points. I would put your main types of buys in another color such as red or blue to grab more attention than the others on the list. The person above mentioned the we buy ugly houses people. That is Homevestors franchise and they have been quite successful in doing what you want to do.
Keep it simple and to the point.
The hardest thing to do is marketing your site so people even know to go to it.
Good luck.
I agree with a lot of what javipa had to say in his response. It’s really important to put your main points and call to actions above the fold (don’t make them scroll). First impressions are key and to be honest I would have clicked off your site very quickly from what I saw initially without scrolling.
The We buy Ugly houses site is perfect in my opinion. The form is the first thing you see and there is no question about how and were to contact you for more information. It pretty much would take about 10 seconds to fill in the form and submit.
I also prefer not to have my buyers and sellers going to the same website. It will require you to put to much information in one spot that could possibly confuse sellers who go to your site. If you notice on the WeBuyUglyHouses site, it’s strickly for people who want to sell their house.
Lastly I think your site is very generic, which might not hurt you but I’ve seen a lot of investor sites and your design and layout is very generic. Just my 2 cents.
Another point that we have encountered in building our websites for our foreclosures real estate company has been that if you put in too many photos or anything that uses a lot of memory, people with slower computers are not going to be able to open up some of the photos quickly.
When we first started we tried to put too much on our pages and older computers with slower capabilities could enjoy the items that were on the page.
I appreciate all the input guys, thank you.
Javi and jool have great points.
You definitely want to keep it dead simple for the seller to fill out your form.
You can always send them more information later ie. articles.
But even then, they don’t have time to read articles, they just want to sell their now.
I just wanted to comment briefly on this as well (as someone who has been designing sites for investors for quite a few years). I agree that the header image/banner at the top really isn’t doing anything for the site. It looks generic and there is no benefit that I can think of to putting your domain name in the header image. It’s much better I think to put something there that will grab the visitor’s attention and encourage them to take whatever action you want (contacting you).
On the Buy A House page, you really should resize the images before uploading them to your site. They are HUGE and take a long time to load.
I agree with the comments about getting rid of the articles. They just add clutter to the site and aren’t likely to help you accomplish your goal of getting people to contact you. They’ll just distract people.
My first impression when I saw the site was that it was one of those spammy gateway-type sites that you used to get sometimes when you were searching for something that had a generic look and a bunch of links to miscellaneous stuff. I don’t mean to sound critical, that was just my initial thought.
I think making some changes to the header area would make quite a bit of difference. If you have a small logo you could put on the left side it could be beneficial and also some text that focuses on a benefit to the person visiting the site, such as “Get Cash for your house today!”
Todd