How to use these graphics

To add a graphic on your own site, first you’ll need to right-click the image below and save it to your computer. You can then upload the image either to your own site (if you’re using WordPress for example you can just upload it to your media library) or to an image hosting site like Photobucket. Please don’t link to the images directly on my site, upload your own.

The code to actually insert the banners on your page goes a little something like this:

[html]<a href=”http://www.infobarrel.com/signup.php?ref_id=47754″><img src=”yourimagepath”/></a>[/html]

You can either paste the code directly into your site file where you want it to display, or use the text widget for WordPress. Change the ref_id to your own, and the image source to the newly uploaded image. If you have any trouble leave me a comment either here or on the InfoBarrel thread and I can probably help you out.

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468×60

Plenty more to come soon, get your size requests in if you have them!

The internet is the perfect medium for house-hunting. You can see more information than in a newspaper ad and view endless images (provided the agent has actually taken some). It should be an enjoyable experience, but it’s not.

Both being webby types, of course, there was much discussion over “this form is quite nice, shame about the results” as well as “this place is a bit more expensive, but look the walls are painted green!”. This inevitably led to the conclusion that if we ever got the opportunity, we would build the best property lettings/sales website in the entire world.

“They can’t be that bad” I hear you cry, “She’s exaggerating!”. You think so? Read on for some examples that may very well give you nightmares.

Our Search Form Criteria

• Must actually work
• Lets us specify ranges for price and bedrooms, rather than just  “1 bed or more”
• If there are a lot of options for example for choosing areas,  give us a “select all” checkbox
• Let us choose property type/at least filter out flatshares

Our Results Page Criteria

• A flatshare with 19 students is not a one bedroom flat
• Let us sort the results by price etc
• Prices shown should be accurate
• Show how many photos are available for the property (this gets important when you’ve just opened 20 flats in new tabs only to find they have 0 piccies that aren’t the external one you just saw)

Our Property Page Criteria

• Clicking on photos should enlarge them
• Let us view property location on a map (Google Maps is free you know)
• Give room measurements
• We’re on the internet, give us a link to email enquiries
• A scanned page from your brochure does not count as a web page
• Tell us when the property is available

You’d think these would be common sense and at least the majority of them would apply to every website. After all, there’s no point having a site that people can’t use. Well…you’d be surprised…

Pattinson

Arguably the most popular agent in the region, they also have one of the worst sites. The map-based area selection is actually quite nifty, unfortunately the search criteria form itself is not (see image at top of post).  We see the all too common “minimum bedrooms” option here, and no way to specify a maximum, resulting in the dreaded flatshares intermingling with our real results and me throwing my cup of tea at a wall.

When we get to the results page, they’re automatically ordered by price, high to low, with no way of changing this. I imagine we weren’t alone in skipping to the last page and working backwards through the list in case of lurking deals. The titles don’t link to the property page, as a lot of internet users would expect, and while we can view the location on a map from this page, once clicking through to read more details we cannot.

The final insult? While (some of the) images will enlarge when clicked upon, the image resizing script is completely useless and only shows a portion of the original image. *sigh*

Reeds Rains

This time it’s a popular national company, and they have an even worse site than Pattinson. For starters, typing in the url takes you to their sales site, and woe betide you if you enter anything into the search form before realising you want lettings. No, not content with giving you a buy/rent option on the form itself Reeds Rains require you visit a differently coloured part of the site and lose any info you’ve already typed in. Ok, let’s start again then.

On the bright side, the search allows you to specify a range of prices. On the downside…everything else. You must decide precisely how many bedrooms you’re looking for, and whether you’re looking for property exactly one mile from your chosen location or not. Never mind, the results page will make it all better, right?

Maybe not. Once again there is no option to sort the results. Once again the property title does not link to it’s page. There is some concession to modernity with the broadband test option, and there’s a perfectly serviceable lightbox effect to view images, but by this point I’m too annoyed to award any points for that. I should also note that while there is an option to send in an enquiry by email, the twice I’ve tried this resulted in no reply.

Globrix

Globrix is evil. Actually no, Globrix is quite good really but needs a bit of refining. I should point out that this is not a letting agency, but an aggregation site pulling listings from other sites.

At first the casual browser is stunned by the fact that it looks decent and uses such voodoo as Ajax and sliders. As the novelty fades, however, we have all the usual problems. While the search itself is wonderful, even including such options as “pets allowed”, they’re often inaccurate. Properties tagged with the aforementioned option will often include “no pets” in the description, so  it leaves me wondering where Globrix got their information. The majority of listings will only feature one external shot forcing you to click through to the agency site for more, and of course this opens in a new tab by default. I have enough tabs open at one time already, thanks very much.

There are a lot of good things to be said for this site, the search results can be manipulated every which way and there’s even an option to email every agent in your results. However all of this is overshadowed by one very important point. Despite the fact that you can search for only flatshares, it appears to be impossible to search for everything but flatshares. There’s no indication given that the 2 bed flat that seems a resonable price is actually twice the price and inhabited until you click through to read the full description. Damn you, Globrix.

Ok those are bad

There were many more sites involved in last year’s househunt, but most had the same problems. A notable exception is Andrew Craig which until recently did not actually have property pages. Instead the viewer was presented with a scanned copy of those pages they stick in the shop window, thus neatly avoiding giving the site any purpose at all. Fortunately they have added a picture gallery for each property, however this is seperate to the aforementioned “details sheet” which is still totally unclickable. Well done, guys.

In conclusion, if you’re building one of these sites you should probably just ignore the competition and start from scratch, your users will thank you. After some bad experiences with Pattinson viewings, including being shown around by a representative unable to answer such questions as “will this bathroom actually be finished?”, we went and advertised on Gumtree where we found our current happy home. Hooray!

His pathetic air of confusion and lost-puppy-ness inspired me to impart some of the knowledge I’ve gained since becoming a regular user of the service about a month ago, which might be useful for other Twitter newbies too. Twitter is highly addictive, and people will attempt to explain their addiction with cunning use of words like “networking” or “link-building”, but let’s face it we really all just want to see Stephen Fry’s new haircut. There need be no shame in this.

Without further ado then…

Use Hashtags

You’ll see them everywhere, basically a word with # before it gets picked up by various other sites, which list tweets by hashtag. The two I’ve used so far are hashtags.org, though bear in mind you need to follow @hashtags before you’ll be listed, and tweetertags.com where as well as viewing lists of the recent tweets containing a tag you can also tag yourself with your interests in the hopes of attracting more followers.

Download a Client

Nobody wants to sit on the actual Twitter site all day, refreshing the page in the hopes of someone saying something deep and meaningful, so save yourself the worry of missing out by downloading a client to beep annoyingly at you at regular intervals. My beepy thing of choice is twhirl, basically because it’s the first one I came across. I understand that Tweetdeck is popular too, though it looks a bit bulky for my taste. Whatever, pick one.

Reply to Strangers

It took me a while to get over The Fear of replying to people who don’t know me with random gibberish, but thankfully I’ve lost whatever shame I started out with. Replies from those with many followers can result in more for you, and more followers = good.

Learn the Lingo

This is actually one I’m still working on. We’ve covered #hashtags,  RT in a tweet means it’s a “re-tweet” (ie reposting something interesting you’ve seen from someone else), and @ lets you reply to someone. Note you can also reply to a specific tweet by clicking the little arrow sybol next to it if you’re on the website, or the @ symbol if you’re using twhirl.

Link to your Twitter feed everywhere

On your blog, in your website profiles, on your Mother’s Day card, everywhere you can possibly fit it in. A Twitter user is by definition cool at the moment, no matter what drivel they spout.

Follow @Holygod

Because who doesn’t really want to know what God is thinking?

There you go, follow my tips and you’re  100% guaranteed to be popular and get all the girls, or boys, or epix, or cake. Or, why not, just have all of the above.