Thread: New Orange County Property Appraisers site

Hi,
I like the site and it looks really good.
The content and pictures are good.

I am not a web designer and I had done few sites.
I have couple suggestions.
first of all, I think the header is too big, the picture looks great, but thats prime real estate and maybe you can condense the pictue, make the picture stop at the tabs.
this way your viewers can see more of the site at first glance.
Second, when I click on The HomeBuyer Checklist, the article shows up under the pictures.
Maybe that can be reserve for the homepage and not show up on each page.
and if you want to get more revenue from google, you can move the Google Custom Search to the top somewhere.

Sincerely,
George

For a new site, it's pretty good so far. I can definitely tell you've spent a lot of time on the content, just from all the different information you have on each of the Orange County cities alone! You did really well on the content -- it's easy to read and surprisingly not too lengthy considering how much content you've added to the site already.

One content suggestion I have for the homepage: Emphasize (bold) the words or phrases you want to attract attention to. The homepage is a little wordy and at first glance the reader may just scan over it, but not really read that information. If that information is important, making some of the words or phrases bold will help pause the reader's eye and focus on that information better.

A couple of design suggestions:
- Change the picture at the top of the site -- Orange County is a pretty area, but that picture seems to emphasize smog more than anything (Southern California = blues skies & sunshine!). The picture at the very bottom of your site would work much better in my opinion.
- I agree with the comment above -- the slideshow at the top might be better on just the homepage, not every page of the website as it starts to seem obtrusive as you go through each page of the site.
- Make the picture just below the text on your "What is an appraisal?" page a bit smaller because it's stretched over into the "Recent Posts" section (at least on my browser).

Last but not least, if one of your main objectives is to get visitors to sign up for a free quote, make sure to add a link to your "Get a Free Quote!" page at the end of the text on each of your main pages so that when the user is done reading, they don't have to scroll all the way back to the top to see a link to that page, they can be enticed to sign up for a free quote straight away.

Just my two cents!