Review: HaydenCanHelp.com

[HaydenHomesLLC]

Please take a look at www.HaydenCanHelp.com. Let me know your thoughts on improvements to this site. Thanks!!

[Ayaka]

Please Review.

[Brazzell Marketing]

Solid design - everything works. That's always good.

The black banner at the top could be more engaging perhaps. A pattern or engaging stock photography would probably do the trick. The slogan under the logo appeared very small on my screen and was too hard to read.

The Investment Property Search Tool works and does what it promises to do. I'm not sure I would be so modest about revealing it's your first tool, etc. But do continue to solicit feedback for new features.

Ultimately, I clicked away from that website confused about what your core service might be. Are you encouraging people to buy investment real estate because you are a property manager, and investment real estate creates inventory for you to manage? Great angle, but I'm still left not sure. An about us page would fix that. A services page would also help. If property management is your business, why are you better than Joe Blow down the street. Answering these questions may make the website more of a sales tool for your business.

Consider offering a white paper. Create a well written paper such as "Top 10 Mistakes Made When Buying Investment Properties." or "Top 10 Habits of Investment Property Success." People who want it, send you their contact information, and have the opportunity to unsubscribe to your monthly newsletter while submitting the form. If they don't unsubscribe, you start sending your monthly letter by e-mail. You will get more readers this way than by expecting them to check in with you monthly, and you will acheive greater top of mind awareness with your target audience -property investors.

[Brazzell Marketing]

Woops. I just found one technical error. When I view the monthly column archive, the maroon bar near the top turns into four maroon bars, one on top of the other. The links "monthly column" and "monthly column archive" run over the bars incorrectly.

[HaydenHomesLLC]

Wow Brazzell, thank you so much for taking the time to review my site. Those are some great suggestions! I will be working on some changes tonight an post back once they are done.

Could you tell me what browser and version you are using? The "Monthly Column Archive" appears fine for me in FireFox but does appear with 4 lines in IE. I am just curious if it does that in another browser as well (I only have these 2 at work...). I know what the issue is, but that will teach me to better unit test with all of my browsers...

I think you may have came away confused about my core service because I am still a little questionable about it as well... I started the site to advertise any real estate that I had for sale/rent. However, I am trying to provide as much free information/tools as I can to drive traffic rates on the site up. I would like to potentially sell access to more detailed tools/information as well as try to make a little via adds...

Knowing that, do you have any other advise for me?

Thanks again for the information you have provided!!!

[Brazzell Marketing]

I was using IE7 when I saw the bars quadruple. I'm on a different computer with a wider screen now, but the glitch is no longer visible in I.E.

It sounds like the website would serve your purposes better if it were an online community. Consider giving the site it's own identity separate from Hayden Homes. Hayden Homes would simply appear as a major sponsor and you as the founder. In this case, other, non-competing property management firms might also want to become major sponsors. If it's structured more like a community of real estate investors, people may be more likely visit frequently. In that case, the content will probably be your biggest attraction, so I would put the content front and center. Right now, the bulk of the content is two levels away from the home page (hinting that the push of the website is supposed to be the property management service of Hayden Homes). Your ideas about putting different tools on the site is great. A simple addition might be adding a feature that allows users to comment on the articles and to submit articles.

[HaydenHomesLLC]

Brazzell, thank you once again for your critique!! I have added a web directory (phpLD) and am working on adding an article submission portion to the site (thanks for the suggestion). I am also going to clean up the "home" page and gear it more towards the tools and content of the site. I will post back once I have some of the additional updates complete.

Thanks again!!

[Brazzell Marketing]

I thought that I should clarify my suggestion about the separate identity for the online community. If you decide to do that, still keep the identity and branding very close to Hayden Homes (i.e. Hayden Help Center).