Great to see you on this blog. Please bring on domain people, as this is starting to become a Dave Platter myspace page.

We all want a challenger to REA. I am a fan of your portal, a superior website and one that my vendors consistently prefer to be on.

You link to a book above about good website practice. Tell me, how could you have released the adore website? It doesn’t appear technically advanced, and the area where operate is portrayed in a incorrect manner (north side of Sydney). Saying that, I believe there is a market for a prestige listings.
Will you be accepting feedback to get this fixed?

Sorry to shy away from your question, but I’m in technology and not in sales or product. My comments on myhome would always be of a technical nature and I assume that’s not what yo’re interested in?

Technically, I think their usability is going to go through a few more rounds before it reaches what they would be hoping for. Microsoft maps were a good call for them considering REA and Domain both use Google, and Microsoft are apparently talking about having oblique aerial photographs (as opposed to directly overhead) in Australian metro areas. I think their floorplans are presented really nicely too, and as a geek I like their use of Ajax, which makes the site much faster but means that page impressions become a difficult or meaningless metric (I think that is good too)

First thing I did on the morning they launched was sit my wife down and ask her to look at houses in our neighborhood, and I sat and watched her. She got really annnoyed at the same features / issues that annoyed Peter in his review, only much more so as she’s way less technical than Peter.

I think the myhome IA team would do well to read a book called “Don’t make me think” by Steve Krug.

(http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/0789723107)

Mark

Welcome to the blog. It is so good to have someone from domain here at last.

It will be great to have you contribute over coming months.

Tell me, from a domain perspective, what are your thoughts on myhome?

E

As you may be aware each State Government controls each real estate industry. Some vendors want their price hidden, some agents want people like you to have to call them.

It really is not up to REA or any other site to control this. I can understand your frustration. You should take this up with your local state government representative.

I agree totally.
Lets put my prospective buyers hat on now.
I get cheesed off on a daily basis when I use my favourite portal in Adelaide SA guess??? (www.realestate.com.au). When this site allows Agents to advertise properties for sale without full disclosure of full street address and appropriate pricing eg a “stated price”. This practice wastes my time because I have to contact an agent to find out this information before I even start my shopping. My time is precious! Agents in many cases do not get back to you, or take ages to respond.
If only the vendors knew this is happening, their propery listed with these agencies that do not do the right thing ethically by them.
Also the mapping function on this portal is useless if properties listed have no full street address stated. They do not register on the map.
In my opinion this practice needs stopping ASAP. Stop it http://www.realestate.com.au!
The most important customer is the shopper or browser looking to buy a property listed on the particular website. NOT THE AGENT advertising.
Commission paid to agents comes from buyers!!!!

And wlecome to our little community (not so little any more) but we still like any new visitors especially when they are prepared to share their views.

So feel free to let it all hang-out and share your ideas and opinions.

What a great place to discuss our needs and wants to the people in the portal businesses, as opposed to the sales people.

How brilliant to see someone from domain!

Thanks for the warm welcome I’m a technologist and so I would be the first to say that anything I say outside of technology is beyond my core expertise. Having put that disclaimer up-front, I’d agree with you regarding the usefulness of rss in Outlook 2007 etc. I also agree with you regarding the trade-off between usfulness and page impressions. If myhome gets any traction their new site will help make page impressions lose meaning, and that’s one metric who’s funeral I’d like to see.

we intend extending the rss feature a whole lot more, and I hope we pleasantly surprise you

Mark

Hitwise statistics are sourced through the ISP and as i understand they have no agreement with BIGPOND – so they provide statistics that exclude the use of the largest ISP in Australia (BY A LONG WAY).

For such an important segment you would like to think there was a solution on the horizon. (Alexa doesn’t really cut it – but is useful for anyone who wants to see graphically how far in front the big two are)

I would happily contribute to any group that could facilitate a better measurement for visitors within the real estate vertical.

Great to have you hear Mark and great to see Domain participating….

RSS: Yes I use your RSS feature everyday Mark and yes, you were the first to do it in Australia at this level, but take it further.

As example: At the moment I get a small thumbnail (in Outlook 2007) and a headline and description text, ADD the ability to have price, bed, baths, floor size and land size, this will save me more time (and all users) and may result in less visitors, but you will make it a better experience than it currently is (and I do like it)

Also as a member (because I know you cannot do this without me logging in) , how about trying (after I login) to have a full search criteria for me to create my own RSS feed.

When I say ‘me’ I mean everyone.

This feature already saves me time, but lets take it a step further to stay ahead of the competition, who will have this up within a week!

Great to see you hear Mark and welcome to all from Domain.com.au