This site is laid out well, with a good blog, and a nice sidebar contact form. MLS type listings are prevalent, so home seekers in Charlotte, NC and bordering parts of South Carolina, will be pleased. Color scheme looks custom made for the logo, and there’s a good balance of information and graphics – very elegant layout. This site seems to have adopted, obviously for the SEO benefit, the URL: www.carolinanewhomesearch.com

Sweet alamode XSite from Sarasota, Florida residential real estate appraiser uses wordpress for blog. www.suncoastreappraisalservices.com – this site uses a great visual style matched to the background of the personal photo and the wordpress colors. Good use of localization, with coastal maps, (Sun Coast), and Florida scenes. The actual wordpress blog is here.

Nice descriptions of each type of appraisal service:

Whoa! The first thing that hits you when you land on this site is all the listings! The site is so heavy on listings, because the owner is actually more of a real estate purchasing consultant than the standard agent. He does what they do, but does more, and seems to work with just about any property. It shows in the site. On the rest of the design: Visually, it’s quite well localized, with skylines and images of Ft. Lauderdale real estate. The logo is professional, the dynamic listings a good use of space. We see a plethora of extra tools and lead capture methods. Navigation is uber-intuitive, clean, and gets an ‘A’ rating. The colorset goes with the South Florida atmosphere. One nifty feature: The “About Us” isn’t just a static page. Superbly organized with a mission-driven design. This one was put together by Daniel DiGriz, an Internet Marketing Consultant.

The new Waterwood Capital site is an example of a clean, crisp site without absolute minimalism. The navigation is extremely straightforward – there’s a flyout for commercial lending and one for residential lending, for commercial news and residential news. Other pages are mostly standard – everything is gathered under the right header. The table in the middle of the home page is a nice touch – click a visual example of the property type you’re interested in, and it takes you to a custom page for each. SEO is quite apparent. Use of color in the design is tame but still impressive. The red from the logo bleeds (intentionally) into the top navigation, creating a soothing backlit effect. This is an XSITE from a la mode, inc – and the designer is Daniel DiGriz of www.editgeek.com

I list Houston is the portrait of elegance. It’s layout is simple and sleek – flyouts on the left, single pages on the top. The home page is brief, to the point, and laid out well. The business’ services, coverage area, and owner’s name are listed right on the front. The site owner clearly has a grasp of salesmanship – his Real Estate 101 menu provides a quick education to prospective buyers and sellers. His “results for you” menu is a value added approach to services to his clients. Nice visuals, and a professional presentation.

This is a real estate agent xsite (alamode’s platform) by Gretchen Janzow, and built by EditGeek.com

The theme is creative, with animated dragon flies, and that fits with the overall personality evident and prevalent in the site, which focuses on international real estate, the arts, the environment, and Austin-area real estate. The site is certainly pretty to look at, given the agent’s photo on the top left. The navigation is more interesting than some we’ve seen, with both drop down and flyout menus. Even the arrangement of the logos/icons in the footer is quite stylish — an added interest to the footer is friendly-named links to key lead-capture pieces that also provide a high degree of service to the client. Search engine optimization is apparent wherever one looks. The color scheme is nice. You can tell some writing talent has gone into the site as well, and it demonstrates crucial organization forethought. Excellent site.

Colby Zeka’s web site (Gateway Mortgage) is a really strong, cool looking site. The black and charcoal corporate theme he has going is very clean and professional. Very subtle animation on the top border and photo are unobtrusive but make you feel that someone is home. The dynamic sidebar is clean – no cute widgets, just rates, a well-done photo, logo, list of what he does, and pertinent links with a smart additional link to his loan application. This site has EXTENSIVE news offerings, so it’s got a high degree of relevance, locality, and will update frequently which is great for search engine optimization. A number of lead capture forms flyout on a menu, which is clever. Nice “getting started” link with lots of options, including (again), the loan app. The word “confidential” tied to the free reports is good marketing. The blog has a crisp name (Zeka Blog) as does the domain. Great site, built on the XSite platform from alamode and designed by mixmysite.com. Visually, a work of art.

Built on a simple platform, the Aerofirma Office rests on the Starfield Technologies’ WebSite Tonight (used by Godaddy). Pity the poor web designer that had to crawl his way through that interface (not the fastest thing to work on), but the result is as fast as anything, so the user will never know. Keyword optimization on this one is excellent, as is the use of individual page descriptions and page titles. The meta-tags are key, as everyone knows. The overall layout of the site is simple and easy to use, visually impressive color scheme, and highly readable. It could use a front photo and maybe either a staff profiles page, or a fleshing out of the content of “Who We Are” with a staff photo. Other than that, nice, well put together site.

This site is a grabber – go to CertifiedMortgageOKC.com and you’re greeted with…. bold orange. The color scheme is really sweet, and it’s appropriate: this site has a lot going on. The information is ‘chunked’ – broken up into categories of flyout menus and sections of pages. The site is well equipped – FAQ, Blog, a whole lot of videos, a link to recommend other professionals with a referral form, a custom interview lead-capture form, a site map (good for search engines and for us geeks who don’t want to get lost, do want to see a big list on one page, and want to know everything on the site easily at a glance). The site will get treated well by search engines for relevance with its Oklahoma material (in many forms, lists – link pages – maps). The Other Professionals page could actually help with that, if the owner listed the business addresses of the recommended appraisers and insurance agents, since the town names and state would tie in. Nice animated top header, and the orange is perfectly and expertly balanced by use of the blue state flag! Very smart. This is another quite strong design built on the XSITE platform by a la mode, inc.

The color scheme and cool animated intro are probably the first grabber at MyOneStopLoan.com (Bright Mortgage & Troy Jones) – a site that never stops showing action. Even past the flash intro, you get complimentary colors, a fly-in company name on top and animated rates on the right. Navigation is balanced – some on the left, most on the top and right. It’s got that nice cockpit feel. Enhanced with very nice major city pages, each with its own set of links (excellent for search engines) and high quality photography, the site features a variety of associations with the owner’s locale. There’s also a flyout animated map and a hard county/town list (again a high search engine plus). The blog is photo-enhanced, and the site offers a series of Free Industry Reports that can be auto-delivered to the user on demand. Lead capture forms are heavily used on this site, to maximize hits. The loan application is accessible in a number of ways. There’s also video media. Fresh, attractive web design.