What should a realtor site really look like?

Well i've been extreamly slowly making http://www.tricityhomesandrealty.com/
(not because on my part.)

Click on the realty division to see some of the work.....

Anyways.... I was never really sadifide with the site. Being that its my first one I really made. I took a photoshop class after I was about 3/4th the way threw. Now im done with the class and im more farimlaire with it and more confortable.

What would you suggest? I want the site to look extreamly proffestional. Colors dont really matter but the "offical" colors of the company are the ones displayed on the site. (Green, black, and white.)

I've played around with photoshop for about the last 6 hours now with different designs and **** and I cant seem to make anything that looks proffestional yet to simple.

And at 10 bucks an hour for my first webpage I need to spice this thing up and make it LOOK like a 10 dollar an hour webpage. The site still needs alot of text and stuff on the relator side and nothing is done on the construction side.... Buh oh well.

Excuse my spelling its 1 AM and i want to go to bed. Thanks.

Basic elements usable on a website of comparible professionality include:
-fades
-strict color theme
-lack of unused space
-graphics and text to the pixel (meaning without blur or distortion)
-an easy to locate and use navigation
-a header with title that is attractive

Though these things can be followed to the tee without a slick website being developed, some sites also lack spice. Be sure to use variations to the suggested above in moderation if at all.

Best of luck.

well my site has all of thouse... Then why does mine look..... unproffestional

Um .. no it doesn't , notice all of that green space, so much space all over the page, all unused.

Hire a professional developer & designer! Playing with Photoshop and Homestead SiteBuilder LPX doesn't help, you have to know how to use the programs to get good results. $10/hour for a site, someone is obviously ripping you off or you have no experience; I'm guessing the latter... just noticed the "since it is my first web site" remark. By the way, it does look like a $10/hour web site.

Post your site in Website Critiques

Do some research on good site design.

Thanks for being a total asshole.

1. drop the counter
2. way way to much bg, maybe add a border with coloured fill etc to have the bg as a bg and not a main fill.
3. add a back to top link @ bottom of the page
4. Encoperate the logo with the navigation a little better

1) You're too worried about the logo. It's too big, and it's setting up a huge area on the left hand side that you can't do anything with. You don't have to maintain all that space underneath the way you do. On the home page, especially. Find a way to work in into the top of the page, so you don't feel like you have to preserve so much of the left hand side of the page.

2) Green. Lots of green. Makes things... greeen. Maybe the top should be as tall as the logo, and it can be green. Then the background of the body area, where text goes, can be a light color - even white. I'm a big fan of plain old white backgrounds. It makes your photos true color and your text readable. But you can solve problem #1 and #2 at the same time if you rework the top of the page in green and treat the body area separately.

3) Scrap the counter. It screams of an amateur. Whoever hosts the web site should be able to provide traffic statstics separately.

4) You need a "home" button. There's no way back to the home page from any of your sub pages. At the very least, the logo should be clickable to go to the home page.

5) Work with your client. Bend over backwards to make sure they like everything you're doing, and work hard to improve anything they don't care for. You're clearly new at this, so your strength isn't going to be your seasoned design work. Your strength COULD be that you'll go the extra mile, put in extra effort, and make sure the client doesn't feel cheated while you learn web design.

6) Spend a lot of time looking at other sites and teach yourself why they work or don't work. A lot of the problems you're encountering are solved for you on a lot of web sites that are out there right now. Look how other design problems are solved and learn from your peers.