COMPANY: Rhode Island Association of REALTORS WHERE TO FIND IT: www.riliving.com
CRITIQUE: This web site combines new technology and old school Web sense (if the medium of Internet can be old enough to have an old school) to form a comprehensive, yet sometimes cluttered, interactive visit. Equipped with exciting features such as a “360° Tour Gallery,” and a “Mortgage Calculator,” riliving.com is user-friendly and user-ready for anybody in the market for buying a house.
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NAVIGATION: Getting around the pages of this site (viewed on Internet Explorer version 4.0) is easy because of the permanent menu on the left quarter of the page. But getting around the pages of this site is also difficult because of the permanent menu on the left quarter of the page. Displayed on every single page, it takes up too much room, and there is nothing that tells the viewer where he or she is, such as the letters of the selected link being illuminated. And since this page was designed in frames, the URL of riliving.com never changes, to alert the viewer of what page he or she is on.
The benefit of this bar, however, is that if you steer off track, you can always at least go back to that gateway link of the area you just left by using it.
USEABILITY: All facets of this site work well, with the exception of a few bum links, which is not always the responsibility of the main site. The RIAR cannot be expected to check to make sure the Fleet Skating Center link is up at all hours of the day.
The prize-winning feature of this site, of course, is the “360° Tour Gallery.” After clicking on a property and reading about its location, you can click on the “iPIX Virtual Tour” icon, which will link to a rotating camera in the middle of selected rooms of the house in question. Not only does this feature work very well, it also provides the option of going slower or faster, or switching directions, if you think you saw a certain nook in a house that was of particular interest, and would like to look again. The official name for this technology is the iPIX Panoramic Virtual Tour.
DESIGN: Although invaluable as an information source, there are some problems with the design of this site. Upon entering the riliving.com URL in the browser, a very busy homepage appears. There are dancing numbers, that obtrusive navigation bar on the left, and there is a different banner ad with each visit on the top of the page, as well as a display of all of the subsequent pages’ banner ads on the side.
If your monitor is smaller than eleven inches, you have to scroll from left to right to read all of the text.
There are over forty links available from this one page alone. And most of them are repeats. The links for “Showcase Homes,” “Contact a REALTOR,” and “RI-The Ocean State” are all listed three times on this page.
CONTENT: The enormous amount of information on this site is one thing that is right on. At times it may seem like overkill, until one considers just for whom this site was designed: homebuyers. If somebody is planning on making an investment this great, that person wants to know as much as possible about saving money, and the background of the property, the community, the surroundings, etc.
In addition to the actual house listings, which is probably the most valuable service that this site has to offer, are helpful articles archived under the “Buying & Selling Tips” link. There is an index of local businesses related to home owning, such as mortgage lenders, home inspectors, appraisers, heat and fuel providers, etc. under the “Real Estate Services” link.
Also helpful is the “Contact a REALTOR” link, which provides information on the distinction that makes a real estate agent a REALTOR. The text explains that the term REALTOR is a registered collective membership mark to signify that a real estate agent is a member of the National Association of REALTORS.
The site also gives access to a consumer view of State-Wide MLS, Inc.’s real estate listings. One may think that real estate agents may fear for their jobs with technology such as this. This is not the case, however. With a REALTOR assigned to each property, this site is simply like viewing the real estate section in the Sunday paper, only with A LOT more information.
WHO CREATED IT: REALTOR Communication Services (RCS), Inc.,
