1. Project Name: Competitive Usability Analysis - Realestate Journal Reviewers: Satyajit Das, Siddharth Gupta. (Sep-Oct / 2006)

10. Navigation – REJ.com MAJOR ISSUE Issue Observation: Illogical categorization - A residential link is placed within the ‘commercial’ section. (under ‘Property Report’)

14. Navigation - Realtor.com Looking at the competition… Positive: Clear hierarchy and presentation of main navigation options. Number of primary navigation options is limited to 5. The horizontal navigation panel represents primary navigation options, while the secondary options are placed just below the main items. Vertical menu options on the left are page specific options that are in context to the selected primary option.

16. Navigation - Realtor.com Looking at the competition… Negative: Links to other sites not indicated / differentiated from within site links.

17. Navigation - Realtor.com Looking at the competition… Negative: The grouping of the items is inconsistent. ‘Real Estate News’ & ‘Local School Reports’ are links to articles. However, these are grouped along with ‘Tools’.

18. Navigation – Nytimes.com Negative: Clicking on ‘Great Homes’ launches a section with navigation + look and feel that is inconsistent to other site sections. Looking at the competition…

21. Navigation – Nytimes.com Negative: Although these are key topics, they are not part of main (persistent) navigation menu. They are only provided as content on the page body. Looking at the competition…

24. Interaction Design – REJ.com MAJOR ISSUE Issue Observation: These links to external sites open in the same window. This aborts the main application navigation. Recommendation: Links to external sites should open in new windows.

25. Interaction - Nytimes.com Looking at the competition… Negative: Overlapping of links leads to a cluttered appearance. This also makes precise selection difficult.

26. Functionality - Nytimes.com Looking at the competition… Positive: ‘ Search with more options’ provided along with simple search on NY Times Real Estate section.

27. Functionality - Realtor.com Looking at the competition… Positive: Content categorization and criteria on the ‘Property Search’ section is specific to the specialized audience. (Real estate buyers and sellers). This enhances ease of use, since it addresses specific requirements.

28. Functionality - Realtor.com Positive: Some customization features are available to users on login – Users are allowed to save Searches + browsed listings. (like favorites) Looking at the competition…

32. Layout – Realtor.com Looking at the competition… Positive: ‘ Articles’ is one section of the overall realtor.com site. The articles section of the site is free of links and navigation items that are not article related.

33. Layout - Nytimes.com Looking at the competition… Positive: Articles are presented in a uniform format (Article Name, Source, Summary) through the page, reducing clutter of the layout.

34. Layout – Nytimes.com Looking at the competition… Negative: No apparent use of grid to layout page content. Multiple alignment points create a cluttered impression.

35. Layout - Realtor.com Looking at the competition… Positive: Consistent alignment of headings reduce the clutter.

37. Layout – Nytimes.com Issue Observation: Extensive, dense page content, with no apparent hierarchy makes scanning and prioritization of content difficult. Looking at the competition…

42. Layout - Realtor.com Looking at the competition… Positive: The ‘Tools’ sections are specific to the section being browsed.

43. Layout - Realtor.com Looking at the competition… Positive: Critical tools are displayed upfront on relevent sectons, increasing visibility as well as reducing task time. (number of clicks.)

44. Layout – REJ.com Issue Observation: Inconsistent alignment of headings lead to a cluttered layout. Issue recurs across other screens. MAJOR ISSUE

45. Layout - Realtor.com Looking at the competition… Positive: Neat, uncluttered layout - Uniform presentation of headings and article names.

46. Layout - Nytimes.com Looking at the competition… Positive: Standard placement of ‘Search’ in a prominent location on the page body.

47. Layout – Nytimes.com Negative: Inconsistent placement of ‘Search across site sections. Looking at the competition…

49. Layout – Nytimes.com Looking at the competition… Negative: Index page of NY Times ‘Real Estate’ is very long and required scrolling a lot to get to the page end. Most of the page information is hidden below the scroll.

53. Visual Design – REJ.com SHOWSTOPPER Issue Observation: The submenus are likely to be overlooked as they are visually disassociated with the main menu. Besides, in some instances the sub menu items are hidden beyond the scroll. Issue recurs across other screens.

55. Visual Design - Nytimes.com Looking at the competition… Positive: Predominantly text-based navigation helps reduce the page load time.

56. Visual Design - Realtor.com Looking at the competition… Positive: Predominantly text-based navigation and page content helps reduce the page load time.

57. Visual Design - Realtor.com Looking at the competition… Positive: The secondary navigation items are visually associated with the primary links, thereby reducing ambiguity.

63. Visual Design - Realtor.com Looking at the competition… Positive: Different sections on realtor.com are visually differentiated through use of color. Besides, selected buttons / tabs are clearly differentiated from unselected buttons.

64. Visual Design - Realtor.com Looking at the competition… Positive: The site is rich in dynamic visual content – This helps capture and maintain user interest. Negative: However, this leads to high site load time.

65. Visual Design - Nytimes.com Looking at the competition… Positive: The site is rich in dynamic content which captures and maintain user interest. Negative: However, this leads to high site load time.

66. Visual Design - Nytimes.com Looking at the competition… Negative: Placement and visual representation makes some sections of the page appear to be related (part of) to the navigation menu and leads to visual clutter.

72. Labeling - Nytimes.com Looking at the competition… Negative: Date is not provided upfront along with the article name reducing credibility & interest.

74. Labeling - Realtor.com Looking at the competition… Positive: Label meanings are clear and indicate section content clearly. Negative: Generic terms that do not indicate destination clearly. - ‘Find a Home’ (Not evident that this includes sale and rent), ‘Home and Garden’

75. Labeling - Nytimes.com Negative : Generic terms that do not indicate destination clearly – ‘Communities’, ‘Great Homes’ Negative: ‘ Property Search’ – This term indicates ‘all’ properties. However, only residential properties are covered in this section. Negative : Generic terms that do not indicate destination clearly - Development Directory. Looking at the competition…