So, I was cruising for expensive apartments I will never, ever be able to afford (side note: Since when is an apartment a "condominium"? Condos are, like, identical row housing by the beach. Not apartments.) and I came across this:
http://www.bensontower.com/http://www.pdxvtours.com/devans3/small2.htmThe abuses of webdesign, Quicktime, and Photoshop apparent here speak for themselves. So I sent the broker this email:
[BEGIN QUOTE]
To whom it may concern:
Please, for the good of your prospective tenants, the industry and all involved: Fire your photographer/virtual tour company. They are *terrible* at what they do.
Photography - OH. MY. GOD. The *windows* have HDR blooms around the edges. (Do you see how the part of the sky next to the window frame is a completely different shade of blue than the sky in the middle of the pane? The sky does not look that way!) The skyline is a vomitous mix of overly bright color that makes the buildings look like they were shot on a Kodak disposable camera and then photocopied a few times. Clearly, whoever took these photos does not know how to use Photoshop, or even when it is appropriate to do so. Perhaps they have heard that HDR can create more realistic images. Clearly they have not, however, learned how this is accomplished, because the only thing they have created is a mess. Looking out the window of your virtual apartment, I found myself wondering if the year could possibly be any later than perhaps 1987, which was to say the least incongruous given the flatscreen TV.
Virtual tours, in the software you're using for them, are designed to be more than just a simple 360-degree view. That little cursor that appears, that allows you to drag around the window? That cursor, when it is placed over a door, or a hallway, or something of that fashion, is designed to turn into a pointer that lets the user click to *move forward* into that room, or hallway, or whatever. The software then loads a *new* 360 degree photo, seamlessly, such that the user *feels like he is walking around the place* - hence, the term "virtual tour". The company you have hired has elected to completely ignore this immersive feature in favor of a drop-down box selecting various places in the penthouse. This is.... superfluous, to say the least, and criminally negligent, to say the worst. Not to mention that this dropdown box then leads to several useless pages, including a slideshow of photos (as a Quicktime video - why not a gallery?) whose aspect ratios are incorrect and an information page which contains no useful information. If it is vital that this content exist, couldn't it have its own link?
Fit and finish - the page title is "pdxvtours Plus Tour devans3", which I take to mean that this is the third plus tour that you, D. Evans, have ordered from this company. What? How is that description, accurate though it may be, useful to the customer in any way?
Seriously. For the good of everyone who works in the web design industry, or even the photography industry, fire your company (PDXVtours). They are the lowest commmon denominator. They are dragging down the entire profession by making this haphazard, slipshod work out to be excellent or even acceptable. If you and other real estate companies stop funding them, they will hopefully cease to exist. Such an event would be cause for celebration.
I will not further examine here the abuses to which your sales website subjects customers; among them are an asinine reliance on Adobe PDF and a preponderance of sales-related links which lead to external sites. (Perhaps you should fire your web designer as well?) I would suggest, if you wish to see what a really good apartment-sales website looks like, that you check out The Ardea (
http://theardea.com), which caters to a similar clientele but has an exponentially better sales site. Perhaps you could find out who coded it for them and hire that individual or company for your next property, because the individuals who are creating your sales material now are doing a disservice to your property: they're making it look much worse than I'm sure it actually is.
Thank you kindly.
-Mellor Suntiger
[END QUOTE]
(Yes, I actually signed it "Mellor Suntiger". It has a nice ring to it.)
By the way, the place I linked to near the bottom (The Ardea) is, while not as downtown as this, INCREDIBLY nice. Check it out.
Anyways. I felt like posting this exercise in snark for any of you who still listen (Does anyone except Wolf still read this?)
(Side note: Do I use too many parentheses? (Be honest!))