Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of lossiemouth
lossiemouth

asked on

Should I use PDF downloads, to give my customers, details of the Property/ Real Estate?

Regards,

I reside in Scotland where property buying and selling is done through an Estate Agency.
So I apologise if the termanology is not familiar

I am new to web site developement. I am a self taught student and this is my first endevour as a trial website.

As a trial, I am developing a web site for fictitious estate agency firm.

I have seen some Estate Agency sites, which display a brief summary of the details of a property and give the user a "click on the picture" opton, to download property details.

However, these are in PDF fomat. So the user has to have acrobat reader and has to go through the trouble of giving email address information etc etc. Then go to outlook express, to view the property details.

I must admit, that if I was a customer, I would want to use a quicker method to see the property details straight away and not have to mess about with emailed PDF files.

I was thinking more along the lines of providing a web page for each property. i.e. I provide a button  "click on the picture", and I redirect to a static webpage which has all of the particulars (Picture, details etc) of the property concerned etc etc.

Is there an advantage in using PDF?
Perhaps, as an option, it is less expensive as I would not be using my web server to store all of the property particulars. Images and text.

or would my idea be a better solution?

Does anyone have any ideas on this ?

Any thougths or remarks would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Avatar of duz
duz
Flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland image

lossiemouth -

A good real-estate agent site will not use pdfs.

There is an almost perfect property site that I contrast with many flawed property sites in order to demonstrate to prospective clients how designing for usability is preferable to designing to the clients concepts.  It so happens that they are a UK company but with offices in the US. Well done the Brits!  Here is the url of the UK site http://www.foxtons.co.uk

- duz


Avatar of lossiemouth
lossiemouth

ASKER

Thank you Duz.

I had a look at Foxtons site and I must say it is very professional and impressive.

However, I see that they also use PDF's to display the full details to the prospective customer.

I am unsure why this should be. Surely, it is just as easy to reponce.redirect to a WebPage which contains the full details rather than messing about with PDF.

Perhaps, the quality of the PDF images are better ?
Perhaps it is to allow the customer to print the schedule?

Thanks
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of duz
duz
Flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Duz -

Sorry if my first post was confusing :-)

Yes, printing the schedule details must be important to a potential buyer.

My problem is, that I was was hoping to avoid learning how to provide PDF.

Guess I am being lazy.


 
lossiemouth -

>I was was hoping to avoid learning how to provide PDF.

Understood :)

If you are developing in PHP this is the best product by far http://www.pdflib.com/

- duz
If there are images involved, PDF will download much slower than having all the content hosted on your server and having the email message draw content from it. I haven't seen any domestic US real estate sites use PDF in showing housing details.
Thanks duz and cogitate4u

I am using visual studio vb.net.

I will now start researching how to use PDF.

Thanks