Upad Should Have Come To Me Before They Launched Their New Site
Written by The Landlord on 04 Aug 2011I’ve mentioned a few times in the past that Upad were in the midst of overhauling their website with a fresh new design. I was told (by Upad) that it was going to be something spectacular to look out for. Being somewhat fascinated with all things Internet, I was eager to see what they would come up with.
On a sidenote. I only recently discovered that Upad are the market leaders (I had no idea) for providing a online tenant-find service for Landlords. I’m not sure how true that is, but someone mentioned it the other day. I’ve used Upad’s service in the past, and I was thoroughly impressed. I can’t comment on their new system as I’ve never used it, but their old system was brilliant. They clearly invested a lot of time and money into developing a great system for landlords. If they’ve improved on it, that can only be a good thing. Either way, they must be doing something right if they’re able to revamp their entire website and push their prices up and became one of the most expensive online “Tenant find services” that advertise on websites like Rightmove, that I’m aware of. A few weeks ago they pushed their price tag up from £69 + VAT to £99 + VAT with no added features. OUCH.
Ballsy move, especially since their rivals average around £50-60. But if they can get away with it, fair play to them. Here’s a full list of Websites that allow Landlords to advertise rentals on Rightmove.
Anyways, back to the point. A few days ago Upad launched their shiny new site. Was I impressed? I was more surprised than anything else.
Firstly, my main contact/lover at Upad (Sue, the Marketing Manager- she’s wonderful) was meant to give me a trial run/preview before launch! That never happened, so we’re currently going through a rough patch. However, they clearly could have done with my input, so it’s their loss, and I’ll be getting the last laugh.
Onto my second point. Their website was clearly built by sloppy web-developers. I’m probably going to be in the doghouse with Sue for this blog post, and I’ll probably need to order £1000 worth of gifts from Anne Summers to get our relationship back on track, but my comment can be justified.
Before launching ANY new website, one of the immediate check-points should be to check the website across all major web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Chrome) and different monitor resolution settings. That’s standard practise which even the most premature web-developers adhere to. Upad’s team of monkeys clearly forget the basics.
Now, back to one of my initial points as a reminder- Upad are apparently the market leader’s, they shouldn’t be making schoolboy errors like that.
The website looks OK in Internet Explorer and Firefox, but in Google Chrome (one of the fastest growing web browsers), it’s barely readable. Jesus Christ. If you open the website up in Google Chrome you’ll know what I mean. Here’s a screenshot anyways, this is what I see…
(click to enlarge)
Fuck me sideways, am I drunk/high? The text is all blurry, on every damn page. The most severely affected sections are the areas where there is purple font on a grey background. It literally feels like I’m long-sighted when I look into those areas. I can’t believe a web-designer came up with that colour combination. Oh, the horror. Is it also blurry and/or difficult to read for you? Please confirm!!
Do any of you remember those “Magic Eye” posters from the 90′s? They’re blurry at an initial glance, but when you focus your eyes, a silhouette of an object appears. It reminded me of those posters, only Upad’s website never returns a magical silhouette, everything remains a blur no matter how hard you focus. The only places where words are readable is where they’re actually an image.
The website is more readable in Internet Explorer, but I still think it’s a bit too blurry. They definitely screwed up the fonts here. This may not sound like a big deal, but a website that isn’t readable may as well be rendered useless.
Why does it look like shit? They didn’t use something which is known as “web-safe” fonts. It’s not a difficult fix, but it is a stupid/amateur mistake, like putting your left shoe on your right foot. Albeit, a mistake like that should never have gone unnoticed and unleashed into the public domain. I did make Upad aware of the problem via Twitter a few days ago, and other Tweeters agreed with my analysis, but Upad have yet to resolve the issue. I personally would have fixed the issue immediately as it’s probably causing a lot of their users problems, especially the elder generation. I wonder what the hold up is.
Besides from that, the new site looks decent, nothing revolutionary though. Minus the font issue (which I hope they fix soon), I’m sure their service remains fab. What do you folks think about the new website?
What can Upad take away from all this? Next time give me a preview, fools! I was willing to go through the website with a fine comb for free. £150 fee now! :)
For everyone else in the tenant-finding space, you may as well capitalise while Upad have crazy high prices and a website that currently looks like steamed shit! POW!
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18 Comments - join the conversation...
YesAdam, do me a favour, please! Make sure you set up an affiliate programme, so webmasters can earn a commission on sales they provide you!!
When is your website launching?
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Before, it was sorta like shouting :)
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The text is poor and is the main thing letting them down. In addition to the font, the web designer clearly hasn't grasped the correct use of contrast between body text and background.
School boy error!
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The last time I spoke to the guy who supposedly owns Upad, he told me the prices had to increase due to the capital they've used to revamp & 'improve' their business.
In effect everyone's paying 30 quid more for a crap website! Lovely!!
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There must be a flaw somewhere because obviously it doesn't work sometimes on various browsers...
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However I know through personal experience that Milton Keynes is huge for rentals but upad only have 2 properties up as opposed to Righmove which has in excess of 500 at this moment in time.
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Darkening the font did help, but it's not a solution. They need to change the font type. Not sure why they're flapping around with this issue. Seems odd.
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Looks like they're using some kind of weird method to deploy the font. As someone else spotted, the font suddenly changes when the page is loaded, and it clears up. However, they haven't managed to fix the issue in Google and Safari, as the font never clears up in either of those browsers. So far it's only looking OK with Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Mind you, still not convinced by the purple on grey background colour combination.
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thanks - will keep watching.
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Bet you feel shit now don't ya.
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