Congratulations to Boston Magazine's "Best of Boston 2007" Home Category Winners

Boston Magazine's "Best of Boston 2007" awards are out. Each year, Boston Magazine invites Boston-area readers to nominate various companies for their "Best of" series. Based solely on consumer voting, the Best of Boston 2007 choices in the Home categories are a result of consumer confidence and experience.

HomeStars.com offers homeowners in the Greater Boston Area a community dedicated to shared intelligence and making home improvement decisions worry-free, while the Best of Boston 2007 awards takes the best of consumer-driven input to point consumers to the best services and retailers.

HomeStars.com congratulates the winners in the Home category:

Lavender Home and Table, for Best of Boston 2007 Bedding: http://www.homestars.com/companies/299619-lavender-home-and-table

Boston Design Center, for Best of Boston 2007 Bath Supplies: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318300-boston-design-center

Morrissey and Sons, for Best of Boston 2007 Electrician: http://www.homestars.com/companies/307933-morrissey-and-sons-electric

Tweeter CE playground Store, for Best of Boston 2007 Electronics: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318337-tweeter-ce-playground-store

Nurturing Spaces, for Best of Boston 2007 Feng Shui Consultant: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318338-nurturing-spaces

Furnature, for Best of Boston 2007 Furniture, Custom: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318339-furnature

Montage, for Best of Boston 2007 Furniture, Modern: http://www.homestars.com/companies/297394-montage-inc

Winston Flowers & Garden, for Best of Boston 2007 Garden Supplies: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318340-winston-flowers-garden

S+H Construction, for Best of Boston 2007 General Contractors: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318341-s-h-construction

Green Home Solutions, for Best of Boston 2007 Green Consultant: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318342-green-home-solutions

Call Phil Now, for Best of Boston 2007 Handyman: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318343-call-phil-now

Charles Street Supply, for Best of Boston 2007 Hardware: http://www.homestars.com/companies/308526-true-value-charles-street

Tiger Home Inspection, for Best of Boston 2007 Inspector: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318344-tiger-home-inspection

Kitchen Arts, for Best of Boston 2007 Kitchen Supplies: http://www.homestars.com/companies/289027-kitchen-arts

Wolfer's Lighting, for Best of Boston 2007 Lighting: http://www.homestars.com/companies/303849-wolfer-s-lighting

Coelho Contracting, for Best of Boston 2007 Painter: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318347-coelho-contracting

Landry & Arcari, for Best of Boston 2007 Rugs: http://www.homestars.com/companies/303595-landry-arcari-oriental-rugs-carpeting

Bliss Home, for Best of Boston 2007 Tableware: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318349-bliss-home

Piari Luna, for Best of Boston 2007 Home Accessories, Neighborhood North: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318350-piari-luna

La Petite Maison, for Best of Boston 2007 Home Accessories, Neighborhood South: http://www.homestars.com/companies/296960-la-petite-maison

Nesting on Main, for Best of Boston 2007 Home Accessories, Neighborhood West: http://www.homestars.com/companies/301775-nesting-on-main

Labels: Best of Boston awards, Boston, Home

Posted by Melanie Zoltan
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The $800,000 Teardown

I came across a real estate ad for a beautiful Toronto home today. Large, treed lot, seriously affluent neighborhood, good schools, and the ad assured us that "million dollar homes" were on the street. With the whole surrounding area clocking in at an average selling price of $977,777, I daresay that's right.

The 3+1 bedrooms, gas fireplace, and various amenities also sounded like comfortable living. The type of place that most ordinary folks would be more than happy to live in. Price tag: a doable figure for a "move-up buyer" at $779,000. With bidding wars, that pushes just over $800,000.

Then you notice the fine print, or at least, the serving suggestion. "Move in or build!". Yes, the realtor was hinting that this, like so many modest homes on oversized lots in established neighborhoods, is a prime candidate for a tear-down. Someone will spend $800,000 to haul away the previous owners' lovely home, and pour in another $700,000+ to build a custom job. Another "million dollar home" now on the street.

When you see stuff like that, do you wonder if it's all gotten out of hand?

Well, it's all relative, isn't it?

In high end real estate, it looks like all of the growth right now is at the lower end, the $1.0-2.5 million range. Outside of Manhattan, in bad times, the awkward, garishly expensive ones will move more slowly. But at the same time, in the most desirable neighborhoods, all the "low-end" stuff gets snapped up. According to a recent report, in Toronto's posh Rosedale area, no homes between $2.3 and $5 million are currently up for sale. There are a few properties available above that. (Especially if you want to go ahead and bid $6 million on someone's $2.3 million property... even if it's not up for sale. Zillow's "name your price" concept hasn't quite made it to Canada, let alone Rosedale... but I digress.)

As much as it's easy to be glib about what most all of us would probably do -- time and money allowing -- in terms of building a custom dream home on a lot we like (perfectly functional present structure be damned), it's still a bit hard for me to get past the idea that many of these existing structures are "perfectly good." The teardown concept feels extreme when the house being torn down is anything but a tawdry mess. Am I just a wuss, or wouldn't it just be nice if some family actually moved into the $800k place, and struggled along with the existing 3+1 bdrms, maybe putting a paltry $150k or so into upgrades and an addition out the back?

It's also worth asking: do people who tear down 4-bedroom homes, to build larger, sprawling, luxury residences, feel any sense of paradox when they then turn to a range of "green home" concerns? Do they feel like the elimination of the old place, and replacing it with a new, bigger (slightly greener) place helps the environment, or not really?

Anyway...

HomeStars users increasingly rely on word of mouth research to help them plan increasingly expensive jobs. Success stories happily show up often here in our "builder" category; I offer you just one example of a well-rated company, D-Cam. Our expanded "Credentials & Financial Information" section puts the onus on owners of construction companies to state their policies on things like written contracts, and which if any professional bodies they belong to. The reviews by you, our users, fill in the real-life feedback.

From the ordinary roofing job done for working people just making ends meet, to the million-dollar dream home plan, the stakes are high for the homeowners involved. When projects don't go as planned, the consequences at either end of the economic spectrum can be tragic. (Admittedly, this may severely test different meanings of the word "tragic.") Finding a good vendor shouldn't be about luck.

Posted by Andrew Goodman
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The Comforts of Home

This is just a tip of the cap to another company in the "home" vertical - AppliancePartsPros.com. They've combined a promotion with a unique good deed at Thanksgiving time. Called the "Comforts of Home" contest, it contributes care packages to be sent to U.S. troops overseas. A few bloggers are picking up the story.

If you really want to give the effort a boost, you can even Digg it.

Posted by Andrew Goodman
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Managing Your Online Reputation Takes Patience, Integrity

We were honored last week to find our way into an excellent piece by Lisa Stephens of the Globe and Mail, on the subject of companies managing their online reputations, especially in cases where they've faced negative consumer reviews.

Negative reviews are inevitable. They're also nothing new. In fact, a Google Search for the term "negative reviews" turns up 1.38 million results!

When it comes to reputation management, some business owners are still in denial. How about this cafe owner, who - stung by negative reviews on Yelp, a popular local business review site - posted a sign banning "Yelpers" from the cafe. Talk about compounding the problem!

There is, of course, such a thing as an unfair review or a bad customer. But the savviest business owners know that sour grapes won't help turn the tide of public opinion. By being proactive and open and courting an entourage of supporters who will be willing to drown out (or argue with) the negative voices, it's possible to come out on top.

Sam Decker, VP of BazaarVoice, writes about the importance of negative reviews in establishing the overall credibility of a site that incorporates user feedback. I couldn't agree more. I was recently a little disconcerted when I visited the American Apparel site, because of the presence of too many glowing, cheerleading reviews of its products. Some simply said "I haven't tried this yet but I'll be getting one really soon!" Poring over the various reviews, I actually felt like I'd be more likely to buy the product that had at least one negative or moderate review. Why? Because I wouldn't be as likely to suspect that the reviews are fake.

To boil the advice down to one point, I'd probably say that you shouldn't wait for negative "incidents" in online reputation, but rather, be proactively building that reputation all along. That means treating the online world as an extension of the offline word-of-mouth world... including, potentially, participating respectfully in the debate. Consumers are the kind of animal that can smell fear. Build confidence by establishing online reputation as part of your proactive, not reactive, marketing arsenal.

Labels: online reputation

Posted by Andrew Goodman
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Making Search Better (Part I)

Like you, I've been an avid search engine critic for years. When I don't see results I like - be it on Google or someone's ecommerce site - I squawk and complain like the next person. Sometimes I even fill out the feedback form (did you know you can click on "Dissatisfied? Help Us Improve!" after you do a Google Search, and tell them why you didn't like the results?).

In rare cases, I blog about how dissatisfied I am, or write an article about it. Obviously I'm more passionate about searching than most people!

So imagine my feelings when I had the opportunity to work on improving the search engine for the HomeStars site. Not as thrilled as I should have been! I thought it would be like getting handed the keys to a Ferrari. But then it dawned on me: I've been invited to the Ford plant and asked to improve the way they manufacture the pistons.

The history of information retrieval runs deep, but the history of web information retrieval has been short, and it has to be said, kind of funky. In either case, some of the people who designed very popular forms of search -- think Yahoo directory -- had no business doing so. If you're anything like me, you've had bouts of extreme satisfaction with information retrieval (I love Google Maps to save my bacon), as well as some years of extreme tedium. I sometimes think that my one main reason for specializing in democratic theory in graduate school was so I could just stick to the same shelf - JC 423 - in the stacks. I'd wander up and down those aisles, looking for any books I hadn't yet read. In the process, I discovered some pretty mind-blowing stuff. :) It makes me wonder if future generations will have a similar experience. I have to admit they probably won't, and it won't be the end of the world.

As imperfect as search is, it always improves.

In the case of groundbreaking technologies like Google, they've often been built on one big idea, and stabilized around the real-life improvements that come with tens of thousands of small refinements.

Search engines do their best refining their proprietary sorting recipes with the help of user data in various forms. Do people find what they need on the query "joe's plumbing" or is something messed up in the results? Feedback helps us improve.

Obviously when Google sifts through feedback, they are largely looking for the high-level stuff, like people being frustrated by not finding what they need. Search engines are businesses, not purists. While companies like Google are lucky enough to have a campus packed with people who can spend 20% of their time on pure discovery, the main thing they do would seem to be to obsessively check up on whether aggregate satisfaction scores are improving.

You cannot satisfy every single user for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is the "universal search box" concept. Search engines these days have trained users to just "go type in the box." That means no matter what kind of search, or no matter what intent behind the search, the sorting algorithm has to pull out the best possible information for that search, without really knowing who you are or what you want. So in other words, a fifteen-year-old typing in a query about an anime cartoon (Bleach) is treated the same way as a 43-year-old parent of four who is looking for info about Clorox. Search engines are only as good as what you put in!

And search engines are not mind readers (though they're improving on that score, through personalization). They're machines. The best ones can try to guess a little bit better from what you type, or where you're located. Failing that, they should at least work in a relatively predictable fashion.

Second, related to the "go type in the box, which is supposed to solve every type of problem" phenomenon, is the fact that people don't want to become better searchers. Search on Google has gotten so good, no one really expects to have to "learn to search better" anymore. And that's a shame.

Twenty years ago, the only folks doing any "searching" were pretty much undergraduates checking out the university catalogs, and the odd soul in the public library. The mainstream public started trickling through the doors in the early 1990's about when Webcrawler and Magellan were available on a text-based browser, and they came along in larger numbers after the growth of search engines like Yahoo and AltaVista.

Today, everyone knows how to "search"... sort of. Search has gotten so kickass good (ever since Google's cocky "I feel lucky" button) that few users use advanced search options.

So I guess we can forget the idea that the average person will bother to read the "instructions" on how to search better. So we, the search interface designers, just have to suck it up and make it work - as challenging as that can be.

This "Google effect" is similar to the bar-raising "Amazon effect" in online retail. In retail, if your shipping is expensive or checkout appreciably more difficult than Amazon's, you're dead in the water. It means all of the little guys have to work harder.

Luckily, we already know a fair bit about what people will be searching for within our database. It's different from searching the whole web.

In fact, compared with smaller more focused (sometimes called "vertical") search databases, the concept of searching the entire web is ... well... silly. The fact that Google has to go to such elaborate (and often inaccurate) lengths to determine which pages have "authority" and "relevance" is proof that the haystack they're helping you find that needle in is just too big. Billions of pages!

With only a few hundred thousand, or a few million, potential pages, the job gets easier. Vertical sites (like HomeStars) have their own industry-specific ways of ranking and rating stuff that is much more reliable because the community there is more dialed in on what counts.

Well, that's a heckuva preamble. I'll share a bit about what we're specifically trying to do to improve the search experience at HomeStars, in my next post on the subject.

Labels: search

Posted by Andrew Goodman
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