First impressions of FixSor.com are of a professionally designed web site. It's easy on the eyes and it's most logical feature considering that it is a local contractors finding web site, the search form, has the most prominent position on both homepage and most other sections. You can enter what you need contractors to do and your local zipcode. If it doesn't find what you need there is an advanced search form on the results page and you can also search without entering a zip code as it will then show all the results available for your job.

The homepage also shows the latest articles and resource & tips and an ad for contractors to advertise through the service. It also invites the visitor to write a review of the contractor, but isn't quite explicit about how can that be done.

Search results are accompanied by the five stars rating feature and can be added to various social bookmarking via the attractive round buttons, and also added to the "quick list" where they then display under a "View Quick List" link. They can also be sent to a friend. However the results also look a little busy with a lot of icons and links floating around. Perhaps it might be possible to group the rating and bookmarking features into a single caption so both the rating stars and bookmarking buttons would be shown below and "best service" and "best value" shown in place of the bookmarking buttons. Here is an example, where I also slightly increased the title size:

Of course this is just one possible way of streamlining the design of listings.

The right sidebar to the search results page looks good. There are three additional sections on FixSor.com two of which display the contractors in the database, residential and promotions. Each is styled in the same way except that the residential listing uses the green color scheme and promotions uses orange, which is a nice touch. Each has an attractive search box with tabs for searching by location and zipcode and further by category and/or country, state and city. The actual listing on the right might use a little more spacing between categories though so it's less condensed and somewhat easier to browse.

The articles section is pretty decent with categories on the left sidebar and listings at the center. It's just not quite clear what listings on the right represent that warrants their differing position from articles listed at the center. It's also probably unnecessarily placed in such a way to share the site's central column while the space on the right is empty.

The advertising section is pretty impressive and works well, with three ajax tabs for each advertising option.

Finally, the banner in the header might be a little too close to the menu and hovering it results in the bottom border that pushes the rest of the content below for a few pixels, which might annoy some visitors. This can be resolved by making sure the "a" and "img" CSS elements are subclasses of the "topBanner" element and then slightly increasing the margin of the "a" or "img" element and making sure the border is zero.

All in all it's a well designed site and the word is it's still in development so it's doing pretty good so far. While it's already aesthetically pleasing and especially fully functional, the above issues and suggestions may perfect the experience.

Design rating: 8/10

Focus:

There's no problem here. FixSor's focus is clearly stated on the homepage: "Find reliable local, Electricians, Plumbers, Carpenters, Builders, Roofers, Painters, Re-modelers and more..." and all content available is relevant to that purpose.

Focus rating: 10/10

Content:

FixSor.com is still being developed so the assumption is that it's still a young service. This may explain that many categories of listings are still empty which might somewhat impair the ability of the user to find what they want. There is a total of 57 listings though so there's still a good chance that among them there's something the user might need. Given the focus and great presentation of the site this number is likely to attract an increasing number of listings. There are multiple listing options and it would likely be beneficial for the home improvement businesses and contractors looking for jobs to get listed. Aside from showcase, premium and basic options charging an affordable price per year there's even a free option so the entry has really been made accessible.

That said, what still boosts the usefulness of the site is the articles section which already has a pretty good amount of relevant material, some of which is sourced and selected from article repositories, judging from the URL published below them. Some don't have a stated author. Most, however, appear to contain some useful home improvement material that seems worth checking out.

Content: 9/10