|
As part of the Home Depot network of sites, HomeDepotMoving.com is the ultimate self-help meet DIY scenario: a meticulously well written and flash animated site that walks you step by step to how to make you house look great for possible buyers, how to orchestrate a move that would get Martha Stewart green with envy, and how to make your moving in as fun and effective as possible, so that you feel home and cozy from the time you first step into it. The site’s design is truly useful, with charts, slides, checklists and materials lists; however, the really awesome bit is the superb language with which ideas are illustrated: walls are ‘pristine’, patios have ‘pleasing curves’ and the useless trash that you usually keep in your garage become items ‘of questionable worth’. But even if you strip this site bare of its divine poetic style, you’d still have the interactive and multimedia features, like instructional videos (forget YouTube: Home Depot really has the dirt!), cost estimators for any possible home need (carpeting, grass seeds, air conditioning, etc) and even an eCard section where you can fix your own invitations to send to your relatives and neighbors to shut down/inaugurate your home. Taking advantage of all this stuff is free (go on, Martha, you don’t even have to be a Home Depot customer), but registered users get extra stuff and discounts in their purchases.