My New Site - Tried To Marry Modern w/ Professional

[ashfordphoto]

Well, I spent tonight making a website that I can send future clients to. Right now I don't have enough stuff to start selling ( I just started taking pictures in early Feburary) - but I wanted to get this ready since it is my goal to sell for people's enjoyment.

I tried to merge hip/modern/trendy with a professional site. Did I do okay? I don't know how to do any fancy photo galleries, and I'm not paying (right now at least) for a shopping cart - but I think I did ok. Let me know what you think needs to be changed.

www.andrewashfordphotography.com

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[oldnavy170]

Well I like the look of your website. I looked over your photos and you take some beautiful pictures for just starting in Feb. Anyways, you have a good start to your website.

[Sw1tchFX]

Looks great! what did you use to make the site, becuase I need to make one myself. I have people who are asking to see my work and I have nowhere to send them that has it all centralized. The only software I have that is remotely capable of making a site is Adobe Lightroom, but it can only do one page.

[ashfordphoto]

I used the free software from Yahoo - - called Yahoo Sitebuilder. I host through yahoo as well, just because it's cheap and easy. But I dont think you have to host with yahoo to use sitebuilder. It's kind of like putting together a powerpoint - nice and easy (however it limits what you can do so people that know what they are doing probably hate it! haha) But, it's easy and free.

Old Navy, thank you for the kind comment!

[ashfordphoto]

I should mention the Sitebuilder templates are fairly cheesy - so I did this from scratch and took me about an hour and a half.

[Jim Gratiot]

Hey, just a few picky comments:

1. On the home page, you have way too much white space below the color picture... basically, I scroll down to find nothing.

2. On that note, the entire site is very white... splash a little color around.

3. On the home page, I like the color picture better than the faded b/w picture... just curious why you didn't use the color one on at the top of all the other pages.

4. On your categories (about, photographs, galleries, and contact), I'm not crazy about the grey line that cuts through all of them.

5. When I go into one of the category pages, make sure you put a link back to the home page.

6. On the contact page, I'd put down a phone number, e-mail address and a mailing address... in addition to having people fill out a request for information. You could lose out on sales from lazy people this way.

7. I would not refer to yourself in the 3rd person ("Andrew Ashford is currently not showing..." should be "I'm currently not showing...") This will give the site a much more personal feel.

Hope all that helps... I do love a lot of the pictures you've got!

[ashfordphoto]

Thanks for all the comments Jim! I'll definitely be taking that in and thinking about what you said. I think I'll change that 3rd person thing for sure. I don't know why I did that