Critique my Website Pretty Please!

[AprilRamone]

Hello everyone...
So, I did a photography trade a little over a year ago with a website designer and the website he made worked fine as a place to show my clients my work, but I feel like there are a lot of things I want to change about it and so I am going to be working on a total overhaul this year. I was hoping some people wouldn't mind looking at it and giving me some feedback about what you like/what you don't like and any other type of critique you want to give.
I already have a huge list of things I want to change (putting some pricing info on there and adding some freaking meta-tags being top priority already) but thought it would help to get some fresh eyes to look at it before I start redoing it.
Thanks!
April
http://www.apriloharephotography.com

 

[Alex_B]

ok, the site seems to work with the Firefox-browser

i like the colourful framing, as it is ver distinctive from other photography sites.

sometimes however, the frame is a bit empy, when there are not enough images to fill it. there I would add acouple of more.

As for the images, most of them appear not very sharp, as if taken through a strong softening filter. If I was a customer, that would probably disturb me. So is this on purpose, or is it a problem with too much compression when saving for the web or lack of sharpening after resizing?

 

[Alex_B]

oh, and when i click on "about april" , there is an image and too much text for the frame and it spills out at the lower end.

 

[MACollum]

I like the look of your website. Many photographers use similar designs (not similar to yours but similar to each other). I like that yours stands out with all the bright colors. Portraits are supposed to be fun, not somber, IMO.

On your About page, you might try putting your links on a separate page. This would keep the page from being too long for the frame.

As for the overall look, your designer did a great job!

 

[AprilRamone]

Thanks for the feedback you guys.
Alex: I think the softening is because I must be doing something wrong when I resize or put it on the web. Maybe I should be saving as "Save for web?" In any case, when I redo it, I will definitely be looking out for that. Some of the other things you mentioned I already have on my list to change (i.e. the about me page being cluttered with links and not fitting right).
Mac: Thanks for the compliment on the design of it. I'm going to take credit for that because I specifically asked the designer to give it a Piet Modrian feel to it
Since you both liked the color, I think that I will still try to use bright colors in my redesign...
Thanks again for your comments!

 

[craig]

I feel that the design is giving a sort of "Partridge Family" feel. Kind of retro as opposed to modern. As always I think the question is what do direction do you want to see it head in? As a viewer the images load fast and are well organized.

 

[PhotoHeather]

My perspective (not a photographer but as someone with web design experience)... I would recommend making the font stylish and funky to match the theme but ensure they still maintain professionalism and readability. As of now they are a bit too flat and look more amateur instead of commercial.

 

[EFKEN]

AprilRamone, I pretty like your website, but it seems that your domain name is too long , jeje... Anyway, a great work you have done, I like the photos you've taken very much...

 

[AprilRamone]

Thanks for all of the feedback you guys. Craig, I hadn't seen it that way before so I'm glad you said what you did. In general, I want it to look more professional and just have more info in general plus it needs some behind the scenes help when it comes to SEO. However, I'm not wanting to go the flash route just because I like that my site loads quickly and most can view it.

 

[Tangerini]

Over all I thought it was quite nice. I would only recommend that you put somewhere on your site where you are located.

 

[craig]

I think Flash is falling by the wayside. Soon everyone will have a blackberry style phone. Pages will need to load quickly with only basic info. On the other hand phones will become more advanced so...

 

[ksmattfish]

oh, and when i click on "about april" , there is an image and too much text for the frame and it spills out at the lower end.

There are a few other places this occurs (babies gallery page).

I don't mind the bright, primary colored grid on the opening page. I wonder if it should be toned done, and made less dominant on other pages? I think you should definately lose it as a frame around the pop-up photos. It detracts from your photos. I could see how it would work with a particular photo or two (like teens, young adults), but not all of them.

When I'm clicking on thumbnails the pop-up box opens up to the size of the first photo I click, and then stays that size for the rest of the photos, unless I close it down. I don't think you should make people resize that box. It should do it automatically. Some people won't know to resize it. If you want people to close the pop-up before clicking on another thumbnail you need to give them a "close this window" button.

Even if you don't do all that, when I click on the thumbnails after the first I clicked, it loads the new photo in the pop-up box, but doesn't pop it up on top again. Everytime I click a thumbnail it should bring the pop-up window back out on top.

The thumbnails could be a little bigger, and still load fast.

I like the size of the pop-up photos, but they look pretty soft. Run unsharp mask or smart sharpen on the web friendly sized files at something like 100%, 0.5 radius (fiddle to your taste).

I'm not saying I know what I'm talking about, my website is simple because I don't know how to make it fancy. On the other hand, I often have clients comment that as they surfed many fancy, flash laden, slow loading wedding websites, they found the simple design, and easy navigation of my website to be nice. Remember, wowing them with your website isn't going to get you customers as a photogrpaher. Emphasize your photos, not the website.