My new website - your critical review, thoughts, input, suggestions, ideas... Please!

[tirediron]

Sorry, I don't much care for the design. Looks to armature to me. The thumb nails are far too small, IMHO.
I would recommend taking a look at the photography based themes at Elegant Themes like These .
Just my .02

Cool - thanks for the input and the theme ideas, I will look at those this evening. BTW - what browser and what version are you running?

 

[tirediron]

Ooohhhh, I get to be the first one to bash your bio pic.

Seriously though, it may be you are in your comfort zone, but put on a pair of trousers in lieu of the jeans. And you know better than to strut football shoulders.

You couldn't have just kept your yap shut, could you???? I was getting away with that.... even Keith and MLeek hadn't said anything. Thanks!!!!

It's so microscopic that us OLD people couldn't see it enough to bash it.

Really, John, do you wear glasses? Because you do have every image on there very small

No, I don't. Could you e-mail me a screen capture of the whole page when you have a moment? That image is 320x320, which, unless you have your screen resolution set to about 9x7 billion, should be reasonably clear...

 

[MLeeK]

 

[tirediron]

"This image or video is no longer available"

 

[Judobreaker]

Ok, I'm gonna be a good boy now and post in the correct topic. ^^

Like I said before: Your pricing pages seem to be empty.

LOL - fair enough. Yes, the pricing pages are empty right now; I'll have that fixed today. I need to take a couple of hours and re-do some math, so I took the easy way out and just "turned off" the pricing until I can get the right numbers in place. As for the design not being appealing - what sort(s) of things would make it more so to you?

Ah that explains.

As for the design:
Right now it kind of looks like a few floating elements in white space. Sure they're arranged properly but it's still all floating a bit.
That's mainly because you've got a plain white background and nothing more.
You'll have to remember that people like slick and flashy even though you might not always like that.
People also like fast loading websites. If a page takes longer than 10 seconds to load you've lost half of the visitors.
The best websites have got a nice slick design with fast loading times.

What you could try to do is use different shades of gray to separate content from background.
A good slick design doesn't need drop shadows, full gradients, loads of images and/or moving flash (probably the worst)... Sometimes it is just as simple as choosing a few well matched colors and creating boxes in those colors.
The colors can be done with simple background colors in html/css which won't really affect loading time at all.

In my website for example I've used 6 images for the layout. One loading icon which I use for the gallery when loading a new image, 2 ball images for the slideshow on the front page (just below the photos, one selected and one unselected version) and 3 buttons for the gallery (back, forward and menu).
All of them put together that's 90kb of disk space.
Yet I've had quite a few people tell me they really like the design... While I just kept it as simple as possible.
It just took me some time to choose the correct colors and match it all together.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that the way you've arranged the website isn't necessarily bad, but it just needs a little extra graphical work.

 

[tirediron]

...Basically what I'm trying to say is that the way you've arranged the website isn't necessarily bad, but it just needs a little extra graphical work.

Input very much appreciated, and I see your points. (BTW, you have some stellar images, esp. some of the macro work!) HOWEVER, having sought input and reviews from a number of NON-photographers (No, not family and friends!) they all seemed to appreciate the simplicity of the 'site. As well, with my previous 'site, (white on black) I had a number of people comment that while it was visually appealing, they found it hard to read. I'm by no means finished, but I do intend to try this basic layout for the next little while and see what the general public has to say.

 

[Judobreaker]

Thanks. ^^

It's probably possible people will like it, it's just my gut saying it could be better.
It might work though and if it does, who am I to complain.
As long as you get your customers, right?

 

[tirediron]

That's what it's all about!

 

[Robin_Usagani]

Seriously man.. just join Zenfolio or Smugmug. That's what I did. If you do custom website, either pay someone who really know what they are doing, or just use services like Zenfolio or Smugmug (many other). While I do plan to do "custom" website one day and hire a website wiz, zenfolio is perfect for me right now. Eventually the zenfolio will just be a client proofing page. What you did on your website is just not up to par to today's website. Look very outdated. Maybe it was done 10 years ago.

 

[tirediron]

Appreciate the comments Robin; yes, at some point I will hire someone to actually build a custom 'site from the ground up, however, at this point, I have better uses for the money that would take. I realize that this 'site doesn't have a lot of flash or glitz and that's intentional. In that aspect, it's a reflection of who I am and I feel that is important.

Interestingly (as alluded to earlier), almost all of the "not positive" (I don't want to use the word 'negative') feedback I have had has been from photographers. On the other hand almost all of the non-photographers I have asked have reviewed it favourably. That said, there are still some things to be done to it. We'll see how it goes I guess.

 

[Robin_Usagani]

yes, hiring someone is expensive. How about the services I mentioned? I pay $120/year for zenfolio + maybe $8 for domain name/year. I use google apps to host my emails. So that is less than $130 a year for website hosting, website that can sell prints with profit, online back up!

 

[tirediron]

Nothing against them, but right now, this seems like it will meet my needs, at least for the immediate future.

 

[Judobreaker]

Seriously man.. just join Zenfolio or Smugmug. That's what I did. If you do custom website, either pay someone who really know what they are doing, or just use services like Zenfolio or Smugmug (many other). While I do plan to do "custom" website one day and hire a website wiz, zenfolio is perfect for me right now. Eventually the zenfolio will just be a client proofing page. What you did on your website is just not up to par to today's website. Look very outdated. Maybe it was done 10 years ago.

Nothing wrong with doing it yourself if you know what you're doing. ^^

 

[MLeeK]

Seriously man.. just join Zenfolio or Smugmug. That's what I did. If you do custom website, either pay someone who really know what they are doing, or just use services like Zenfolio or Smugmug (many other). While I do plan to do "custom" website one day and hire a website wiz, zenfolio is perfect for me right now. Eventually the zenfolio will just be a client proofing page. What you did on your website is just not up to par to today's website. Look very outdated. Maybe it was done 10 years ago.

I pay a whopping $5 a month thru Portfoliositez. I don't do any proofing on line, so I don't need anything more than their absolute basic service!

 

[tirediron]

Seriously man.. just join Zenfolio or Smugmug. That's what I did. If you do custom website, either pay someone who really know what they are doing, or just use services like Zenfolio or Smugmug (many other). While I do plan to do "custom" website one day and hire a website wiz, zenfolio is perfect for me right now. Eventually the zenfolio will just be a client proofing page. What you did on your website is just not up to par to today's website. Look very outdated. Maybe it was done 10 years ago.

I pay a whopping $5 a month thru Portfoliositez. I don't do any proofing on line, so I don't need anything more than their absolute basic service!

The last of the big spenders!