toastydeath
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cyberdyke said:Would you please elaborate on what you mean here "professional standards."
thanks
J
http://www.redhawkphoto.com
Sure. While DocFrankenstein bluntly nailed the image composition complaints I had, I really didn't elaborate on specific website critique. I felt the critique of the product was necessary before the delivery mechanism.
But since you ask...
Professional standard: What would you expect for $10k (USD) per page? Because that's what businesses pay, base price, for top-quality websites. It goes up from there depending on how complicated the website needs to be or what it's for (people to maintain it, etc). As was mentioned earlier in this thread, this does NOT account for the hundreds of thousands of dollars that need to be invested to get legitimate traffic. There are a bunch of user interface considerations and aesthetic elements that MUST be considered from a psychology standpoint in order to create a sense of trust and honesty with the people browsing a website. There are tons of papers and studies on this, and I won't go into that aspect of things. Good textbooks on web design and development will have it in spades, and I suggest your local public or college library.
Specific non-professionalism on the page in question:
It's written in a very informal tone. This presents the things being sold as amateur work, as the person doesn't appear to have the seriousness required to pitch themselves. This presentation style does not consider what the person wants from the service being sold, but instead pitches it from the viewpoint of the person selling the service. This is not a good way to sell something.
The background color is inappropriate and is in the same intensity ballpark as the white text AND the picture colors. The pictures have a wide variety of reds and oranges, and this contrasts very strongly against the stark blue background. The layout, in general, looks like it was done by someone just learning HTML. Looking at the page source itself appears to confirm this.
There are only 5 or so menu sections, and a gigantic title graphic that takes up a large amount of space (it draws the eye away from everything else, including the minuscule menu by comparison). One whole page is dedicated to a one-line copyright statement, and the contact information is a direct link to e-mail. E-mail is great, but businesses expect to be able to contact you via phone, and possibly send you letters in real life. This is common inter-business peeve (that I have unfortunately experienced all too often), and you don't want to **** the person off who wants to contact and buy stuff or services from you.
"Buy Image" is an awkward menu item to read, as it reminds me of a lemonade stand I once tried running as a kid. The gallery and "buy image" section are separated for no apparent reason. All the pictures in the gallery are on the "buy image" page. You have to find and view the image on the gallery, then find the image again on the buy page. You can't just browse and buy, because the buy page doesn't allow you to blow the image up. Even worse, the buy page is substantially different from any other part of the website.
Even worse than that, it's offered as low-cost commodity data file. No apparent print service, no prompt shipping, just some JPGs on a website for some money. I would expect to see a large, nice page about each picture. What print sizes are available, the framing available, the purchase option, and even a link to the contact page for additional questions or custom requests. For each picture. Let me say that again: A specific webpage for each picture.
Realistically, that means developing a database and a webpage fronted capable of delivering that.
These items seem like nitpicking to people outside computer science and web development/internet commerce, but they seriously affect how a person viewing a page interprets the information conveyed to them. It's like walking into a shady pawnshop versus a high-end art gallery.
This was mentioned before: You can't just learn some basic HTML and expect to put up a good commercial webpage. That was the state of affairs back at the beginning of the internet boom, and we've moved so far past that, amateurs can no longer compete. You need to spend serious time learning the visual standards used, as well as the programming languages and database packages available in order to even DREAM of running a successful webpage.