Advice Wanted on NEW SITE

[Renair]

I just want general feedback on a 7 day trial site I have.
My current ones costs me about €120 a year, the link is below.
www.themidwesternphotographer.com

My new one I am toying with on a 7 day trial is super fancy with flash and no possiblity or right clicking and stealing images. But it costs €408 a year to start and then €220 a year after that!
What do people think, honest opinions please:
http://webfarm.foliolink.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=16657&AKey=2C782FMS

Still under construction at the moment!

 

[Fiendish Astronaut]

In the first site, you chosen two images on the front page that are completely out of focus. Why? Click through and there are perfectly good sharp images there. Those blurry pics would get deleted staright away - they wouldn't go anywhere near my website, let alone the front page!!!

Plus the blue text on the black background doesn't stand out enough for me.

The second one could be good but there are improvements I would make. Firstly, there are no contact details (that I can see)! Secondly, when I hover over a thumbnail it enlarges in a way that stops me from then selecting the next one. Some of the shots are really good though...

 

[Renair]

Sorry Ben, I dont make the templates and so far I have no problems picking the image I want or putting it on slide show. Also as you probably read, its a 7 day trial site, I dont have a contact page at this time....

 

[AprilRamone]

I don't think the second site is intuitive enough to use to justify such a huge price increase. Plus, I have a flash site (everything except the splash page) and even though I love almost everything about it, I don't love that it's about near impossible to get it higher in the search rankings with just the splash page. So just make sure whatever site you do use has more html pages on it where you can put good content!

 

[Renair]

Search Engine Visibility with FLASH Websites

FolioLink’s FLASH movie web sites take advantage of the visual richness of FLASH technology while allowing search engines to index metadata and text content. All FolioLink FLASH website templates generate shadow HTML sites that are fully index-able. In fact, if a visitor comes to your FolioLink FLASH website without a FLASH plug-in the service will automatically switch to an HTML template that often times is very attractive. This dual design & technology approach made FolioLink the first service of its kind to offer flash based web sites with search engine visibility. And we mean visibility beyond the Front-Page… the FolioLink service continues to be unique in its ability to give full visibility to every page of your website including image keywords, classifications, text pages, portfolio opening pages and more.

 

[federerphotography]

In my humble opinion, starting with equipment is not a good way to go. The point is your images, lead with the photographs.

 

[Tomas Gun]

In my humble opinion, starting with equipment is not a good way to go. The point is your images, lead with the photographs.

I couldn't agree more, not being funny, but if your taking shots of celebs who's going to care if you carry a national geographic camera bag?
Don't worry about an equipment list, in fact trash it and replace it all together with a sample or two of your very best in order to hit it home that you can get the job done.
You have some very good work on the site, stunning to be fair, those pano's are top banana mate, I would say be more selective and only display images that you can't fault in anyway in terms of composition, clarity, punch and artistic license, if it don't blow your head off then no one else is left headless either.
All the best.

 

[Icon72]

I have to agree with the equipment list. Dump it. The majority of people come to your site to see your work. Unless they are fellow photog geeks I have to assume they could care less about your NIKON MBD200 Battery Pack etc.

I really like how quickly everything loads on the trial site. Whether or not the new package is worth the upgraded price is up to you alone.

 

[MichaelT]

Why do you have a web site?

The goal of my website is to make the phone ring or my email inbox active. It doesn't make any difference whatsoever how much it costs. Usually a simpler, more direct web site works better to attain this goal.

I do not find this evident in either of your web sites, so you may have a different set of goals. If your goal is to simply have a fancy web site, then spend the money! It's very pretty.

 

[AprilRamone]

Search Engine Visibility with FLASH Websites

FolioLink’s FLASH movie web sites take advantage of the visual richness of FLASH technology while allowing search engines to index metadata and text content. All FolioLink FLASH website templates generate shadow HTML sites that are fully index-able. In fact, if a visitor comes to your FolioLink FLASH website without a FLASH plug-in the service will automatically switch to an HTML template that often times is very attractive. This dual design & technology approach made FolioLink the first service of its kind to offer flash based web sites with search engine visibility. And we mean visibility beyond the Front-Page… the FolioLink service continues to be unique in its ability to give full visibility to every page of your website including image keywords, classifications, text pages, portfolio opening pages and more.

That's all very neat, but I still think the website itself was hard to use. I assume I have about as much patience as the next person and I didn't stay long enough on the website to see any images!

 

[Renair]

Some honest answers, well the equipment bit is there due to people always asking, but I will remove it, I will decide in the next day or two which site to stick with, I am going to concentrate solely on landscape, black and white and portraits from now on, so the new site might be better.... Thanks for the feedback.

 

[jkopp]

If you want an opinion from a webdesigner.... don't spend the money.

I could design a flash site that looks better than that for half the price...and just a one time fee.(you'd obviously need to keep up with the webhosting...$4/bucks a month or so). I'm sure you could find plenty of people to design something alot cheaper that looks more pleasing to the eye.

 

[Mesoam]

if you're actually looking for comments on the site design here's a few

Some people are going to have a hard time reading the blue on black font

The other weird thing was opening the gallery brought me right to the celebrities area. Perhaps a generic "select where to go" option would be better