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

[tirediron]

I've just "gone live" with a totally revamped version of my website and I would really appreciate ANY thoughts, input, suggestions, or general critique on ANY aspect at all.

Thanks!

 

[snowbear]

I think it has a nice, clean design and the navigation is very straight forward. I did see one image that I thought had soft focus (the military medals). It took a few seconds more than "normal" to load most of the images, but that may be something on my end - I've noticed this off and on with a couple of other sites.

 

[tirediron]

Awesome, thank-you! You're right, that image is soft (motion-blur actually I think when I look at the hi-res version) so I will bin it. Not sure why the images are taking so long to load, but I will investigate that as well.

 

[snowbear]

It seems to be buffering them, but not all. the first one or two just popped up, but the others seemed to be buffering; not sure if it's because your end is not sending fast enough or mine isn't receiving fast enough. I'll look at them again, later, with other browsers to see what happens.

 

[Mully]

I like the site .... clean layout but ran into a problem ..... when I clicked on the large bar of images on the home page it goes to another page with the same bar at the top but there is no way out to go anywhere. You might want to look into this.

 

[MLeeK]

John, your prices... WOW.
The focus of the whole website seems to be words, not images. The images are small, hard to scroll through and hard to load. It's not smooth, fluid or really very flattering. Lots of big white space and words with itty bitty images.
The images you are showing are not designed to land you a portrait or wedding job. If I am looking for a portrait or wedding photographer I want to see images that reflect portrait and wedding photography. Not birding, airplanes, ships...
I'm going to say this and you'll know what I mean. You have images on there that you're way to emotionally attached to.


It takes me a long time to load a lot of those.

 

[Demers18]

I had the chance to look at your website and I found a couple things I would improve on.

1) your logo, when I view on my iPad it pixelizes on the curved portions, is it a vector done in .ai or is it a photoshop logo? If its a PS logo I would recommend to get it done in .ai, I could help you with that if you like, pm me if you want.

2) there are a couple places where I found some spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes. Yes they were part of your "feedback" from clients however I think it would be better to fix those mistakes as it makes you look bad.

 

[SCraig]

Your web site is an international portal for your work, however your prices don't say anything about travel limits. What if someone in the middle of nowhere wants your lowest price package? Might want to state a limit on mileage or a cost per mile over some limit.

 

[KmH]

MLeek said pretty much what I was thinking.

I was looking for family and wedding photos and wasn't seeing very many.

 

[tirediron]

Thank-you very much everyone; much appreciated.

First off, let me address the gallery issue. The short answer is: I don't know WTF is going on! When I first installed the software, it worked fine, but now it's slowed right down and I don't know why.

John, your prices... WOW.

Wow as in? Those numbers work for me.

The focus of the whole website seems to be words, not images. The images are small, hard to scroll through and hard to load. It's not smooth, fluid or really very flattering. Lots of big white space and words with itty bitty images.

Putting aside the issue of the gallery page which is something I'm working on, do you feel the whole 'site is too wordy and not picturey enough?

My "design theory" was simple, smooth and uncluttered. I dislike pages which have too mcuh of anything whether words or text. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

The images you are showing are not designed to land you a portrait or wedding job. If I am looking for a portrait or wedding photographer I want to see images that reflect portrait and wedding... I'm going to say this and you'll know what I mean. You have images on there that you're way to emotionally attached to.

Mea culpa! I know I need to sort that out, but damnit... I like 'em!

I like the site .... clean layout but ran into a problem ..... when I clicked on the large bar of images on the home page it goes to another page with the same bar at the top but there is no way out to go anywhere. You might want to look into this.

Will do, thanks!

I had the chance to look at your website and I found a couple things I would improve on.

1) your logo, when I view on my iPad it pixelizes on the curved portions, is it a vector done in .ai or is it a photoshop logo? If its a PS logo I would recommend to get it done in .ai, I could help you with that if you like, pm me if you want.

I will take you up on that!

2) there are a couple places where I found some spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes. Yes they were part of your "feedback" from clients however I think it would be better to fix those mistakes as it makes you look bad.

Hmmmm... thought I'd run those through spell-check, but I will again.

Your web site is an international portal for your work, however your prices don't say anything about travel limits. What if someone in the middle of nowhere wants your lowest price package? Might want to state a limit on mileage or a cost per mile over some limit.

I thought the "serving southern Vancouver Island sort of covered that, but I did totally forget to include travel charges, thanks!

MLeek said pretty much what I was thinking.
I was looking for family and wedding photos and wasn't seeing very many.

Yeah! I knew the pictures weren't the best choice, but... emotions over-rode common sense.

 

[Demers18]

Thank-you very much everyone; much appreciated.

First off, let me address the gallery issue. The short answer is: I don't know WTF is going on! When I first installed the software, it worked fine, but now it's slowed right down and I don't know why.

Wow as in? Those numbers work for me.

Putting aside the issue of the gallery page which is something I'm working on, do you feel the whole 'site is too wordy and not picturey enough?

My "design theory" was simple, smooth and uncluttered. I dislike pages which have too mcuh of anything whether words or text. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Mea culpa! I know I need to sort that out, but damnit... I like 'em!

Will do, thanks!

I will take you up on that!

Hmmmm... thought I'd run those through spell-check, but I will again.

I thought the "serving southern Vancouver Island sort of covered that, but I did totally forget to include travel charges, thanks!

Yeah! I knew the pictures weren't the best choice, but... emotions over-rode common sense.

It's not just the spell check, I will point them out to you this evening.
As for the logo can you send me your ps file?

 

[Ilovemycam]

It is OK. Your pix loaded for me and I got an old computer.

Good luck!

 

[runnah]

You need some optimization here. Your image file sizes are huge for the physical size displayed. For example "Krupke.jpg" is 145kb for a 272 x 432 image which is way to be. Ideally it should be around the 50k mark. This seems to be the case for all the photos.

Also don't use code to shrink the images to fit because that keeps them at a larger file size.

I also agree with the comments above about highlighting the photo more than the text. Using a different gallery player might help.

 

[tirediron]

You need some optimization here. Your image file sizes are huge for the physical size displayed. For example "Krupke.jpg" is 145kb for a 272 x 432 image which is way to be. Ideally it should be around the 50k mark. This seems to be the case for all the photos.

Also don't use code to shrink the images to fit because that keeps them at a larger file size.

I also agree with the comments above about highlighting the photo more than the text. Using a different gallery player might help.

D'ohhhhhhhhhhhh.... You know what? I think you may have just solved part of my problem. I thought the gallery software was actually resizing the images, I never even looked at the file-sizes. It is just doing a software constrain!

Thanks!

 

[runnah]

You need some optimization here. Your image file sizes are huge for the physical size displayed. For example "Krupke.jpg" is 145kb for a 272 x 432 image which is way to be. Ideally it should be around the 50k mark. This seems to be the case for all the photos.

Also don't use code to shrink the images to fit because that keeps them at a larger file size.

I also agree with the comments above about highlighting the photo more than the text. Using a different gallery player might help.

D'ohhhhhhhhhhhh.... You know what? I think you may have just solved part of my problem. I thought the gallery software was actually resizing the images, I never even looked at the file-sizes. It is just doing a software constrain!

Thanks!

Anytime. Let me know if you ever want some help. I run my own website design company and always looking for portfolio pieces and can give you a "at cost" deal.