New to the board and business!!

[Capturemecute]

Hello everyone,
I have been lurking here for a while and wanted to say thank you for all of the wonderful information and ideas that you have all given me. On that note I have finally decided to take the plunge and start my own photography business. I would love to have some advice and a critique of my website. I just finished it and did it all by myself (no past experience). Please take a look and let me know what you think!!

www.capturemecute.com

Thank you in advance!!

Amy

 

[Big Mike]

Welcome to the forum and to the business.

You web site in nice and simple, it's not too cluttered and it gets the point across. You need more shots in your gallery but that will come as you get more work.

 

[jdunphy]

While I'm not a pro photographer, I am a website designer and developer.

There are some things I'd change about your site. The photo you chose for the splash page is great. I think its a nice example of what people could expect to see.

There are, however, a lot of things that need improvement on your site.

(In my opion...) Some problems:

1. The header text is too large. Its pushing that first image off of my page, and I run at a fairly large resolution. (1280x1024) I'd decrease the size of your header text.

2. I had to scroll down to see your navigation. You should make it as easy as possible for a user to navigate through your site. To do this, it needs to be visible on every screen and to be in the same place on every screen.

3. The background is distracting to me. I don't think the pattern is terrible, but you might want to edit the image and decrease the saturation on it. That's what I would probably do.

4. I would get rid of the marquee and find a different way to display your special. Marquees are sort of considered a "web design no-no" these days.


All of that said... Building websites will always be a learning process, and the next site you build will be better tha this one, and so on. I'd keep experimenting with some different ideas and see if you like the way they look. Don't be afraid to ask more questions about web designs. I'm sure there are a number of people on this board who would be willing to help.

 

[EBphotography]

Great post above.The marquee is a no-no because it just looks cheap. I also have an annoyance with multiple question marks. Navigation bars do need to be in the same place and accessible. Great start.

EDIT: I just realized something else! I can't read your pricing!

 

[niccig]

You have a nice site, but I have a couple other nitpicks:

The image you've used on the pricing page covers up the navbar
The text on the pricing and about me pages is really hard to read
All the of the page titles are "New Page 1", "New Page 2", etc

Also, the as you get more images in your gallery, you'll probably need to redesign that page to have different categories, ie "Children", "Families", "Birthday Parties" etc.

For a beginner site, it's very good! However, for a more professional looking site, I'd probably look at buying a template (www.templatemonster.com has some good ones) to keep the style and "feel" of the pages more uniform.