Website Layout Opinion

[thebledhrcfan]

Hey all, I was wondering what you might think of the layout of the photos on my site. www.asadmahmood.com ---I'm just beginning with this.
be honest please!!!!!

 

[PhotoSlip]

thebledhrcfan,

Good start to the site. I see you have chosen a few fonts and done some layout work.

However, you asked for an honest opinion. The site needs a lot more work.

Fristly, if this is a retail website, pay for hosting and get rid of the advertisements. Ads on your site reflect that you're not able to pay for proper hosting and consequently will affect your shops reputation and people will expect dirty cheap prices when they get to your storefront. A decent hosting service can be as little as $4 a month. You only need the basics.

The front page is unimpressive. It's quite empty and flat. The picture placed there looks like an amateur snapshot, not one to be used to present your store. Take some time and try to get a decent shot of the storefront with a nice jump (definitely eliminate the guy on the floor taking shots ).

When entering other sections of the page, the layout is better with the navigation and

Links on your site are loading up new pages instead of working with the original page already open. That needs some fixing. Look into HTML coding of iframes. Some of the graphics aren't working either. Also a quick fix.

The shots in the Prime section are quite nice. I especially like the shoe and board rack shots. Very nicely done and I think you should follow that quality of photos to present yourself. Also, optimize your photos for the web. At almost 100kb per photo, that is very large.

Example: pat180tail.jpg in your team section can be reduced to 20kb with no visible quality lost. This is important to have your webpage load up fast enough for people and also reduces your use of bandwidth which may be limited if you choose a lower hosting plan.

As you are in the business of an active sport, I advise some animation on your webpage through the use of Flash or animated .gifs if you're not familiar with Flash. Give your webpage some action.

Have you considered a product page? That and some news on your front page would be a good addition. Placing the products (with proper product photos) would be great to show what you sell and interest people to come visit your storefront. News, reviews, upcoming products, events pictures, etc, help draw people consistantly to your webpage. Unless you have enough new products coming out constantly, you won't have enough of them to keep people visiting your page. Reviews, and other articles will keep them coming to the page and eventually make them binge to buy that item they've been holding out on.

In conclusion, if you are planning on marketing your business with a webpage, you have to invest quite a lot into it or it is actually a negative impact. As you are probably focusing on a small area (those accessible to your storefront) a webpage may not be totally necessary to start. If capital allows, a webpage is great way to reach more people and get them to visit (with a properly designed webpage). If capital is limited, I have seen other businesses acquire decent webpages by approaching graphic design school students and having them do their webpage for next to nothing and agreeing to being a reference. You may also refer them to some paying contracts in return.

All in all, a great start to learning to make a webpage, but definitely not enough for a commercial webpage. Sorry.

 

[Jeff Colburn]

I agree with PhotoSlip.

I also felt that there was a lot of empty space on the Home page. You need to tighten things up here so people don't have to scroll down so far to see things.

Visit my site, The Creative Cauldron, at http://www.CreativeCauldron.com and you'll find over 30 articles about website design on my Articles page.

Have Fun,
Jeff