Critique on my website?

shieldz

shieldz

Suspended / Banned
Messages
79
Name
Phil
Edit My Images
Yes
I have built my own website, and I'd like peoples opinions (sorry if this thread is in the wrong place)

I wanted to go for something simple, and easy to navigate. I am pretty happy with how it looks, but I feel that there is something missing, I just can't quite put my finger in it (I don't just mean content) :thinking

http://pfs-photography.co.uk
 
Last edited:
My first impression is that the pink text on a gray background clashes. The business logo is centrered but the menu is off-centre, then the first tag line cuts off on the second line.

I want to click the photos on the homepage expecting them to take me somewhere.

About page: the image of the sea doesn't seem to bear any relevance? What has a close up of some waves got to do with you seeing as it's on the about page? I photo of you would be better, or something photography related such as a camera, although that's a little bit of a cliché. The quote, the punctuation doesn't seem right and Lagerfeld is a little freaky looking if someone decides to google him

Gallery: photos are too small to bring any wow factor. I would lose the assorted section and stick to a small range of photography types.

Testimonials: some dodgy word wrapping going on there with the second one. The margin from the right side of the photos needs to be more.

Contact Page: Borders are all messed up, the top menu has its own border which doesn't line up with the photo, but then the contact section underneath spans out wider. The comments box is a little vague, I'd look to having specific question boxes such as what type of photography are you looking for, when, etc.

The biggest thing is the colour scheme.

View on IE9, hope this helps?


Cheers
 
I like the idea of the website, one big thing that stood out for me is the logo on the images, i understand its to stop people using them, in theory, but it sort of distracts from the point of the website.

Coming from a web design past and owner my own business in design and marketing, I would personally make it slightly bigger to fit a little closer to the 1024px, I know this is getting old hat now as people are getting larger resolutions etc but it always pays to design to these standards or use dynamic layout which expands, shrinks to screen size. The colour scheme is nice however I would most likely use black and white on all images on the home page to bring it in line with the gray background colour, I would also keep the logo left rather than in the middle, middle logos feel a bit like word and centring the text. my reason behind this, your eyes naturally read top left, this being the most prominant area, then display the next most important info and so on, you get about 5 seconds to impress a potential customer. 5 seconds isn't very long.

I had a client who would not listen to me what so ever, his site took 25 seconds to load and he was happy with that, your website needs to load pretty much instantly on all connections. this is hard for a photo site as it will be loaded with images. but its worth a thought when editing images for the website.

I have tested this on a ipad/safari and all works great, however as mentioned I was kind of expecting to click the five images.

Marketing wise, your homepage title needs to be more specific than just “home” things to think about, what is the aim of the site, whats your target keywords, think of your website like a hardback book, you read the title first and then a description, you need to say it all in a to the point way while keeping your target keywords intact, but without spamming your keyword.

In my personal opinion a lot people in the design industry say dark websites don’t work, however they do its just how you work the darks. I like what you have and would develop this further.

Remember a website is never finished.

Hope this helps
 
Last edited:
This sentence contains different fonts, which looks odd:

Welcome to the website of PFS Photography - St Helens
Click to expand...

Page title is 'Home'.

This text is redundant:

Please feel free to browse our website. If you have any questions, queries or want to book an appointment, simply go to our contact page and we will respond to you as quickly as we can.
Click to expand...

Also doesn't have any <h> headings.
 
Last edited:
The photos should be bigger and be your absolute best. Even on the small picaresque there's evidence of subject movement.

The pink on grey looks a little dated, as does the amount of spot colour.

The galleries work weird on the iPad, I'm still not sure I've seen all of what you intended to show.
 
your selling a service.. 900 quid for a wedding.. Thus I would lose this bit in your about : "Although I am relatively new to the world of professional photography"
 
On 2nd thoughts, as a website, start with:

What's it for?

Then think about how to achieve that.

At the moment, it's still a 'this is who I am and here's some pictures' site.

If its supposed to be a shop window, it needs to work much harder, clue; where are you? Where are you selling services? Read up on SEO, and more general marketing stuff, then some design stuff and look at some of the better wedding photographers work.

There's enough of all the above to be learned on this site alone.

As Tony said, do you want; 'I might not be very good but I'm very keen and flexible' as a slogan? Because that's close to what you have currently.

There's some stuff in the business section currently live, promoting; 'I might be inexperienced but I'm cheap', which is a mix between a business plan and a sales slogan.
 
KIPAX said:
your selling a service.. 900 quid for a wedding.. Thus I would lose this bit in your about : "Although I am relatively new to the world of professional photography"
Click to expand...

Thanks for pointing this out Tony. Now I look at it, it does look a little defeatist. Now removed.


As for the images, I'm working on it... :)

And I'm frantically trying to read up on this SEO thingy ;)
 
Hi. I notice several things:
Title of pages needs to be thought about more carefully. SEO isn't that difficult - get your keywords in important places. "weddings" isn't sufficient.
Navigation goes awry on several pages, ends up on 2 lines.
Jez says what I was thinking.
Use of different fonts on different pages. Testimonial page text is not left aligned.
Don't care for the green button thingys on the picture galleries. There are lots of ways to get slideshows etc free these days.
I agree about the pink text. Looks very dated.
 
Last edited:
Photodiva said:
Navigation goes awry on several pages, ends up on 2 lines.
Click to expand...

I'm looking into that. It was fine yesterday morning. When I look at at through my web design software, it appears to be fine. No overlaps etc

I'm still trying to figure out the whole <header> tag thingy as well as SEO. I'm sure my friend Google will help me.....
 
With so many great template systems available, I really can't understand why anyone would consider designing a website from scratch unless they were already an expert.

We wouldn't turn up to a shoot with a tripod fashioned from an old clothes horse, we laugh when people suggest they could make a good effort at shooting a wedding despite having no real technical knowledge, but website design? It must be easy they teach it at school?

A Wordpress install and template will be easy to update, easy to customise, do all the important stuff with no hassle ( I don't get header tags either, but my site makes page 1 for my chosen search terms).

I've got enough on to keep on top of photography, lighting, posing, marketing, album design and bookkeeping. So website design is something I feel I don't need to learn.

Have a look into a prophoto template, zen folio or some of the other great one stop solutions. Or even go the custom route and buy a suite of sites or pay an expert to do it well.
 
+1 on Phil. You are using Serif WebPlus and there is virtually no content for google in what you've done. I do web design, but frankly, I don't have time to muck about these days - I use Zenfolio as an easy way to get my photos available. Wordpress is another route, too. If you don't get <tags> there are easier routes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top