I need your help to check our website...

medialinx

medialinx

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Name
Graham
Edit My Images
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Hi everyone,

Firstly, I am probably putting this in the wrong forum, but as I generally only post in this forum and interact with the other professionals here, I thought I woulld ask your advice.

Back in May we discovered our web server was infected with a pretty nasty virus that like to spread itself and corrupt every file it came across. :( Fast forward to now and we have launched a brand new website on a brand new server. :-) Our old site was designed to reflect the rest of our brand identity and it was important the new website did the same. This all happened about the time that Google changed their algorithms too prioritising mobile sites so it was a good time to launch a new site anyway.

The site is wordpress based with a very very heavily customised theme. The design, colours, typefaces etc. reflect our brand so we had to stay true to that. The site has been designed around our pre-existing brand, not the other way around with a brand being created around a website.

We have used Peek UserTesting to get rid of niggles and as many bugs as we can see. Also to see what different users liked and didn't like. What I need your help for is to see if you find anything out of the ordinary and that you don't like.

Now before we begin, the design reflects our brand (which might not be everyone's cup of tea) and the same goes for the photos we take (not everyone like them, but our customers do - so that is all that matters to us).

I need you to please look at the site and let me know:

- Does it load slowly or quickly with you? Does the load speed annoy you (it is actually a one page site with a lot of jiggery pokery to make it look like different pages)
- Do you like the background? (I have been trying different colour schemes and looked at hundreds of swatches!) - I think I am happy with the background currently. We had to find a colour that worked well with vibrant red (as this is our company colour and EVERYTHING including the company car are these colours)
- Do yyou prefer to download a brochure with or without leaving details (have a look at that mechansm)
- Does the gallery style work with you (I didn't want a big slideshow where people would get bored, so have given them thumbnails that they can click on if they like)
- Do you think I need more "Call to action" contact buttons (We are trying to push people to download the brochure as they generally leave their details)
- Does the blog format work for you or does it annoy you?
- Anything elses you might improve the experience for the people looking at it (I love to tinker so no ideas are too off the wall!)

What I am not looking for
- Critique of the photographs - I am looking for feedback on our website on this occasion, not my work

If you get a chance please have a wee look on mobile as the site is meant to work on mobile across the board too...

In advance, thank you so much for taking the time to look and give feedback. The thoughts of my peers is important as we can all learn from each other.

The web address is: http://www.letmetellyourlovestory.com

Thank you muchly,
Graham.
 
I'm sorry - its so slow its painful. I'm on a 100 mbps broadband and its still very very slow
 
Cheers Boyfalldown :)

We moved from CPanel hosting to Cloud hosting and I think it is running slower overall too. :(
 
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Has anyone experience of using a CDN service for hosting images etc to speed a site up?
 
I'm assuming it is slow as the whole website is essentially one page and the navigation simply shows and hides the relevant content for the page. It took a few seconds to load the 301 requests eg css, images, java-script totaling 7.8mb. It may be worth looking at combining some of the style sheets and javascript to save the http requests.

See http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/eux6Yq/http://www.letmetellyourlovestory.com/
 
medialinx said:
Cheers Boyfalldown :)

We moved from CPanel hosting to Cloud hosting and I think it is running slower overall too. :(
Click to expand...
I meant to ask, are you on Virgin? I am on Virgin with a 50mbps connection (although once it hits the office through our powerline adapters it gets to about 20mbps. It loads okay (not fast, but not slow) with a cleared cache across all our machines in the studio and on my tablet. Some other people have told me it loads slow and others told me it loads fast. I know Virgin were having problems in our area earlier today as the internet got knocked out (which killed our phone lines too!) so it was slow for me today. I find Virgin speeds very... flexible. ;-)
 
Thanks Johnsy. You are bang on :-) I am crunching the images on it now via bulk optimize. I am hoping this gets some of it down. 7mb is tooooooo much. I will have a look at the stylesheets.

Kind regards,
Graham
 
Very slow to load for me too. Only on approx 13mb. Also, when i click to remove the brochure at the bottom it just reappears. It doesn't go away?
 
boyfalldown said:
I'm sorry - its so slow its painful. I'm on a 100 mbps broadband and its still very very slow
Click to expand...

I am not a developer, but if I was a customer, I probably not would hang on that long for it to load.

Seemed marginally quicker on an iPhone 6 but the pop up requesting details then would see me off.

Needs rapid load then 'click to contact me'. Talking to them will allow you to not only sell, but also to determine their budget and commitment. The website is only a shop window.

I would let them download the brochure regardless.

Once the site has loaded first time, navigation thereafterwards seems ok once it is in the cache.
 
Raincloud said:
Very slow to load for me too. Only on approx 13mb. Also, when i click to remove the brochure at the bottom it just reappears. It doesn't go away?
Click to expand...

Thanks Raincloud. Hmm, are you clicking on the red bit at the top of the popup? It should vanish if you click anywhere on it. What browser are you using on which platform?

Cheers,
Graham.
 
shreds said:
I am not a developer, but if I was a customer, I probably not would hang on that long for it to load.

Seemed marginally quicker on an iPhone 6 but the pop up requesting details then would see me off.

Needs rapid load then 'click to contact me'. Talking to them will allow you to not only sell, but also to determine their budget and commitment. The website is only a shop window.

I would let them download the brochure regardless.

Once the site has loaded first time, navigation thereafterwards seems ok once it is in the cache.
Click to expand...

Thanks Shreds. There is a little "Click here if you are lazy" option for downlooading the brochure for those that don't want to leave their details, but it is probably not obvious enough - perhaps that would be better as a Contact Us button instead...
 
Sheds, one thing that may be casuing a big prblem is the wedding and engagement galleries load as part of the "load one page" thing. I could shift them on to another page and that might make the site load quicker initially...
 
1. Took 20 secs to load on my computer.
2. How do I get rid of the "Download the brochure"?. There's a little cross which I thought would get rid of it but it just pops up.
3. Looking at everything on that page, the menu along the top is on the small side and is harder to read against the background. The text everywhere else is easier to read because it's on a plain white background.
4. If I click on Blog and then go back to another page, it still takes too long to load.
5. If I click on Packages, for some reason it loads the page half way down so the first thing I see is "create your own tailored package" and I miss the stuff above it. This happens with other pages and I think stems from where I am on one page before I jump to another. Ditto on the contact page - I have to scroll up.

Not a pro - just someone who's looked through sites when finding a tog for my own wedding.
 
Very, very slow to load for me. At first I wondered it the link was working. I tested it on an iPhone 5s and everything [eventually] worked, though I found the text quite small so had to stretch it with my fingers to read it properly. I found the white text on black menu difficult to read, but maybe that's just me. Otherwise it displayed fine on my iPhone and looked visually appealing. By the time I had scrolled all the way to the bottom I would have loved a 'back to top' button to click!
 
omens said:
1. Took 20 secs to load on my computer.
2. How do I get rid of the "Download the brochure"?. There's a little cross which I thought would get rid of it but it just pops up.
3. Looking at everything on that page, the menu along the top is on the small side and is harder to read against the background. The text everywhere else is easier to read because it's on a plain white background.
4. If I click on Blog and then go back to another page, it still takes too long to load.
5. If I click on Packages, for some reason it loads the page half way down so the first thing I see is "create your own tailored package" and I miss the stuff above it. This happens with other pages and I think stems from where I am on one page before I jump to another. Ditto on the contact page - I have to scroll up.

Not a pro - just someone who's looked through sites when finding a tog for my own wedding.
Click to expand...
Thank you
 
dbr1066 said:
Very, very slow to load for me. At first I wondered it the link was working. I tested it on an iPhone 5s and everything [eventually] worked, though I found the text quite small so had to stretch it with my fingers to read it properly. I found the white text on black menu difficult to read, but maybe that's just me. Otherwise it displayed fine on my iPhone and looked visually appealing. By the time I had scrolled all the way to the bottom I would have loved a 'back to top' button to click!
Click to expand...
Thank you... dbr1066 that was very handy as I don't own a iPhone. I thought there was a pop back up button but that might just be on desktop.
 
Okay I am going to move the galleries to their own pages which should reduce the initial load time. I just tried loading on my phone and nearly fell asleep! ;)
 
Once website loaded around 12 second , the links were pretty fast, on IPad Air 2
 
Hi
I viewed this at work on a super fast connection and it loaded fine and looked great. Very interesting images and i,m sure you are going to go from strength to strength with this.
Some good interesting photos. Wish you well with the new venture Graham..

Darren
 
shannensdaddy said:
Hi
I viewed this at work on a super fast connection and it loaded fine and looked great. Very interesting images and i,m sure you are going to go from strength to strength with this.
Some good interesting photos. Wish you well with the new venture Graham..

Darren
Click to expand...
It seems fast for some and slow for others on super fast connections. I wonder could the server be slow or are the connections not as super fast as thought. No matter what it has to come down on load time as it is taking far too long.
 
Yip all loaded up for me and great images, Love the Castlewellan maze shot, I know it as I do weddings and Im in Ards!
 
stumac said:
Yip all loaded up for me and great images, Love the Castlewellan maze shot, I know it as I do weddings and Im in Ards!
Click to expand...
Thanks Stu. I am very proud of that shot. I was the first to do wedding photos in the maze so was very proud of that. It was taken years ago. Got a fab massive canvas in the studio of it that we wheel out for wedding shows. Although the forest service commissioned a tog to do a publicity shot and copied my shot as they were aware of if. We looked at legal action but it was too expensive and my not worth it. It did make me angry... great we spot though and fab campsite!
 
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Yes was doing a Wedding there on Saturday but up at the Castle as the couple didnt want to pay to get into the maze :-(
 
Stumac. Do u do it full time? If so, I am in the ppani. We are a friendly bunch if you ever want to tag along to a meeting or two...
 
Just to add to the speed issue. I'm in north west Scotland about 75 miles west of Inverness and after clicking on the link in your first post, the site appears in about 6 seconds.

According to Speedtest.net I'm getting about 4.8 Mbps.

The site looks good. The initial totally red screen is a bit startling but appreciate it is your company's colour and it changes quickly.

I'm not sure about the brochure. Not that I think it is a bad idea but (a) I would make it available without asking for any details, (definitely get rid of the "or if you are feeling lazy") and (b) when I downloaded it, it comes into the Adobe reader in a sort of banner format, which I had to zoom into to read, but perhaps that is just my setup here.

Otherwise - looks good to me.

Dave
 
Thanks dave. The speed things are crazy. The site is physically hosted in the middle of England. The brochures we have printed are long 5 part folded ones so the pdf is a long version of that. I think I will offer the brochure as just a download but I am always interested to see who is Downloading so I can call them. But I think you might be right...
 
I put up with fifteen FIFTEEN seconds of red screen.
Fudge that, exit.
(Opera nine or ten, javascript on, plugins disabled, probably not yer average viewer.)
Surely you know you have to have an initial welcoming screen which is almost instant, you can load whatever bells and whistles afterwards ...
 
16 secs on a 160mb download speed., pop up about a brochure, lots of red then all the red disappears and you get something else, like a menu page. Why not just load that quickly.
 
Byker28i said:
16 secs on a 160mb download speed., pop up about a brochure, lots of red then all the red disappears and you get something else, like a menu page. Why not just load that quickly.
Click to expand...
Thanks biker.

The red is a preloader. The site is a one page site that loads all the components while the preloader hides what is going on underneath. It wouldn't be possible to just load it quickly I am afraid but I am looking at how to speed up the load time.
 
Ulfric M Douglas said:
I put up with fifteen FIFTEEN seconds of red screen.
Fudge that, exit.
(Opera nine or ten, javascript on, plugins disabled, probably not yer average viewer.)
Surely you know you have to have an initial welcoming screen which is almost instant, you can load whatever bells and whistles afterwards ...
Click to expand...
Thanks Ulfric.
 
Okay folks, so I have had a wee look and changed some things based on feedback from some of the members here. I have done the following:

- Removed the preload screen
- Reduced the amount of files loaded on the initial load
- Made the brochure downloadable without entering your details
- Replaced the X on the brochure tab with an arrow to better describe how to get rid of the tab once expanded (it cannot be removed from the screen) - suggestions for plugins that can be removed are welcome.

If anyone who has used it before wants to volunteer to clear their cache and let me know if it loads any quicker that would be better. Also if anyone wants to feedback on the other requested points from my initial post that would be appreciated too.

Once again thank you so much for taking the time to do this for me, I appreciate it.

http://www.letmetellyourlovestory.com

Graham.
 
Load speed is fine for me. I'm on only a 7mb broadband link.

Looking at it on my iPhone 6+ there are a few things that annoy me b
- the intrusive pre-loader of the brochure downloader. It's annoying, I was worried about spam before you can see what it is, and come on. I'm online, I don't need a downloadable brochure immediately on the home page. I only want that when I shortlist you and want to show my nan. But even then I'll probably bring my iPad ;)
- the design wastes a lot of space. The margins left and right are huge. In the gallery it gets worse with only a single row of images, yet the images don't scale up. So it is obvious about the wasted space, it could easily fit three next to each other.
- the big black hamburger button at the top. The responsive menu option, it is ugly, out of place, the black colour doesn't fit in.

I think someone hasn't done testing on a mobile screen. There are some easy extensions for Firefox where you can emulate those screen sizes. I suggest you go over the site yourself as it is missing quite a bit there.
 
medialinx said:
Thanks biker.

The red is a preloader. The site is a one page site that loads all the components while the preloader hides what is going on underneath. It wouldn't be possible to just load it quickly I am afraid but I am looking at how to speed up the load time.
Click to expand...

It's now forwarding to http://www.grahamcrichton.com/ Fast loading.
The page seems quite big, in that I have to scroll down a lot to see the details. Feels like a lot of dead space and doesn't feel balanced. It might help to make the menu wording larger?
It's not sectioned well for me on a laptop screen. First presented with huge logo in dead space, with your ma in image panel at the top.
Then I scroll down to get let me tell your story, and finish with the story worth telling with the 3 panels in between, but then theres the bit left at the bottom, your contact details, almost as a after thought at the bottom.
Not sure I like 'see pretty pictures' on your portfolio, because that sounds amateur and your images are much, much better than that.
 
Slow for me on a work connection. When eventually loaded it looks good. I think the way the site has been built isn't very good - sure you have a lot of images that'll slow a site down but it's perfectly possible to build a responsive site that looks like yours without it being this slow. CDN doesn't make a huge difference - been there done that with cloudflare.
 
Hey bass. Thanks for your feedback. Are you talking about the coding of the site slowing it down?
 
I'm not a fish... and yes - wordpress is in and of itself a CMS - and you're using plugins. All of this combined makes for code bloat - and add things like inline css, uncombined javascripts, fancy effects like rounding and sliders with large images you're almost guaranteed to end up with a slow site. Looks nice mind you, but site speed is a major factor in limiting visibility in the first place. Just one of those compromises that you have to make.
 
Seems to load quick enough on my desktop very slow on my iPhone though even when connected to the same wifi, like the layout apart from the pokadot background.
 
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