my new website up and running

Simon photo said:
So after a long enough wait I've finally got around to re vamping my website. I have a couple of things i may want to change and i think i have one broken link to fix but i would appreciate any feedback to check against my thoughts
Here is the link
www.simondaviesphotography.co.uk
Click to expand...

Hi very unique look, has a disorganised feel to it. It's different enough that I want to click and explore more :). Thumbnails do no work when viewing on my iPad mind
 
Ahhh that will be the flash. Will have to see about making an eyepad friendly version perhaps.
Interesting comments about the ugliness, i don't know if i should be happy im not putting the same stamp on myself as everyone else or gutted you think its ugly. I always stick to my guns add gut feeling so it more than likely won't change.
So its bang straight into the nav page then? I thought an enter page would give the viewer the feeling of arriving at the site rather than an instant immersion.
Im no web designer and this is my only my second attempt so your comments are helpful but do some of you just don't like it because its not what your used to seeing for photography websites?
 
It depends what you want the site for, if it is just to point friends at then fine, if you want someone to be interested in what you do then I would want to instantly know what sort of thing you do. Also the feel changes when you go to comments so seems separated.

So, IMHO, think about what you want the site for and what you want to be able to do and then build it around that. For me, as a photographer, photos are key, so instantly people see photos at quite a large size when visiting my site and those of the majority of photographers. Nothing wrong with doing something different, just make sure it is different and works for the desired purpose, not different for the sake of being different.
 
mark1616 said:
It depends what you want the site for, if it is just to point friends at then fine, if you want someone to be interested in what you do then I would want to instantly know what sort of thing you do. Also the feel changes when you go to comments so seems separated.

So, IMHO, think about what you want the site for and what you want to be able to do and then build it around that. For me, as a photographer, photos are key, so instantly people see photos at quite a large size when visiting my site and those of the majority of photographers. Nothing wrong with doing something different, just make sure it is different and works for the desired purpose, not different for the sake of being different.
Click to expand...

Great thanks, something i can work with there!
Well im not a professional, you you may be able to tell lol so its just a showcase of my keepers. I built it around my ideals which i know isn't always the best thing to do as i am not everyone else and they are not myself. I always like to have options and make my own way around sites rather than have content thrown at me, hence the welcome page, nav page and so on. Saying that, some sites that immerse you instantly work beautifully but i don't have the skill set or perhaps the images to design like that yet.
The comment page does seem disjointed, i thought that when i saved it but the code for it wasn't very flexible, or im inflexible, and changing it seemed like a night mare.
Not everything is set in stone, i didn't pay for it (can you tell lol) and the more i play the better it will get i suppose.
 
to reiterate what others have said, not my cup of tea design wise but if you like it then great.

the main thing for me was that i had to click 4 or 5 times until i got through to a photo, and that was a flash (like many others, i don't like flash so have it blocked, and it wont work on some smartphones/tablets) slideshow that i couldn't flick through. not saying all the photos have to be on the first page, but at least one maybe?

also, the 'enter' page shouldn't really be needed but if it is staying, i had to scroll down to see it (small ish 13" screen), bit of a no-no in web design i hear.
 
philxthomas said:
to reiterate what others have said, not my cup of tea design wise but if you like it then great.

the main thing for me was that i had to click 4 or 5 times until i got through to a photo, and that was a flash (like many others, i don't like flash so have it blocked, and it wont work on some smartphones/tablets) slideshow that i couldn't flick through. not saying all the photos have to be on the first page, but at least one maybe?

also, the 'enter' page shouldn't really be needed but if it is staying, i had to scroll down to see it (small ish 13" screen), bit of a no-no in web design i hear.
Click to expand...

Hmmm thought i had it set to re size for any screen, works great on my galaxy s2 but it likes flash apples don't.
Something else to think about there thanks. Its all going in and onboard cheers
 
I do a bit of website design work and this isnt really my thing... In all honesty, I think it is a little too cluttered and I am not able to tell what are links and what isnt. It almost has that punk rock look of the sex pistols.

The images look great but I think that the text, the background design and the underlining (looks like MS Paint) dont do them justice. Also, when I look at the images from my laptop, I cant even see the whole thing. They come up looking like full screen and then become smaller when I press the full screen button. Also, once I go into the gallery of images, I am not able to navigate back unless I press the back button on my browser. This can become annoying to customers and they might just leave. Just a little button in the corner might work...

Also, one other thing is the links at the top. I noticed that you have used spaces and these will come up as "%20" in the URL bar. This can make finding pages difficult and will mean that people cant just jump onto certain pages as easily... This could be changed by have all one word or putting "-" into the it.

I loaded it up on my HTC 1X and it doesnt look at all right. The links seam to be in different places. I was having to scroll and kept hitting the links as I tried.

I like that you havent gone for the norm and tried to be different. I support that as im always trying to do that with my design. however, I think that you do need to this about the potential people/ clients that might be looking at it. At the moment, it looks disorganised and this can mean that clients are put off. Im trying to say these comments as constructive as I was in a similar place to you a few years back. Best advice is to type best website design into google and have a look at what sort of things are currently in fashion/ currently working and try and take pointers from them. I did this and I think my design skills have improved because of it.

Drop me a PM if you want to talk anything through as I also found someone I could talk to about it and he was able to help me out immensly.
 
The pokemon kid said:
I do a bit of website design work and this isnt really my thing... In all honesty, I think it is a little too cluttered and I am not able to tell what are links and what isnt. It almost has that punk rock look of the sex pistols.

The images look great but I think that the text, the background design and the underlining (looks like MS Paint) dont do them justice. Also, when I look at the images from my laptop, I cant even see the whole thing. They come up looking like full screen and then become smaller when I press the full screen button. Also, once I go into the gallery of images, I am not able to navigate back unless I press the back button on my browser. This can become annoying to customers and they might just leave. Just a little button in the corner might work...

Also, one other thing is the links at the top. I noticed that you have used spaces and these will come up as "%20" in the URL bar. This can make finding pages difficult and will mean that people cant just jump onto certain pages as easily... This could be changed by have all one word or putting "-" into the it.

I loaded it up on my HTC 1X and it doesnt look at all right. The links seam to be in different places. I was having to scroll and kept hitting the links as I tried.

I like that you havent gone for the norm and tried to be different. I support that as im always trying to do that with my design. however, I think that you do need to this about the potential people/ clients that might be looking at it. At the moment, it looks disorganised and this can mean that clients are put off. Im trying to say these comments as constructive as I was in a similar place to you a few years back. Best advice is to type best website design into google and have a look at what sort of things are currently in fashion/ currently working and try and take pointers from them. I did this and I think my design skills have improved because of it.

Drop me a PM if you want to talk anything through as I also found someone I could talk to about it and he was able to help me out immensly.
Click to expand...

Hey thanks i might take you up on that.
Quite happy I've got a punky website tho lol
 
  • the graphic links don't have alt text
  • no HTML <h> headings
  • splash screen is pointless
  • I found navigating round the site a bit confusing as there's no global navigation
Hope this helps
 
Jez2011 said:
[*]the graphic links don't have alt text
[*]no HTML <h> headings
[*]splash screen is pointless
[*]I found navigating round the site a bit confusing as there's no global navigation

Hope this helps
Click to expand...

Alt text is the pop up text when you hover over a link?
Absolutely no idea what <H> headings are. Much to learn lol
 
Simon photo said:
Alt text is the pop up text when you hover over a link?
Absolutely no idea what <H> headings are. Much to learn lol
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If you don't know what these are, what did you use to create the site?
I agree with other comments. Its a site to showcase your photography. Why on earth do I need to click 3 times to even see a photo? and then find its a flash thingy. There are much better alternatives out there.

I don't dislike your black/white theme, but as it is it doesn't say photography. Remember, a visitor will spend about 5 secs looking at a site and if it isn't what they expect they will leave. I left.
 
I actually like the idea, if this was executed in HTML5 with CSS3 you may be slightly more successful.

A few things I don't like;

- click on contact page get taken straight to my email, would rather a new page
- background is not alligned when you go from nav page to gallery page
- the Flash element
- no thumbnails
- overall sharpness of all the pictures (I think this is a web thing rather than a camera thing)
 
one more thing;

- the hotmail address, surely your hosting includes a few email addresses you could route to your hotmail account?
 
By all means drop me a message.

To post back to other posters, you don't have to use <H> tags within your website. My website has none of these in and works fine as I have used CSS's instead.

Also, why have you used multiple background images with the text put on the top? Could you not just have one background image used multiple times with the text overlayed?
 
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The pokemon kid said:
By all means drop me a message.

To post back to other posters, you don't have to use <H> tags within your website. My website has none of these in and works fine as I have used CSS's instead.

Also, why have you used multiple background images with the text put on the top? Could you not just have one background image used multiple times with the text overlayed?
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I think you're missing the point about <h> tags.

Not only that but the OP has used a single image and image map areas for the links on both 'entrance' pages. There is no 'meat' for google to find there. At least there's a <title>.
 
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I understand the point of them. They allow search engines to pull the information from your site to help build the search results. But using too many of them will push you down in the search engine listings. For the OP, the best thing to gain extra site traffic/ higher search engine rankings would be to have meta tags which go with the subject.
 
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The pokemon kid said:
I understand the point of them. They allow search engines to pull the information from your site to help build the search results. But using too many of them will push you down in the search engine listings. For the OP, the best thing to gain extra site traffic/ higher search engine rankings would be to have meta tags which go with the subject.
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Search engines only penalise you if do stuff like cram the headings full of keywords then hide them with css or make them white on a white background. I'm not sure which meta tags you're referring to, but Google pays zero attention to the content of the meta keywords tag.
 
Google juice doesn't really matter if it's not a working site. The OP has said it's just a place to show his keepers, so I'm guessing he's not too fussed about ranking highly.

I think most of what struck me about the site has already been covered:

- Too many pages before you see a photo.

- The contact page is white with black text - opposite of the rest of the site.

- The contact page has size 30 or something, Times New Roman, not a great look. And completely unbalanced to the size of the comments box. The whole page looks like the browser has failed to load and is just displaying a text only version. No design or graphics carried over from the rest of the site which is heavily stylised.

- No navigation out of an album.

- Pause and play buttons are the wrong way round in the album.

- No option of manual navigation through the slideshows.

- Page titles are random, some are "SIMON DAVIES PHOTOGRAPHY", others are "bits and bobs" etc. Having your site name and the page name in the title, makes it a lot easier if you like to use your browser history or bookmarks to revisit. Not a fan of shouting in block capitals either.

- Once in the gallery, you have to go back to the homepage to find the contact link. Much prefer if all the navigation is available all the time.

- Contact is just a mailto link, which is fine in itself, but I would rather have the option of seeing your email address as well. (Because I hate things automatically opening on my computer, and I don't use Mac Mail which is what mailto links open in).

- The underlines and circling, etc around links doesn't look very good to my eye. Higher resolution graphics would be nicer.

- Homepage link from Galleries takes you back to the navigation page, whereas the homepage link from Comments takes you back to the splash page.
 
The description meta tag I was referring too. I believe Google and the other search engines still look at this tag to help rank the pages. all be it, it is only part of a large algorithm that they use.

but I have a few of the others as I think it looks better when it comes to search engines such as the author tag and the keywords tag...
 
Four clicks before I see an image - you're a photographer so this should be apparent on the home page
 
Dont like the style of the website looks like an etchasketch gone wrong.
 
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