New Site Up At Last!

EOS_JD

EOS_JD

Suspended / Banned
Messages
6,729
Name
Jim
Edit My Images
Yes
My new design is at last up and running. I know it's not perfect and there's a few things I'd like to amend but any thoughts would be appreciated. It's similar to my previous site but now has galleries and projects and a couple of other things.

Thanks to my friendly web designer who's been a great help.

It is a flash site (music off) and I know many don't like flash sites but I personally like the look and feel of flash sites. I may look to do something non flash too at some point! Hopefully not slow.

All comments/critique greatly appreciated. Thanks for looking

www.jbdavies.co.uk
 
Thanks Andy.
 
Just had a look at your site I like it think it looks clean and slick,great looking site.
 
Personally I think it's overcomplicated, confusing and rather indulgent.

The complete reliance on Flash, without offering an HTML version is a mistake, and Google can't read a word of the Flash content. You have a good meta-description but there's no substitute for Google being able to read your page text.

I personally dislike the way that the top right menu moves when there are sub-menus. I think a main menu should stay put.

There are at least 3 different spacings between page headers and their content and the icons that change the background only represnt the actual image in one instance. The image of the woman in the thrid instance of those backgrounds is a poor choice in my opinion. Nowhere near abstract enough and the content covers her eyes.

The 'about me' title is in the first person, and then the text is in the third person. That seems strange.

Yes, it's slick and clever and clearly cost lots of money, and yes, I've deliberately picked faults. However, I'm sure you didn't want eveyone to say 'wow' and I hope you'll take my comments without offence.
 
Nice, clean and, easy to use, I'm one of the anti flash brigade but, this is good.

personally like the loo and feel of flash sites
Click to expand...

Funny how one missing letter can set a whole new meaning, or is that just my twisted mind:D
 
Backstage: The complete reliance on Flash, without offering an HTML version is a mistake, and Google can't read a word of the Flash content. You have a good meta-description but there's no substitute for Google being able to read your page text.
Click to expand...

Exactly my thoughts.

Why do you have a website?
Well for most photographers its to get more business.

How do you get more business?
90% of it will come from people searching on Google or similar.

This site is perfect as a 'show site' for someone who was an amateur wanting to show off their work. As a business website it will not help you at all. You will find it extremely difficult to get traffic.

My suggestion is if you want to keep the Flash you deffo need a html version of the site for search engine purposes.
 
JasonRS said:
Google's been able to index flash since July 2008.

My site's Flash, and Google's webmaster tools lists all my keywords from inside it. So it's definitely indexing it.
Click to expand...

I am pretty sure Google can read some text in Flash but I think it is also dependant on how the text is used, there are different options for inserting it and only some are readable.

I could be wrong though.
 
JasonRS said:
Google's been able to index flash since July 2008.

My site's Flash, and Google's webmaster tools lists all my keywords from inside it. So it's definitely indexing it.
Click to expand...

It might well be indexing it, but if Google performace is important to you then you should consider whether having a Flash only site is compromising your ranking.

It may be that you aren't interested in doing as well as you possibly can on Google, and I could understand that.
 
backstage pass said:
Personally I think it's overcomplicated, confusing and rather indulgent.

The complete reliance on Flash, without offering an HTML version is a mistake, and Google can't read a word of the Flash content. You have a good meta-description but there's no substitute for Google being able to read your page text.

I personally dislike the way that the top right menu moves when there are sub-menus. I think a main menu should stay put.

There are at least 3 different spacings between page headers and their content and the icons that change the background only represnt the actual image in one instance. The image of the woman in the thrid instance of those backgrounds is a poor choice in my opinion. Nowhere near abstract enough and the content covers her eyes.

The 'about me' title is in the first person, and then the text is in the third person. That seems strange.

Yes, it's slick and clever and clearly cost lots of money, and yes, I've deliberately picked faults. However, I'm sure you didn't want eveyone to say 'wow' and I hope you'll take my comments without offence.
Click to expand...


tyhis is exactly what I wanted and it's great geting the feedback. Regards the Menu there's not much i can do about that but I'll speak to my web designer.

egards the text I thought I had been careful about keeping it third person but when reading it a zillion times I didn't note my About page was 1st person so thanks and I'll amend that.

I'll check the spacings and will look at the images to see if I can change them to suit.

backstage pass said:
Yes, it's slick and clever and clearly cost lots of money, and yes, I've deliberately picked faults. However, I'm sure you didn't want eveyone to say 'wow' and I hope you'll take my comments without offence.
Click to expand...

regards the cost i think I have been VERY lucky! I did a small photo job for a friend who happened to be a web designer just starting out. He produced many different versions of a site for me and some looked fine but he had issues in different browsers and others were not my style but eventually he came up with a design based on this (didn't have galleries though so that is a new addition uploaded yesterday). Right away I loved it and he would not take anything for all the work he'd done!! i did give him a little something but 've been very fortunate and George is the kind of gyu that will go the extra mile for his clients. I've put a couple of people his way since then so hopefully I'm starting to repay the huge favour. So really the site cost me pretty much nothing!

really thanks for the comments and that gives me some work to do later :)
 
Pete Allen said:
Nice, clean and, easy to use, I'm one of the anti flash brigade but, this is good.



Funny how one missing letter can set a whole new meaning, or is that just my twisted mind:D
Click to expand...

haha - edited now :)

Thanks for the words.
 
tpd said:
Exactly my thoughts.

Why do you have a website?
Well for most photographers its to get more business.

How do you get more business?
90% of it will come from people searching on Google or similar.

This site is perfect as a 'show site' for someone who was an amateur wanting to show off their work. As a business website it will not help you at all. You will find it extremely difficult to get traffic.

My suggestion is if you want to keep the Flash you deffo need a html version of the site for search engine purposes.
Click to expand...


my ranking on google has been pretty decent over the last year and bit that it's been on. Doing a search for photographer hamilton and I was always on page one although recently it fell onto page 2 (but I've not really been advertising - I have a full time job that does not involve photography).

Searching google.co.uk still has me in the local list on page 1.

But I do take your point. I also own the www.stepintothelight.co.uk site (that has my version 1 site for comparison). I'm considering making it an HTML site.

thanks for the words and guidance and I take it all on board.
 
backstage pass said:
It may be that you aren't interested in doing as well as you possibly can on Google, and I could understand that.
Click to expand...

That is exactly the point I make above. 'm happy to get a few here and last year I had enough from it to be happy - not a huge amount but enough. very busy in my main job so I don't want to be inundated (chance would be a fine thing to turn work away) :)

Again thanks to all for their kind words and great critique.

Cheers
jim
 
It look small on my 24ins wide screen text not easy to read.
4401395848_187ceca164_o.jpg

May I ask what preforming right licence you have to use the music on your web and I guess for clients?
 
when I load the gallery in FF3.6, the image flashes up in full, before disappearing, then giving me the 'loading' bar and then fading in :(
All works okay from there, but the initial flash of the image is a little annoying.

Otherwise, looking really good, and fast to load, which is usually my gripe with flash sites.
 
I think you need to slightly shrink the butterfly "watermark" in the background so that there isn't a little bit of dirty grey sticking up just above the boxes that show in the centre.

Other than that, i think it looks nice and uncomplicated. :)
 
Chaz Photos said:
It look small on my 24ins wide screen text not easy to read.

May I ask what preforming right licence you have to use the music on your web and I guess for clients?
Click to expand...

The first point I made with my designer was the size of the text which is small on any high resolution screen (mine are both 1680x1050) - your resolution looks more than that! I'm stuck with that for the moment but a future update may sort that. The size of the window is limited too at the moment purely because of my flash editing skills (almost zero) and it's something I will look at with my designer at some point.

Good point about the music! I think many of us don't really think of that. I will look at changing the music. My sister plays the piano and I've been asking her to make me some music but that never seems to progress :)
 
RacingSnake said:
when I load the gallery in FF3.6, the image flashes up in full, before disappearing, then giving me the 'loading' bar and then fading in :(
All works okay from there, but the initial flash of the image is a little annoying.

Otherwise, looking really good, and fast to load, which is usually my gripe with flash sites.
Click to expand...

I have had that issue in all FF versions over the last year and a bit. I thought it was my pc! Thanks for reminding me and I'll have a chat with George about that. It's been a minor niggle to me.

Cheers
Jim
 
slimboy fat said:
I think you need to slightly shrink the butterfly "watermark" in the background so that there isn't a little bit of dirty grey sticking up just above the boxes that show in the centre.

Other than that, i think it looks nice and uncomplicated. :)
Click to expand...

THanks mate yes aI see it :)

I think my version 1 site had the same problem but a quick edit sorted it.

These comments have been very helpful. THanks to everyone.
 
Hellooo there,

Firstly great website... Really liking the feel of it.

Only little crit, is that in projects - josh, there is a spelling mistake. You've put 'nefew'.

But otherwise, fantastic site!! :thumbs:
 
norvic-boy said:
Hellooo there,

Firstly great website... Really liking the feel of it.

Only little crit, is that in projects - josh, there is a spelling mistake. You've put 'nefew'.

But otherwise, fantastic site!! :thumbs:
Click to expand...

Brilliant! I'm a stickler for spelling and give others a hard time :) Thanks for pointing that out. I note noone mentioned the ??????? where the date should have been. Now rectified :)

THanks
Jim
 
hey, I really like the feel of the site. I'm of FF3.6 and it works fine for me. looks good.

only thing I can say is your galleries, particularly the wedding gallery, feel like you've just dumped images.

Would definitely recommend you cut out 70% of the images and pick a 30% that cover the 'main' shots people want, and that you are VERY proud of.

Would make it look like you are more confident about your work, and not just trying to cover every angle.

But I think it's a very nice design, works well, and I would be impressed as a potential customer.
 
sambam said:
hey, I really like the feel of the site. I'm of FF3.6 and it works fine for me. looks good.

only thing I can say is your galleries, particularly the wedding gallery, feel like you've just dumped images.

Would definitely recommend you cut out 70% of the images and pick a 30% that cover the 'main' shots people want, and that you are VERY proud of.

Would make it look like you are more confident about your work, and not just trying to cover every angle.

But I think it's a very nice design, works well, and I would be impressed as a potential customer.
Click to expand...


SamBam - have been thinking about doing this. To be honest it was a case of get some images on and get it up and running as I've had this version for a few months and not done anything with it!

I'll be more selective with the images. Maybe a page per gallery max.

Really appreciate the feedback.

Regards
jim
 
slimboy fat said:
I think you need to slightly shrink the butterfly "watermark" in the background so that there isn't a little bit of dirty grey sticking up just above the boxes that show in the centre.

Other than that, i think it looks nice and uncomplicated. :)
Click to expand...

An update on this. the small grey bit sticking out depends on the resolution of your screen. On my laptop there's none of the butterfly visible and the site display area takes up quite a bit of space. I guess you use a 1680x1050 resolution like me on your main screen? My laptop is 1280 x 800 and it does look a bit bigger on that and no butterfly :)
 
Couple more spelling mistakes - Flora is missing an l and landscapes is missing a c - both in the box.
 
nuttyboy78 said:
Couple more spelling mistakes - Flora is missing an l and landscapes is missing a c - both in the box.
Click to expand...

Brilliant spot - When you look at it all the time the eye just skips over that! Many thanks for the help.

Now fixed :thumbs:

Cheers
Jim
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top