New website - I'd appreciate your input

Hacker

Hacker

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Colin
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I've been busy recently putting a new site together which is why I haven't been around much. I've now outgrown Photium and wanted something a bit more professional looking and after considering and rejecting various options Duncan (WeddingHack) pointed me in the direction I wanted to go - thanks Duncan! :thumbs:

The new site is a Flash site which I realise some people don't like but it is exactly the look I was after. It has not gone live yet as I am still tweaking and I would appreciate it if you guys and gals could take a look and give me your thoughts on the following sections:

1. I have set up a temporary gallery of images from Badminton in the Proof Room and the password for this is TP, when the site goes live this will be for clients to view and buy their images, does everything appear to work?

2. I have loaded some music to one of the galleries but I'm not sure, does music work for a website? I used to be indecisive.....:D

3. General content, layout and navigation - what do you think.

Many thanks in advance.

Test site
 
so much to like about it but..... aaaaaaaaaarrrrrgh!!!

Flash is OK. I can hack flash. But I hate sites that ask me to switch off a popup blocker. Not that I had to, as it happens :thinking:

But the main layout problem that I can see is that when switching to full screen (that's another aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgh!!) the menu gubbins at the bottom is half hidden by theXP task bar. I haven't looked in OSX yet.
 
full screen comments above only apply to Safari under XP. Just checked in IE7 and it runs full-window rather than full-screen. And, as a result, the menu gubbins are fully visible and functional.
 
Some wonderful testimonials there. I usually hate music being forced on me when I visit a site but it seems sort of appropriate here. Although it did begin to grate when it started the second time around.

A wonderful site to showcase your wares. Very quick and slick under Safari but it may be worth investigating the full screen problem.
 
Colin, here's my thoughts after a quick browse.

Sites that open full screen just irritate me.

You're missing a space between dance and Every Wedding on the About page.

On the contact page, I'd re-word the all fields marked with a * are required as you require all of them anyway.

What purpose does the Home page serve?

The RR image on the testimonials pages is a bit over-powering and lessens the importance of the text.

The gallery is scaling the images to fit but leaves them a bit soft sometimes which might leave a negative impression. OTOH that might only be with people like me who notice this kind of thing and not matter to potential customers.

The background image selection seems a bit random without a common theme.
 
The shopping basket appears to work very well as far as I took it. Wot, no discount for quantity?

Only suggestion I have is this. After selecting the paypal option, the reader is invited to enter an email address. Now I assume this would be the email address associated with the customer's paypal account??? If I'm right, then it might be worth saying so on the screen.
 
Thanks 2blue, that is exactly the sort of feedback I wanted. I don't use Safari so wasn't aware of the problem, I'll look into it. I've changed the song so that it is not repeated, something I thought I'd done already!
 
Nice, but there's a couple of typos on the About Us section

I hated the music - personal taste of course, others will love it

I think the opening shot of the couple is wrong as he's looking down and his eyes appear almost shut, hers are shut. This looks like one of those 'Looking forward to our future together' shots, so I'd really like to see them with eyes open

Many images clearly have black near to their edge, and on a black background they just merge into nothingness - I'd suggest the simplest of black/grey borders for each shot, and the same for each shot

I'd also put the stunning & recent tot shot as first in the portrait gallery

Here's my 2p then... hope you don't feel the need to throw it back at me :lol:
 
pxl8 said:
You're missing a space between dance and Every Wedding on the About page.
Click to expand...

Done!


pxl8 said:
What purpose does the Home page serve?
Click to expand...

It is possible to have a slideshow on the Home page but I'm not sure at the moment, or do you mean the first Window that opens where it says Click here to enter? If so, that is the way it is unfortunately, I can't change it.


pxl8 said:
The RR image on the testimonials pages is a bit over-powering and lessens the importance of the text.
Click to expand...

I'll have a look at that, thanks.



pxl8 said:
The gallery is scaling the images to fit but leaves them a bit soft sometimes which might leave a negative impression. OTOH that might only be with people like me who notice this kind of thing and not matter to potential customers.
Click to expand...


Sharpening for web is an ongoing problem with me, I really must look into it more.

Thanks for all the feedback. :thumbs:
 
Just few little things from me as well, Flash - not one of my favorites, and so that really 'annoyed' me a little. Even if is was nice and smooth with safari, there was still a little waiting time when pages downloaded. And I have a 10MB connection, so.

I liked the lay-out, well maybe not the full screen of it. But it was a beautifully done site and easy enough to navigate.

Music, well as someone already said, it is a matter of taste and in my view it didn't add anything to the site.

Photos, well they were great, but it took a 'while' to get there.

All in all I liked the site, and whether my little nags about it would do anything to improve it.. who knows. Just airing my views.
 
Hacker said:
It is possible to have a slideshow on the Home page but I'm not sure at the moment, or do you mean the first Window that opens where it says Click here to enter? If so, that is the way it is unfortunately, I can't change it.
Click to expand...

I meant the home page on the site proper. It opens on it but once you've visited another page what purpose does it serve going back to it? In effect it's just a link to a picture...
 
DiddyDave said:
Nice, but there's a couple of typos on the About Us section

I hated the music - personal taste of course, others will love it

I think the opening shot of the couple is wrong as he's looking down and his eyes appear almost shut, hers are shut. This looks like one of those 'Looking forward to our future together' shots, so I'd really like to see them with eyes open

Many images clearly have black near to their edge, and on a black background they just merge into nothingness - I'd suggest the simplest of black/grey borders for each shot, and the same for each shot

I'd also put the stunning & recent tot shot as first in the portrait gallery

Here's my 2p then... hope you don't feel the need to throw it back at me :lol:
Click to expand...

Thanks DD, I'll change the picture on the 'about' page and I'll give some thought to and experiment with the grey borders.
 
I've spent about 15 mins browsing around Colin. Here are my thoughts -

Generally I do like the site and I feel it works well so I'm only going to point out a few niggles and negative points. It doesn't mean I don't think there are lots of positives though :)

On the About section, the text is very small and imo quite hard to read. Could it come up a point size or two?

The music is a big no no for me. It made me jump out of my skin when it started playing because I just wasn't expecting it lol! I also found it quite hard to find how to turn it off. If you're going to keep it I would suggest a simply "music on/off" text.

For me I felt the pause between images was a little too long when selecting slideshow. Eventually I gave up and clicked the thumbnails myself. Tricky one that because I'm sure some would probably say it should be longer and some would say it's spot on, but for me.....too long :shrug:

Proof room - I would prefer to see "add to basket" rather than add to favorites. After clicking add to faves I had no idea where they went of quite what it meant, whereas with "add to basket" you are in no doubt as it's a familiar terminology.

In the shopping basket selection drop downs, can I suggest a space between the pounds and pence? At first glance the prices look like £1495 not £14.95 :eek:

As I said Colin, those are my niggles but aside from the above I think it's a great web site - IF you have a fast connection and don't get p***ed off by flash ;) The one thing it does portray imho is a very professional image :thumbs:

As I've been typing this I received a delivery failure notification email from info at greenlees-photography dot com, then an order confirmation email
 
First impressions, lose the 'entry' page, it's really just an annoyance, particularly when the main site opens in a new tab.

Make the music 'opt in' rather than opt out, music gets tedious and what you like most likely is not what most other people would like. Add to that the possible copyright issues associated with playing music for public consumption on a commercial website...

Some of the images in your gallery are very large which is great for us but leaves them open to being pinched by nasty types, keep them for the proof section?

In general the site works really well, looks swish and of a very high standard, maybe a touch impersonal? A picture of yourself on the about page would help there, let folk see they are dealing with a human :)

Opera has no problems whatsoever rendering the pages and all the menus etc. are easily visible and understood.
 
Hey Colin

Well... first impressions first... you certainly have the makings there of what I'd term - a professional photographers site. The look is slick, the images are class, and the overall 'first impression' is that of... I really do want to look further on here. The same feelings one experiences perhaps when looking at one of CJ's sites (i.e. obviously professional), rather than mine (i.e. obviously not professional) :)

Now, for some additional comments. Flash... well yes you get nice looking sites, but yuck... personally I just don't like the way it causes such delays in page loads compared to php/asp/html sites.

Also agree with steep above - remove the splash page, they are an annoyance and add little or no value at all. Go straight to one of your class images I'd say...

Not checked for spelling or grammar, but overall you get superb marks from me matey... :thumbs:

Good luck with it.
 
Nice looking pro site Colin. :thumbs:

I think you should improve the entrance page if you can't get rid, make it work for you as it is superfluous at the mo ... write (In HTML only) Info about you and what you do etc. ...give the google bots something to chew on kinda thing. At the moment their is nothing for them, just a title and other odd meta stuff ...so it won't rank it along side other equine photo sites because it doesn't really know much about your site other than those few details, which is no way near enough to even begin to be useful.
 
Hmmm. not sure. I like the clean look of it and it certainly looks professional but there is a lot I don't like too.

I could live with flash (though I don't really like it) but this seems like slow flash with delays everywhere.
Fullscreen feels like control is being taken away from me.
Buying doesn't seem intuitive as it doesn't use a system like a shopping site - it might but it does not feel like it.
Choosing print sizes and the shopping section in general has fonts and colours that are not the easiest to read.
I like to see the https so that I know I am on a secure site before I start entering anything to do with payments and I'm in fullscreen so I bail out.
There is no 'normal' navigation so I'm never sure what to click to go back.

If I was a customer and interested in your services I don't think it would put me off - but it certainly didn't feel like a 'normal' web site visit.
 
I think the thing with purchasing isn't a problem since you're not conducting business on Colins' site, if you choose paypal the paypal site is secure, the other option is offline.
 
Wow, great response everyone, muchly appreciated and I will try and address all the points.

Grendel, the font has been increased, good spot. With regard to the e-mail I obviously have a problem as I've also had a failed delivery message so obviously something I need to look into.

Steep, MusicMan, Robert and FB, due to it being a template type design unfortunately I can't get rid of the Splash page, I could open in the same window but a lot of the images are lost due to the toolbars and makes the page look more cluttered.

I'll make some amendments and alterations later this week prior to going live. Thanks again for all the input, you lot are absolute stars! :clap:
 
Colin,

Nice work. I would change two things however.

1. The image in the background on the 'about' screen. The couple shown both have their eyes shut - spotted it straight away - just looks a bit asleep...

2. The little boy image on 'home'. You can see that it is angled shot and the grass not being level. As such I would level it in CS2. A minor point but would look better.

Hope you dont mind me saying this.

Pete.
 
Just agreeing on two point already made -

- The music scared me! It honestly did. And my first instinct after being startled was to close the damn thing as fast as I could to make it stop. LOL. Music in general on photography websites tends to irritate me, but combined with the style and the lyrics of that particular song, I think it's a big mistake. As a bride, it would creep me out a bit to view a website where the photographer has chosen a song about girls with the words, "Such a doggone shame that they couldn't all be mine" -- yikes. It's especially a bit creepy when you also have lots of shots of children in there.

- The opening shot of the little boy in the grass is by far the weakest of your portrait shots. I would suggest not including it in your site. You've got many stronger shots that would impress a potential client much more favorably.

- CJ
 
that little boy frightens me. It's the eyes. I see him and think of Damien of Only Fools and Horses.
 
2blue4u said:
that little boy frightens me. It's the eyes. I see him and think of Damien of Only Fools and Horses.
Click to expand...

:lol::lol::lol:

Thanks again! Home page and About page have now had their images changed.

And the music has gone!
 
Very smart Colin - just one or two minor points for me.

It all appears to work in Opera (I suspect I might be the only person so far who's viewed it using Opera!) but as others have said it is extremely slow - I admit to not getting past the first few equine shots as I was bored waiting for it to load them up. I'd say that the slow loading of the pages is something you need to address if I'm honest.

Proof read your testimonials carefully - there are quite a few spelling mistakes at the moment.
 
Thanks Witch, I have corrected the spelling mistakes, that will teach me to copy them straight from the emails!

I am obviously going to have to address the slow loading issue, will smaller images (kb) solve this?

That's it, I'm off to bed as I getting up at 3.45am to catch a flight. :shake: :shake:
 
I liked it but....


...I just felt, for a 'wedding' site (i know you have other stuff on there' that 'white' would have been a better choice, the black page at the start just doesn't seem to have the right 'feel'

Nicely done though, it doesn't look 'home made' so it does achieve its goal.
 
Did you put all this together yourself, as in do all the flash stuff?
If so how hard was it?
 
I'm going through all this right now. I need a website badly and I've only seen one site offering really quality templates like the one you've used, but they're $800 each :( I'm not that keen on a completely flash website, but I've come to the end of my abilities as far as web design goes so I need to pay for one now I think.

I'd be interested in knowing where you got yours made Hacker. Oh and BTW the 80-200 is still my best lens :thumbs:
 
Some comments suggest that the apparent slowness of the site is due to the use of Flash. I'm not convinced. It ran fairly quickly and smoothly for me with the only delays being the loading of large images. This is due to file size and broadband bandwidth and has nothing to do with Flash.

Maybe trim the max size of the images. This will make a huge difference to the file size and the download time and the overall impression of speed and slickness of the site.
 
Nice Site,

There were no technical problems with firefox and ie7 on vista, and load times were about 3secs with a broadband connection.

I think that flash works well for photographic portfolio sites and your site looks polished, and gives out a good message.

The only issue for me like others is the initial welcome page, I think it cheapens the site a bit. I assume you have this to remove the browser toolbar, to prevent navigation problems (back button etc). Instead you could use separate html pages for each main area of your site.
 
Thanks for all the input - it is appareciated. All the images have now been re-sized to approximately 150kb so that should help with loading.

Hopefully the site should go live over the next few days.
 
Colin can you tell me about the music and if you need a special license for it?

Good looking site.
 
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