Please critique my first website

Welcome,

The first problem for me, the white "banner" stuck on the grey background.
Then you have white photos on the grey background, and in my opinion it all feels a little bit disjointed.

There are a few great wedding photographers on these forums with excellent sites, some ae full flash. Hang about, post some work, and you will soon catch up with them.

I like some of your photos on the opening page.

Gary.
 
like the web site just a small point, even under special offers I wouldn't quote a fixed price but a percentage off. That way you don't have to alter the site. Also make sure any photos are too small to be enlarged
to be any good or have a watermark embedded within the pictures,
either on the site or on you order presentation disc, otherwise they may be "lifted" and you not getting paid. Don't rely on a siggie in a corner that can be edited out

Quote " once the shoot is over you will receive a DVD of all the images taken. It is then up to you to review at your own leisure."

Realspeed
 
Good first effort but I'm afraid I agree with Gary the contrast between the banner and the grey background is a bit jarring and looks a little dated. I would have also thought about making it central to the browser and making sure the content is the same width as the banner.

The rolling photo app on the front page is always works though. What did you use for this?
 
Dove Mobile photographer service provides a quality mobile portrait photography service to clients throughout the region

If it is quality studio quality photographs with no compromise on customer service then Dove mobile photography service is for you.

Nice site, but after just a quick glance this seemed wrong, too many service/quality in one sentence. In fact the wording throughout the site could do with a bit of a tweak IMO. Just a few little things that jar slightly, nothing too serious as otherwise its a fine looking site.

Andy
 
Hello!

Great first effort.

I won't offer any advice on layout etc, as I'm a more of a words man.

Agree with the last post - the copy needs tweaking so it flows a little more freely.

If you're unsure PM me and I'll see what I can do.

Tim :)
 
I doubt you'll be around that long if you continue working "professionally" for £10/hour including an 8x10 print and travel up to 20 miles of your home. You'll get better pay and benefits at MacDonalds TBH.

Overall the site looks nice and no doubt will get the tweaks mentioned here and probably more too. Just think carefully about your pricing and offers cos at the current rate you're working at a loss if you're doing it all legit.
 
hepburn said:
I doubt you'll be around that long if you continue working "professionally" for £10/hour including an 8x10 print and travel up to 20 miles of your home. You'll get better pay and benefits at MacDonalds TBH.
.
Click to expand...

Seems to be loads of togs doing home studio for that sort of price round our way. I assume you then charge a huge mark up on prints, canvas, acetates etc?
 
Hi there.

May be just my eyes but the blue text on your special offers page is making my eyes go funny.
 
As well as the other points mentioned, I'm not a fan of the pink/yellow/blue fonts on the grey background that pop up on a couple of pages. Also the font for those bits of texts looks a little 'cheap' IMO. I would have a little play with fonts and colours to find some that have a slightly more polished look and colours that don't clash with the grey background.

Overall I think your close to a great little site.
 
I agree with the comments above re the grey background, there is something not quite right about it.

On your FAQ's page you have a heading with Wedding FAQ's but nothing underneath it, I'm also not sure about the yellow font.

On your blog you state "Russell has a small but successful history of photographing weddings in the past and is looking forward to showing the nation how talented and creative he can be." I would change it too "a successful history" and I'd change nation for something else - it just doesn't sound right.

On the Links page the first thing I noticed was the second box down "Find a wedding photographer", scrolling down I found further similar links to wedding and/or photography search engine type sites. Why have you put that there? Hopefully by clicking on your site they have found their wedding photographer, why tempt them with anyone else and do yourself out of potential bookings.

Finally, you need to re-think your pricing. I notice you are local to me, this is a reasonably affluent area and your prices should reflect that. Purely as an exercise let's break down your £10 offering.

1. The client lives 20 miles away so that is roughly a gallon of fuel, let's say £4. You are now down to £6.

2. 10x8 print from Photobox - £1.19 + £1.50 postage. Now down to £3.31.

3. Envelope and postage to get the print to the client. Card backed envelope roughly 25p, large letter (1st Class up to 100g) 52p. Going down again - £2.54

2. 30 minutes to get there, 30 minutes to set up, 1 hour shoot, 20 minutes to break down your kit and say your goodbyes, 30 minute drive home. Almost three hours. Processing - 1 hour? Odds and sods like ordering prints, writing envelopes, going to the post office etc let's say another hour.

That works out to around 50p per hour. Don't undersell yourself otherwise you will be known as the "cheap photographer" and will find it difficult to get out of that bracket. If people only want to pay a miniscule amount you must make a business decision to walk away from them.

Just my opinion of course. :) Good luck with it.
 
After a brief view i like it, at work at mo will look in more detail later
 
I agree with the price issue, but its a nice looking site and it all seems to work well. Most of the suggestions made above a subjective so it's up to you. Excellent.

I hope it is successful for you.
 
I also agree with the price. £10 would be cheap if you had a studio set up in your garage and they came to you so cutting out setup time and travelling! I just don't think its worth doing it for that much. There appear to be two broken picture links on the home page too. Overall looks quite good
 
He obviously didn't like our feedback. :lol:


:shrug:
 
Hacker said:
I agree with the comments above re the grey background, there is something not quite right about it.

On your FAQ's page you have a heading with Wedding FAQ's but nothing underneath it, I'm also not sure about the yellow font.

On your blog you state "Russell has a small but successful history of photographing weddings in the past and is looking forward to showing the nation how talented and creative he can be." I would change it too "a successful history" and I'd change nation for something else - it just doesn't sound right.

On the Links page the first thing I noticed was the second box down "Find a wedding photographer", scrolling down I found further similar links to wedding and/or photography search engine type sites. Why have you put that there? Hopefully by clicking on your site they have found their wedding photographer, why tempt them with anyone else and do yourself out of potential bookings.

Finally, you need to re-think your pricing. I notice you are local to me, this is a reasonably affluent area and your prices should reflect that. Purely as an exercise let's break down your £10 offering.

1. The client lives 20 miles away so that is roughly a gallon of fuel, let's say £4. You are now down to £6.

2. 10x8 print from Photobox - £1.19 + £1.50 postage. Now down to £3.31.

3. Envelope and postage to get the print to the client. Card backed envelope roughly 25p, large letter (1st Class up to 100g) 52p. Going down again - £2.54

2. 30 minutes to get there, 30 minutes to set up, 1 hour shoot, 20 minutes to break down your kit and say your goodbyes, 30 minute drive home. Almost three hours. Processing - 1 hour? Odds and sods like ordering prints, writing envelopes, going to the post office etc let's say another hour.

That works out to around 50p per hour. Don't undersell yourself otherwise you will be known as the "cheap photographer" and will find it difficult to get out of that bracket. If people only want to pay a miniscule amount you must make a business decision to walk away from them.

Just my opinion of course. :) Good luck with it.
Click to expand...

Agree 110%, very well written post.
 
Get rid of ALL the links, why help people to leave your site? Otherwise I think Hacker has covered the other points I can find.

Good luck with the business.
 
Hello all,
I would like to thank you all for your thoughts, especially you 'Hacker', I have taken on board what you have said and will try to turn things around.

Getting business seems harder that it first looked.

Just out of interest, if anyone would like a second photographer for any event, please let me know.

Thank you again
Russell
 
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