Photographers Website, I'd love some constructive critique...

gizzymo

Hi all,


I posted my site a couple of weeks ago here to get some critique, It was a great help and I acted on most of it and now I was hoping I could get a fresh round of comments on whats right/wrong?
The site is http://www.peterneill.eu

Thanks in advance, as always, any help is appreciated and I am not afraid of honesty, if you hate it, say so, just say why too!

Thanks

Peter

Fajitas!

Hows it going?

Right, first off, I'm going to be a bit controversial...

Get a decent splash page - The homepage is great and all, but if you could land on to a single image when your domain name is typed in, have a single image or two, and your name, it should give something better to remember your site by, rather than a 630px × 293px landscape image and text. A lot of people will disagree with this, saying that it's best off going straight into the site, but I'm always a fan of a splash page to be remembered.

In your About You, I'd either talk less about weddings, or more about what else you shoot, and to take out the "I invite you see some of my work on the samples page."

I'm on my 3G internet thingy at the moment, so don't have a reliable loading speed, but from what I can make out, the embedded flash galleries don't take too long to load up, however, if there was any way you could take out the toolbar at the top, with the Download/Subscribe/etc options, it'd be great. I'd nearly say the same about the bottom - Especially the Apple logo.

I'd also move the Blog tab to the very end of the bar at the top, I don't think blogs are that essential to a photographers business, but if you want to include it, I wouldn't put it between samples and print sales!

Think that's it for the moment, hope the above makes some sense/helps you out in some way!

sheesh

Splash pages are not an option if you want to be found by a search engine and is very nineties. if you wanted to do something like a splash page you try some sort of quickloading flash movie of some of your best images in it

there is a black line between the image of the bride and the 'reflection' of the image you need to sort that i am on firefox version 2.0

the text: I would look at putting a area around the main text all it needs is a slightly different colour and some rounded edges on the corners the elements need to be contained

I like the site but it needs more images of weddings

the images in your blog are georgeous.

Edit: ok actually looked at the samples page there are loads -sorry

Fajitas!

Hmm, not getting that reflection here at all?

Anyways, splash pages are as 90's as you want them to be - Make them more dynamic, interesting, etc and they'll work better. Think of it as the cover of a book, or a CD cover... Also, I've never had a problem being found with a splash page and search engine, so can't complain here!

ThOnda

I like it.
But still the same font - doesn't show me creativity and visual pleasures.
Samples of photos - nice links in pictures, however description is right, left, left, right - very strange rhythm. RLRL or all on the same side.

And about splash site - very annoying, imho. Sorry (you know who).

mikeanywhere

Fajitas! wrote: »

Hmm, not getting that reflection here at all?

Anyways, splash pages are as 90's as you want them to be - Make them more dynamic, interesting, etc and they'll work better. Think of it as the cover of a book, or a CD cover... Also, I've never had a problem being found with a splash page and search engine, so can't complain here!

Totally agree with ya Al. Its a myth that splash pages aren't found by the various search engines. By adding or doing certain things to a splash site WILL increases your visibility to said search engines.

With regards to feedback. Its simple but effective. Personally I would only have the one image in the about me section and would also have it so that people can see your face rather than a silhouette but each to their own. You have some nice images there and one or two of them seem a tad dark (checked on both Firefox & Explorer).

Well done with it tho!!

gizzymo

Hi all,

thats really useful feed back.

Splash page:
I was thinking of Flash animating the pic on the front page to smoothly transition between a few different images, is this a good alternative to a splash page, that still is eye catching but brings you directly into the site?

Technical issue: Thanks for the heads up on the Firefox 2.0 issue!


Images: I totally agree some of them are too dark, also, I have a couple of more weddings that I should include samples from and remove some that are already there, just to add more variety.


Blog: I think I'll keep it, but I agree, it should move to the end of the Nav bar!

Text: Really like the idea about the area of a slightly different color around the text on the homepage, goign to fiddle with that today.
Not so sure I agree about changing the font, any thoughts or suggestions??


Thanks to all of you again!!

Peter

sineadw

On Splash pages, in general I'm not a fan at ALL (having to click page after page to get to the info you want makes for poor navigation) but I think they can work very well on photography sites *if* they're done properly. Its all about the visuals after all. They establish an image with the viewer straight away. And Al and Mike are right - they don't necessarily make for bad SEO. You have to be careful though - make sure you have all your keywords in the right places - meta, H1 (your title on the main page for example is paragraph format - REALLY needs to be H1), check your density, keyword competition, footer etc. Whatever works best with the overall design. And your alt tags. If you do it right there's no reason a splash page won't be indexed fully. Its a bit of a wire-walk though if you're unsure what you're doing. Flash is inherently difficult to get indexing properly so unless you know what you're doing I'd steer clear on that one TBH. You can use Javascript or even CSS to make dynamic content. I'm not a huge fan of Flash.. Personal preference.

As for the site.. Hmmm... there's no real 'branding' on the first page. Its a beautiful image, but I think it needs some more design elements. A logo? Introduce some colour? On the text blocks as someone mentioned maybe? But be careful not to fussy up your page. Just something to give it character and a little subtle oomph. At the moment its functional, but its not doing much for me visually. And with a photography site it really should.

The text still needs work (sorry!). "My pricing is excellent & I provide all images from an event to the client. If I take your wedding pictures and produce an album with 50 images, you will get a CD with all the photos, not just the pictures from the album, this leaves you free to print additional copies for friends and family for non profit purposes." I think you could lose this paragraph altogether? Its not running right, and its not necessary info to have straight off. Maybe move it somewhere else? And edit it. There's too much text on the front page. Your imagery should be holding the eye, and at the moment its being a bit swamped by great big blocks of text. I know you don't exactly have war and peace up there, but its still a lot for a home page. Personally I'd be aiming for something between a home page and a splash page - visually very strong but with full nav elements and a *small* bit of text.

The image on the about page is very dark at the bottom, and when I parsed the page first it looked like you'd hit the return key too many times before you started your text if you know what I mean. I'd crop out the black bit at the bottom. Not crazy about the shot itself (I think its too 'mysterious' for a wedding photographer) but I know how much I hate photos of myself so maybe its a personal thing

I know the above sounds very critical, but its honestly not meant as such. You asked for honesty I love the cleanness of the design and your images are stunning. I just think it could be tweaked a bit..

gizzymo

Thanks all for your feedback! I welcome all of it !

And Sinead, dont worry about appearing critical, your message was nothing but helpful!

I have played around with the text, fixed some spacing issues and brought the front page to a half way point between a splash page and a regular front page....

Any thoughts on wether this works or not??

Thanks again!!

Pete

grainne.obrien

I agree with the others who have mentioned that the About page should have a photo of you that shows your face.

The other thing would be the inclusion of some sort of logo with your name that would be placed above the menu bar on every page. Even if you just mess around with fonts and colour with your name in photoshop to create a logo.

I like the update to the photo box on the front page and would leave out the splash page. As a user it annoys me to have to do extra clicks.

Paulw

grainne.obrien wrote: »

I like the update to the photo box on the front page and would leave out the splash page. As a user it annoys me to have to do extra clicks.

You could always have a splash page that then automatically brings you in to your website. Very easy to do.

tricky D

Hi Peter,


Firstly, pop-up pages are bad - dump them.

For your Prints for Sale slide show my first attempt to load it produced an empty pop-up. The following was in the URL:
data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAlgAAAF8CAYAAAATs8VhAAADi0lEQVR4nO3BMQEAAADCoPVPbQo/oAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAfgbsvwAB5poN+wAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==

which looks like a leaky and badly written script. Looking at the source code on that, it's all written unncessarily in JavaScript and the JavaScript doesn't look good, at all. It is also hosted by a third party along with many of your images. There's no good reason why this can't be simplified which would have little likelihood of failure like above and could perform better for search engines as opposed to barely at all. There's even more stuff done in those iWeb JavaScript widgets and I'll be blunt, they're letting you down in so many ways (search engines, reliability, backwards and forwards compatibilty, scalablity... ). I would strongly advise that you redo this in plain old xhtml, images and a much simpler JavaScript slideshow. The more fancy things you try to do, the more points of failure/frustration and lost business.

WHOA the gallery just crashed my Firefox 3. That's a pretty much a showstopper for doing business.

Learn how to use the alt attribute for images. As sineadw says, also do this for heading tags.

Flash is a bad idea imnsho.

Wrt splash pages and homepages.

Splash pages and excessive animation are a distraction. The analogy is that you're walking into a shop and the worker hops in front of you doing some dance or something. It's a waste of time and space.

On homepages, think about a customer walking into your shop, what are they looking for from you? What customers want from your site is to check your products' and services' info (including prices, please, please put the bloody prices in or some idea of them), find out where you are and how to get in touch to start doing business. When they walk in, do they want to hear, 'I work in a number of areas of photography including weddings, portraits, and limited edition artistic pieces. I am based in Wicklow and am available for for work anywhere in Ireland, the UK and mainland Europe. Samples of my work can be found in the samples section of this site.' OK they know your in Wicklow etc., but the analogy is valid, it's you talking about yourself, like a bad example of chatting up. Usually you'd say hello, how can I help you? They reply saying they are interested in x, y or z, telling you what market they're in i.e. Wedding (probably most likely), Event, Portrait/Art etc. and you give your spiel first and then show samples and discuss pricing. These are your main markets, address them up front and directly i.e. on the homepage. Say they want a wedding, then what do you say? Something like, we have a number of packages from the one costing around X which will give you A,B and C, to packages costing in the region of Y which will get you A, B, C, D, E and F, interested?? In your case you also have a special offer to add on. The way to pitch this on the homepage is to address the customer requirements: Need a quality Wedding Album at a competitive rate? We have these quality solutions for you, get in touch... oh and we have a super special offer. (The format is: problem, solution, call to action and in your case you also have a bonus proposition). Do this for each of your 3 main markets/customer types with a suitable image for each and no more than 50 max words in each of the 3 paragraphs (pref 30 words). These link to pages with full info and with the right amount of keywords.

'Welcome to the site of Peter Neill Photography.' is not needed.

Peter Neill Photography. If not h1, I would make this a graphic and give it a bit of treatment making it into more of a logo which could be used for biz cards and other livery items (brand identity).

'Something genuinely different...' the tagline is a good idea. Personally I'm not sure about this one. 'Genuinely' just sounds weak imo and 'different' isn't very reassuring. I'd be wanting reliability, quality, decent value, (and no bull artists who get pissed before the cake is cut) so you could rethink the tagline more around those. Get testimonials to back these up.

gotta go
my 2c/hth
\r

sineadw

Whoa with the horizontal scrolling

Just had a good look at your source code though and he's right. All those widgets can cause big problems, and code that's messy like that really doesn't go down well with google. It likes clean and valid. Actually...

...ran it through W3.org's validator there and there are 52 errors. I'm not getting the ones listed above (I'm on FF3 and Chrome today..) but it'll stop search engines getting to the info on your site. If you know how to code then I'd consider a rework. Its not visible stuff but it makes an impact. You've still got your title marked up as paragraph too.

You can get hung up on the coding I know, but if you get it clean from the start its great

Edit: Just looked at my own site and I have a few errors meself. Pot>Kettle

For me the Flash animation is running a bit fast and juddering a bit? Its definitely getting there though..

tricky D

sineadw wrote: »

Whoa with the horizontal scrolling

fixed:)

gizzymo

Hi guys!

Thanks for all the help, I've adjusted the flash animation, so ti should be a lo smoother now.

I'm going to remove most of those widgets over the next few days, to be honest, most of them are not even been used, there is crap for the nav system in all of them, but if I rewrite the nav system I can dump pretty much all the widgets.

I am also going to get a decent pic taken of myself by a fellow photographer for the about page.

Can I ask one favor though, I got this Anon comment via the webstite:

name: soundadvice
email: soundadvice@yahoo.com
hi there,

you are a brill photographer ....stunning

but your webpage is really bad sorry but I think you are doing yourself no favours here...

Maybe hire a good web designer to display your outstanding work


I do appreciate the compliments contained, I just wish it was not anonymous. What I want to get an opinion on though,
Its within my abilities to fix the widget issues in the code, so assuming thats the case is the site "really bad" as the writer suggested?.

I'd rather people were blunt! I'm prepared to put the work into the site to get it where it should be, but I want to make sure I'm not doomed to failure, and that there is good reason to continue on my current course!

smelltheglove

Hiya Peter, it is still feeling a bit home made to me. Now I mean this in no offense. I did a bit of desk top publishing in college so I find font a HUGE thing in presentation and a variety also.

I have my own font which I use for all my correspondence. It means that everything is flowing, but the more important part say Peter Neill Photography would be slightly larger and a different colour. I don't mean extreme, classy. Then my tag line is italic but the same font. Everything else is the plain font.

So my recommendation for your site is, choose a font you like, you seem to be ok with a general font but maybe look at Garamond or Batang, nice enough but still a little different. The black and white does nothing. A girlie thing I know, but I always remember in the fashion pages it is often mentioned that someone who wears black and white has something to hide. My last website had a winey coloured but slightly textured background with an off cream coloured font. It looked quite well. Another one I had was dark blue with an almost black font. Black is kinda classy though so you'd need to change font colour if you wanna keep it black, a very very light grey maybe.

I'd cut down on the text also, let your pictures speak for themselves. The print for sale option take out the this might take a few seconds, people expect pictures to load one by one. I'd give the pictures a name also rather than say a14 it could be frozen in time....

If you are trying to make it high in the profession I'd take away the blog. Its too personal and gives the impression of a guy down the road rather than a professional business man.

Phototoxin

It looks like it was done on iweb with a few modifications.

I like its simplicity however

I found the loading of some of the galleries a bit slow

gizzymo

Hello lots of changes to the front page text and how the user is brought though, thanks for the suggestions about that!

I have also changed the font to Optima, I think it looks better, any thoughts?


RE: the blog and some people thinking I should kill it...., I'm really not sure what to do here, I get a lot of positive feedback from it from clients, considering that the blog is all photography related, and not a "I ate cornflakes today" blog, the impression I have got from clients is that it adds weight to my ability,
Any thoughts?

THANK YOU ALL AGAIN!

sineadw

Much better Its still lacking oomph though? I definitely think you should have a (decent!) logo or logotype. Have you thought about a two column layout maybe? It all seems a bit linear, and it'd be easier to display some graphic elements with a nice subtle dividing line or something. Plus you could eliminate the need for vertical scrolling (I love it when a site can display everything with the minimum of work - I'm lazy that way ) Doesn't have to be fancy - my own site is very plain and basic but has enough in it to lift it from the plain black. I think the comment on your site is unfair TBH. Its badly in need of something to stop it looking like a document overall though - it should have balance and composition exactly the same way a photograph does. Use your rule of thirds for example. Your shots show you know how to do it. Sometimes I find walking away from the monitor and squinting a bit helps. See the page as a picture..

I'm leaning towards trebuchet font for online use these days. Make sure whatever you use is pre-installed on most peoples' computers or it'll display default (yeuch).

And justify your text

gizzymo

SineadW, you are a saint, thanks for the continued help, I'll fiddle round with your suggestions tomorrow and post here when I have some changes up, thanks again

Pete

sheesh

keep the blog its all about photography and has excellent images
for seo create a site map these can be submitted to google and yahoo.

it seems that now you are designing by committee!!

sheesh

gizzymo wrote: »

Hi guys!

Thanks for all the help, I've adjusted the flash animation, so ti should be a lo smoother now.

I'm going to remove most of those widgets over the next few days, to be honest, most of them are not even been used, there is crap for the nav system in all of them, but if I rewrite the nav system I can dump pretty much all the widgets.

I am also going to get a decent pic taken of myself by a fellow photographer for the about page.

Can I ask one favor though, I got this Anon comment via the webstite:

name: soundadvice
email: soundadvice@yahoo.com
hi there,

you are a brill photographer ....stunning

but your webpage is really bad sorry but I think you are doing yourself no favours here...

Maybe hire a good web designer to display your outstanding work


I do appreciate the compliments contained, I just wish it was not anonymous. What I want to get an opinion on though,
Its within my abilities to fix the widget issues in the code, so assuming thats the case is the site "really bad" as the writer suggested?.

I'd rather people were blunt! I'm prepared to put the work into the site to get it where it should be, but I want to make sure I'm not doomed to failure, and that there is good reason to continue on my current course!

Unless the person goes into specifics there is not much you can do with that comment. overall the site does what its supposed to but its not going to win and design awards. the Majority of photograper websites are like that i think (well the ones I've seen)

Building your website will be an ongoing struggle. Like photography your design skills and you eye for good design improves with practice. Have a look around at other photographer website.

As an exercise: find 5 photographer websites that you like write down what you like about them.
find 5 photographer websites that you don't like write down what you don't like about them.

gizzymo

Thanks for your comments and advice sheesh

I'll keep plugging away at it, its certainly not the same site I started with 2 days ago, so with any luck I can keep it improving

cheers

P

workaccount

Hi,
I like your site as it's very easy to use and navigate. That's extremely important - more important than flash stuff and graphics. Your photos are excellent and are much better than most I see so they speak for themselves.

The site is contempory and professional and the pictures do the selling.

As soon as I hit your site the thing I was most interested in was the photos but the flash animation moved them too fast. I wanted to study them but there was no way to stop them. So I'd say if you can leave them at the speed but put in a stop and play button.

You might argue that you can go into the samples to study the photos but you have only a few seconds to catch peoples attention before you go back to google. If I don't like what I see straight away I often won't bother navigating the site further.

gizzymo

Thanks for your feedback Work account, especially for the feedback about the speed of the flash, i'll see if I can add a pause button

cheers
pete