Redesigned website C&C

ki_user

ki_user

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Name
Lee
Edit My Images
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Hi everyone. Last time I asked for feedback on my website everyone was brutally honest and ripped it to shreds. Taking everyone's feedback into account I have completely redesigned it.

www.digicasephotography.co.uk

I would love to know what you think of this one, and wait with interest to hear your comments good or bad.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to look and post.

Lee.
 
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Agreed with niggle about flash...sooner HTML5 arrives full scale the better.

Quick point - the images on the homepage slideshow are a lot lower resolution than their counterparts in the portfolio section.... the homepage needs to grab with a wow factor - the pixcellated images on my monitor would look so much better if they were same res. Should be a minor tweak.

Are you a pro? The 'Get Free Websites from WIX' at the bottom doesnt look great if you are, but if it is a hobby then all cool.

HTH.
 
seems to be the trend at the moment that you have that weird click to enter page. Just seems a bit weird that the first page forces the viewer to add their input and extra effort before getting anything back.
 
:agree:

Sorry, but flash sites just look a bit naff now IMO.

Also, (with my web head on here) to be honest, the first thing I notice when entering your site is the WIX brand.. not yours. It's all over the place.

There are other ways of getting a low-cost (don't like the work 'cheap') web site to show your work without having to resort to freebie stuff that just gets in the way. It's quite simple - If you want people to take what you do seriously, then do it properly.

Why is the image on your 'about' page back-to-front.?

Constructive, not bitchy. Hope this helps.
 
ignore that... its fine XD

sorry everyone, i like the flash site, and im sure most of the non techy public would too

i agree with the comments about the low resolution images, there is a good mix of images there to show what you can do but they are let down with the resolution in my opinion.

the images seem to me changing very quickly too, like one every second, i just about get focused on the image then it goes again XD
 
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I like your photos, but I hate Flash sites.
Also it's a WIX site. I think it's better to design it yourself or pay a designer to create your site.
 
Flash sites are not good... better to use a more friendly technology

for example, I cant see your site at all on my ipad or iphone...

EDIT: now that I have looked on my PC, the images on my 1920x1080 screen look horridly soft and pixelated, not a good way to promote your work, also the WIX thing everywhere looks bad.

I would say either get someone to make you a good site, or learn how to use wordpress...
 
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next said:
seems to be the trend at the moment that you have that weird click to enter page. Just seems a bit weird that the first page forces the viewer to add their input and extra effort before getting anything back.
Click to expand...

Well, at least you can copy and paste the telephone number and email address from the splash page, which you can't in the Flash Contacts section. :|

Splash pages on web sites are so late 90s, though.
 
Thanks for all the comments so far, will have a good read soon, WIX logo will be going very soon. Search engines won't be a problem beacuse of the 1st page, highly google ranked already for a lot of searches. I know a lot of people don't like flash and the click to enter is there so I can be seen on Iphone etc.
 
You need to ask yourself a few questions;

1. What is my website for? Is it (a) to get business from people, or (b) simply a place to showcase your photos.

If it's b, then it doesn't really matter if you're using a wix site, because you're not going to lose anything by using it. On the other hand, if you are trying to get business from people, your site needs a lot of work, from the ground up.

I assume from the weddings/portraits links, that you're trying to win business from customers, then the site is;

a. Too many things. Concentrate on one or two things at the most. People looking for a wedding photographer don't care about landscapes (although won't be put off by portraits, I suspect, as it's the same type of photography (people) )

b. Poorly branded.... Who's is the first brand you see? Yours, or Wix's?

c. Flash. Poor for Google (put this in your browser: site:www.digicasephotography.co.uk) It shows the OLD site, but nothing from the new one... because it's flash.

Elements of Flash are OK, as long as there is other content to back it up. Building a website completely in flash is not only a really bad idea for the search engines, but not what flash was designed for in the first place. (I know there are exceptions to this, but I'm trying to be generic)

If you want to target a few different niches, then look at having a few websites - it won't hurt and will probably do you a favour in the SERPS if you link between them all.

EDIT:

Thanks for all the comments so far, will have a good read soon, WIX logo will be going very soon. Search engines won't be a problem beacuse of the 1st page, highly google ranked already for a lot of searches. I know a lot of people don't like flash and the click to enter is there so I can be seen on Iphone etc.
Click to expand...

The search engines WILL be a problem, because there's a single page, with not much content (which is currently backed up by your old site still being ranked and active... Take that off, and I suspect your rankings will go down.

Think of your users... If I browsed to a site on my phone/ipad, then "clicked to enter" and got a blank page, I'd still navigate away to someone elses site, so even if your splash page can be seen, the actual details can't.

What search terms are you currently ranked for?
 
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next said:
seems to be the trend at the moment that you have that weird click to enter page. Just seems a bit weird that the first page forces the viewer to add their input and extra effort before getting anything back.
Click to expand...

+1, I hate these pages.. they have no purpose except to delay the client gettiong to your site.. but .. in this case it does provide the client with the most useful information (and probably the bit they're looking for).. you contact details. Although it doesn't have a town/district/county - that would be useful to add. And a reminder of your name, location and the 0845 number on the bottom of every page.

I don't know if it's my PC or your site.. but a lot of the larger images look extremely soft - bordering on out-of-focus. The pebble beach shot shows it the worst, but the large portrait is almost as bad and it continues into the individual portfolios. Is this an artifact of the slideshow?

The Mach shots should probably be seperated on the Landscape portfolio.. they run into each other on the slidey thing.

Is there any way you could spilt up the portrait section? You've got semi-glamour, child portraits and the grunge/tatts all together.. someone looking for one might be put off by the others.

It's always best to put a name to yourself. "We" and "us" don't engage the viewer - they establish distance, "Lee" and "I" are more personal and start to develop a relationship with potential clients from the start.

If you're in Bridgend.. put it on the frontpage and the bottom of every page.. along with how to get hold of you knowing where you are is one of the most important pieces of information a client needs to know quickly.
 
Musicman said:
Well, at least you can copy and paste the telephone number and email address from the splash page, which you can't in the Flash Contacts section. :|

Splash pages on web sites are so late 90s, though.
Click to expand...


and who wants a 90s revival!?! :LOL:
 
Alastair said:
I don't know if it's my PC or your site.. but a lot of the larger images look extremely soft - bordering on out-of-focus. The pebble beach shot shows it the worst, but the large portrait is almost as bad and it continues into the individual portfolios. Is this an artifact of the slideshow?
Click to expand...

Probably because the Flash canvas scales to fill the available window. If you have your browser set large on a big monitor, you end up with a 200% or 300% sized image. It looks like the presentation SWF does some anti-aliasing to partially offset that, but it softens everything a little too.
 
Entry pages are not good, but contrary to many opinions above I do like flash sites, they allow you to use decent size images with less chance of them being purloined "accidentally".
Yours is quite intuitive and importantly ' it's interactive too, this makes your visitors more likely to stay long enough to appreciate it and hopefully buy your services. It's quick to load when it works but I don't think the hosting site is working too well. There are some quality problems with some images too which I think is down to compression, they look soft.
 
Works ok for me on 64bit Win 7.
 
The other big issue with flash is that it excludes a very large part of the mobile browsing audience.
 
Alastair said:
The other big issue with flash is that it excludes a very large part of the mobile browsing audience.
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Really?

http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html

Only a few iDevices manufactured by Apple don't support, and the rest of the portable device market is doing it's best to make sure Flash is supported. There's also a few people that don't want to use Flash on their browsers, but they're not the majority just a bunch of philistine technophobes ;)

HTML 5 is coming, but isn't mainstream, it needs browsers to be updated to support it and not everyone's running the latest version, and a HTML5 site can look utter c@ck on an unsupported browser where some bits work and some don't. You can check what you're own browser(s) support here

http://html5test.com/

There's plenty of big name, web savvy, photographers taking advantage of Flash. I'm sure if their business were affected they'd move in a heartbeat.
 
JasonRS said:
Really?

http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html

Only a few iDevices manufactured by Apple don't support, and the rest of the portable device market is doing it's best to make sure Flash is supported. There's also a few people that don't want to use Flash on their browsers, but they're not the majority just a bunch of philistine technophobes ;)

HTML 5 is coming, but isn't mainstream, it needs browsers to be updated to support it and not everyone's running the latest version, and a HTML5 site can look utter c@ck on an unsupported browser where some bits work and some don't. You can check what you're own browser(s) support here

http://html5test.com/

There's plenty of big name, web savvy, photographers taking advantage of Flash. I'm sure if their business were affected they'd move in a heartbeat.
Click to expand...

Until Froyo goes mainstream on Android devices capable of taking it, and taking into account the legacy (still less than a year old) devices that won't support Froyo, then yes there is a problem.

A large number of photography sites I browse on Android (2.1) are running parallel non-flash enabled sites - if you're browing on flash-capable iCarp devices you might not be aware of these.

Not using Flash isn't the mark of a Luddite - if you were at the bleeding edge of technology just 6 months ago you'd have found yourself shelling out a lot of notes for your iPad which at the time of launch Apple were adamant would never, ever support Flash as they viewed it as a dead-end for browsing.
 
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No offense but you didn't really design anything, you've just used a automated system to create a website through a horrible flash template generator. It's really really bad.

Try editing some templates yourself I guess, and learn a bit of HTML along the way? Search google for "open source templates".

Hope that helps.
 
hi. Just my thoughts: why do you need a splash front page? Why not go straight into the flash site? Unless it has the sort of content that was unsuitable for certain audiences, I can't see the point?
 
absolute said:
No offense but you didn't really design anything, you've just used a automated system to create a website through a horrible flash template generator. It's really really bad.

Try editing some templates yourself I guess, and learn a bit of HTML along the way? Search google for "open source templates".

Hope that helps.
Click to expand...

No doesn't help at all
 
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The photos have "by Oshi Yuval" at the bottom?

As others have said, the slideshow on the homepage is too quick and the WIX branding is intrusive, but that aside, I think the Portfolio page looks good although maybe the titles for each section could be done in a different way. (So that "landscape" for example doesn't get lost on the beach).

On the Contact page, the boxes for data entry look a bit weird, like they're drawn with a pencil. I'm sure it's not supposed to look like that.

Either on the About page or the Contact page, include a name. Assuming it isn't Oshi.
 
ki_user said:
Splash page is there so I can be found more easily through search engines
Click to expand...

There are 2 sorts of SEO - onpage and offpage. Your splash page has the onpage SEO characteristics of a chocolate firegaurd
 
Lee, i am sorry so many people seem to have attacked your efforts with very negative remarks.

Ok so your site is driven by Flash, but it is what it is, at the end of the day if you are happy with your efforts and the site fits the purpose you intended it for then, be happy with it.

It can be an expensive and time consuming exercise, might be nice to see the guys giving such negative remarks to offer some alternatives and support.
 
GRECIAN said:
Lee, i am sorry so many people seem to have attacked your efforts with very negative remarks.

Ok so your site is driven by Flash, but it is what it is, at the end of the day if you are happy with your efforts and the site fits the purpose you intended it for then, be happy with it.

It can be an expensive and time consuming exercise, might be nice to see the guys giving such negative remarks to offer some alternatives and support.
Click to expand...

One alternative is DHTML, as I mentioned in my earlier post. What I said about SEO is a statement of fact
 
Yeah you need to basically put a message forward saying "OI YOU! COME CHECK WHAT I CAN DO FOR YOU!"

Being a little more polite obviously.

I can't say too much since mine needs fixing up.
 
AdamPearcey said:
Yeah you need to basically put a message forward saying "OI YOU! COME CHECK WHAT I CAN DO FOR YOU!"

Being a little more polite obviously.

I can't say too much since mine needs fixing up.
Click to expand...

Well I am dammed if I do and I am dammed if I dont. Either the OP wants an honest opinion or not. Self promotion has nothing to do with this

Why do people use flash?
- fancy pants interfaces
- control over the browser
- It offers a different logic setup & programming language to HTML

I was pointing out that you can achieve all of the above, and the option for decent SEO by looking at another technology. Best of all - it is supported by more users browsers
 
absolute said:
No offense but you didn't really design anything, you've just used a automated system to create a website through a horrible flash template generator. It's really really bad.

Try editing some templates yourself I guess, and learn a bit of HTML along the way? Search google for "open source templates".

Hope that helps.
Click to expand...

Why does a photographer need to know any HTML?

I would suggest he buys a copy of Serif WebPlus X4 which is what I use. Combined with PS CS5 and I don't know anything about HTML...
Wait doesn't "<p>" and "<p/>" mean paragraph?
I'm not even sure thats HTML rofl...

In the mean time I will keep using the "Return" key on my keyboard.
 
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