feedback on my website please

rampanthamster

rampanthamster

Messages
1,250
Edit My Images
Yes
hi guys, i spent today designing and putting together my website. I wanted to go for a minimal type look. I may chop and change certain pics (to be honest the picture choosing/exporting was a pain, and i may not necessarily have chosen all the best ones!) and may add to it here and there but I'd really appreciate any comments / feedback etc on it if you get a minute. Thanks!

http://www.rowanhunn.com
 
I really like it, the minimalist style looks really good.

My only gripe would be I don't like the links to each page. I don't think the colour suits, but that is a very personal opinion. I would possibly move your email address details to a contact page and have a copyright note at the bottom and make the 4 links (inc a contact page link) at the top black in colour.

Nice to see something different though :thumbs:
 
Don't like the link font/colour either, and the thumbnails could do with being a tad bigger, and maybe a bit more information about who you are and what you do?
 
It looks very minimalistic.I like it but whether it will be everyone's taste is a big question.The frame in the webpage could be a bit bigger and the Thumbnails size to increase as well.The photos look but you can certainly add few more photos to each set to give a good range.
 
thanks a lot for the feedback guys - appreciated. I think i'll certainly be adding a few photos and portfolios over the coming days.

- link colour - yes, you're all right, i'll change that. The old blue/purple is very 90's ;)
- more info about myself - yes, need to bulk that up a bit as well.
- Size of frame/thumbs - true, i guess it could be a bit wider. I'll experiment with that. However, despite the fact that i designed it on a 27" imac, i need it to look right and to sit in the frame on a 15" laptop as that's what a lot of people use these days. I want the whole frame to sit in the screen without any need for scrolling. So it could be a bit wider, but not taller. Thumbs are 75x75 at the moment, i might try 85x85, which will fit if i make the frame a bit wider.

Do you think i really need to have a link that says 'contact'? Is it not enough to have it in my 'about' page?
 
What do you want it to do?
It's difficult to critique a website without knowing it's purpose.
 
Phil - basically, just showcase a few of my pics and have my contact details on there. Something so that when i hand out my card with my web address on, there'll be a page in place for people to look at that will (hopefully) look quite good and be easy to navigate.

or do you mean what do i want to do in terms of photography? Well, at the moment i'm fairly open. I've done a wedding (which went quite well for the most part), a model and a few events...yet to find my niche though and very much at the stage of 'accepting what's thrown my way', which i guess a lot of photographers are, and certainly at the beginning! :)
 
one point - as you are basically selling yourself as a weddings/portraits/events photographer - why are nearly half the images on your front page not from those genres ? - if i'm going to hire you to shoot my wedding , i'm not going to care that you take nice landscapes/architecture/flowers etc

also on your weddding portfolio an awful lot of shots seem to be from the same event (the one with the bloke with the stubbly beard and the japanese partner) - you might want to put a wider selection up as a prospective client wants to be assured of your experience
 
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big soft moose said:
one point - as you are basically selling yourself as a weddings/portraits/events photographer - why are nearly half the images on your front page not from those genres ? - if i'm going to hire you to shoot my wedding , i'm not going to care that you take nice landscapes/architecture/flowers etc

also on your weddding portfolio an awful lot of shots seem to be from the same event (the one with the bloke with the stubbly beard and the japanese partner) - you might want to put a wider selection up as a prospective client wants to be assured of your experience
Click to expand...
^This, basically -
rampanthamster said:
Phil - basically, just showcase a few of my pics and have my contact details on there. Something so that when i hand out my card with my web address on, there'll be a page in place for people to look at that will (hopefully) look quite good and be easy to navigate.

or do you mean what do i want to do in terms of photography? Well, at the moment i'm fairly open. I've done a wedding (which went quite well for the most part), a model and a few events...yet to find my niche though and very much at the stage of 'accepting what's thrown my way', which i guess a lot of photographers are, and certainly at the beginning! :)
Click to expand...
Because ^this is a bit half cocked - excuse my bluntness - I'm Northern.:)
If you're still at a stage in your photography, where you're mostly taking pictures for fun, but you're prepared to take on a few jobs - you'll find some jobs through WOM etc. Put some pic's up on FLICKR or something similar.

If, however you're planning on starting a business and your website is a shop front - it's a VERY different proposition, and nice, simple, easy to navigate all queue up behind;
SEO friendly
Marketing

OTOH, as you've decided you want your own site, then it looks nice and simple - but you can't expect it to work as a business site. :)
 
all the wedding shots are from the same wedding, well spotted. (it's the only wedding i've done, and she's not japanese ;) ).

Obviously it's early days, and i haven't got a great deal of work under my belt. I just think that it's better to direct people to my own website rather than just saying 'take a quick look at my flickr'...even if it is for word of mouth stuff, it does just seem more professional i suppose.

And yes, whilst i suppose there might be more work in weddings/portrait stuff it's not all i want to do at all. In fact, i've done some stuff for postcards/calendars (hence the pics of london eye/westminster)..it's just i didn't quite know how to catagorise that on the site, or whether it was even worth doing so. So instead i thought i'd pop a bit of variety on the homepage, then narrow things down a bit in the portfolios.

At the moment, primarily because i'm in the early stages, i think i'm more interested in having a site that looks reasonably attractive and clean but showcases a few things. Once i build up my portfolio (already have a bit more work in the pipeline) i can hopefully start to streamline the site and make it more focused.
 
If you want to set it up as a business site this is definitely NOT the way to go about it.

"Minimalist" may be good as an "arty" concept but for a business site it's pure poison.

If it's going to be a wedding site then all you should have on it are pics and info pertaining to weddings.

Same for portraits etc.

If it's a general site to showcase your work then it should not be used to get weddings etc - you could put a link to your wedding work etc but that would be all.

Also No SEs are going to index a site without TEXT - and lots of it.

And before the site is ready to go live you need to put a nolink/nofollow instruction in the META tags otherwise when (and if) Google and the others get round to index it a totally unfinished site may then get indexed.

Once the site is properly ready then you can simply delete the tag.

You need to re-think the whole purpose of the site and then design it for that purpose.

You also need to re-do the whole code because when I tried to validate it you have 11 errors and 3 warnings, and checking your code shows it's all over the place.

And your thumbnails are much too large - some show as over 100Kb! - use EasyThumbnails to resize and create much smaller files otherwise your bandwidth is rapidly going to get eaten into.

.
 
hi peter - i appreciate the feedback.

The plan eventually is to have different sections to the site, which will probably be clickable upon loading the main index page. When i have another wedding or two under my belt, i will aim to have a dedicated wedding section, with pics / prices / info etc. It's just very early days at the moment, and all my stuff is from word of mouth. However, given that i am handing out a few cards here and there, i needed to have something on the web and this is the kind of thing that i have in mind...for now.

I'm not even thinking about getting indexed etc at the moment.

the thumbnail size thing is a bit odd though - most of them are about 25k but no idea why some are bigger. They're all resized to 85x85...

will try to check code errors etc, but bear in mind that i'm not even close to being a coding whizz and this was based on an initial image gallery template which i've just embellished somewhat. How do i put the nolink / follow thing in then?
 
rampanthamster said:
hi peter - i appreciate the feedback.

The plan eventually is to have different sections to the site, which will probably be clickable upon loading the main index page. When i have another wedding or two under my belt, i will aim to have a dedicated wedding section, with pics / prices / info etc. It's just very early days at the moment, and all my stuff is from word of mouth. However, given that i am handing out a few cards here and there, i needed to have something on the web and this is the kind of thing that i have in mind...for now.

I'm not even thinking about getting indexed etc at the moment.

the thumbnail size thing is a bit odd though - most of them are about 25k but no idea why some are bigger. They're all resized to 85x85...

will try to check code errors etc, but bear in mind that i'm not even close to being a coding whizz and this was based on an initial image gallery template which i've just embellished somewhat. How do i put the nolink / follow thing in then?
Click to expand...

Just put this in the head section:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />

And 25k is still extremely big for such small sizes - I'd get them down to about 5-6k where they will allow your site to load much quicker.

This is an example of accurate coding which validates perfectly within the site:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />
<title>Macro Photography</title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/php; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<meta name="keywords" content="Macro Photography,lenses,extension tubes,macros,raynox" />
<meta name="description" content="Macro Photography." />

<base href="http://www.macro-photography.co.uk/" />

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="macro-photography/style/main.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="macro-photography/style/picboxes.css" />

</head>

To find out if your site validates OK just install the Opera browser - load your site into it, right click on any page you want and then scroll down to "validate"

Once you click on that your page's code will be loaded into W3C's validator and checked with a readout giving you the errors in detail.

.
 
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peter, many thanks once again. I've made all my thumbnails 4k in size and to be honest, at 85x85px they still look just the same - nice one! Will download opera now and give the coding check a go.
 
Hey,

My slightly older website resembled something similar to this.

I think that the text is a little too small for me. I am using 1920x1080 on my screen and im fairly young so ive got good eye sight. but my dad could barely make it out.

Also, I find that you have slightly over used the lightbox. its a great tool but i would only use it for the portfolio part. I think that you need something else on the first page...

Also, I wouldnt have your phone number on the bottom of every page. I would have a copyright details at the bottom. I would leave the phone number for the about page. Gives you a little more content...
 
The pokemon kid said:
Hey,

My slightly older website resembled something similar to this.

I think that the text is a little too small for me. I am using 1920x1080 on my screen and im fairly young so ive got good eye sight. but my dad could barely make it out.

Also, I find that you have slightly over used the lightbox. its a great tool but i would only use it for the portfolio part. I think that you need something else on the first page...

Also, I wouldnt have your phone number on the bottom of every page. I would have a copyright details at the bottom. I would leave the phone number for the about page. Gives you a little more content...
Click to expand...

I'm using 1024x768 and he text size is fine for me.

.
 
petersmart said:
I'm using 1024x768 and he text size is fine for me.

.
Click to expand...

But that's because you are using a monitor with a lower resolution. I was just saying it because its tiny on mine...

It can be solved by using multiple css style sheets linked to the page.
 
petersmart said:
If you want to set it up as a business site this is definitely NOT the way to go about it.

"Minimalist" may be good as an "arty" concept but for a business site it's pure poison.
Click to expand...

I totally disagree with this. Minimalist design like this puts all the pertinent information and imagery directly in front of the viewer without distracting clutter. It also reduces the number of clicks necessary for navigation.

Few things are as off-putting, both as a viewer and a potential client, as a busy design full of distractions. Frankly, I find sites with loads of text and busy designs extremely off-putting, and am therefore less likely to buy anything from them or consider the owner of the site a competant professional.
 
onona said:
I totally disagree with this. Minimalist design like this puts all the pertinent information and imagery directly in front of the viewer without distracting clutter. It also reduces the number of clicks necessary for navigation.

Few things are as off-putting, both as a viewer and a potential client, as a busy design full of distractions. Frankly, I find sites with loads of text and busy designs extremely off-putting, and am therefore less likely to buy anything from them or consider the owner of the site a competent professional.
Click to expand...

I was talking in the context of getting listed on SEs - without a decent Google and other SE listing the only way to get business is with business cards and fairly expensive advertising.

But a SE friendly site doesn't have to be "fussy", "distracting" or "busy".

It can be well laid out and attractive and with easy to use navigation.

After all Google itself states that easy to use navigation also helps with SE placings.

The bottom line is a high SE placing gets you more business - and if that's what you're after then you have to get decent placings.

If you don't then "arty" and "minimal" is fine.

.
 
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