Finally updated my website after 5 years, what do you think?

ljphil78

ljphil78

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263
Name
Philip
Edit My Images
Yes
Well after about 5 years I finally decided to update our website and jump on the Wordpress bandwagon, I've used a theme called Darkroom http://themeforest.net/item/darkroom-fullscreen-studio-for-wordpress/8274662
and just thought i'd gather opinions from some other togs as this is my first foray into a Wordpress site.

Linky here http://www.direct-fx.co.uk/

There are a couple of things i'm not sure about, the main one being music on the homepage, yes or no can't really decide.

There are 2 of us that work together and most weekends are spent doing nightclub photography, with the odd studio shoot and wedding booked in throughout the year.
The main reason behind the update was one the weddings we shot this year was entered into the local wedding magazines wedding of the year competitions and the old website had nothing about weddings on it eek.

Looking forward to hearing your feedback, posotive or otherwise.
 
I really like the overall feel of the site. Compared to other sites it is more unique. One slight criticism is to do with the "direct-fx photography" logo on the top left of the page, it looks pixelated, maybe try and use some anti aliasing to reduce pixelated look, other than that it looks like a very nice site. :)
 
wooooooooooo moving pictures.. made me feel woozy and left... not good at all :(
 
Company blurb on home screen is very difficult to read depending on what photo is behind it. If the blurb is so important that it takes up half the screen then it needs to be readable.

Immediately off putting IMHO.

I was looking at it on iPhone 6+ and the page becomes completely unreadable if you switch to landscape.
 
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Thanks guy's, I did wonder about the text on the home page, but need to figure out how to place a box behind the text to make it more readable or just use it as and enter site page. Michael, how are you viewing the page? Mobile or desktop?
 
Well I've switched to a basic slideshow and removed the music, just need to figure out how to make the text more readable.
 
On the menu, wedding's should not have an apostrophe.

Same thing with the word guest's.

Speaches should be speeches.

'Includes 2 photographers taking shots of the' - this phrase does not fit with some of the items in the list.

Unneeded apostrophes in 'about us' page: photo's, DJ's, club's, DSLR's.

The site could do with being proof read as there are various punctuation and capitalisation issues.

Not sure is you really need your google analytics data on show.

And the images take ages to load!

A few things for you to be getting on with!!
 
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kevin0410 said:
Not sure is you really need your google analytics data on show.
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Lovely thanks for the feedback, i'll get to work on the spelling and punctuation, just curious where you can see the google analytics data?

Ok just found it, that must have got added to my sidebar when i installed it, thank you.
 
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Michael D Beckwith said:
I am viewing the site on my desktop pc at 1920x1200. Here is a screen cap which is cropped and looking at the top left logo : http://fav.me/d89o7ei
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this is an odd one, it lloks fine in Firefox and Chrome (my 2 standard browsers) but just tried it in Safari and IE and also get the pixelation on the logo, another question for the theme developer I think lol
 
You've got some really nice images. For example the bride & groom on the tandem bicycle, the B&G at the gate in the evening. But your first two images make me want to gouge my own eyes out with a spoon. Lose the spot colour.

On your samples gallery, again lose the spot coloured photos and add more images, it's a bit light. Oh and remove the filenames. Your customers won't care so why show it?

I'm not seeing the relationship between your company name and what you do. If anything FX makes me think of movies as in special FX.
 
RE the word clubs as in 'clubs websites'. Sorry, I was wrong saying in my previous post that there should be no apostrophe, but it should be at the end i.e. clubs' as it's a possessive plural.
 
Some of the images on your splash screen make the text VERY hard to read. Choose your images more carefully

KlJEbm8.jpg
 
Ok so I've taken off the music and the moving photos, stopped Google analytics showing in the sidebar, hopefully sorted or the readability of the home page text and hopefully sorted the grammatical errors that Kevin pointed out. Just need to get rid of the filenames in the galleries and add some more photo's. Anything I've missed? Any further feedback is gratefully received.
 
Looking better with the problems already mentioned fixed, but I have some more observations..

What's a family launch party?
"Whether it's a family portrait, launch party or wedding"​
I can't decide if it should be "lunch" or whether you've randomly inserted a commercial service between two private offerings.

I'd personally always put contact details on the homepage when you're using a website as a sales tool, at least the land line phone number. 80%+ of meaningful website hits will be looking for a phone number to make contact with you. Best to make it obvious rather than rely on a contact page. Many people won't make the second click if the information isn't obvious.

You mention professional grade printers, but don't even hint that print services might be available on the wedding package page. Is there a reason you're not wanting to up-sell a package to include prints as well? Even just aline to say that print and album packages are available on request and by separate quotation.

The "studio" section has a lot of environmental/outdoor portraits, the common theme appears to be "portrait" rather than studio.

The event prices page could probably use a duplicate of the contact form if you're not providing standard prices - always make it easy for customers.

Too many fonts.. four fonts on a website is at least two too many (one pretty font for the main title, a second high readability font for everything else). Stick with a strong font theme and be very careful about how you use it, choosing to use a smaller font size in bold (as per the homepage) rather than increase the size of a non-bold font can make the text harder to read. I doubt you need more than four or five text styles (main heading, sub-heading, standard text, emphasis text, quotation text).
 
-Rob- said:
I've just had a look at it for a couple of minutes because that's all I could stand before it started to hurt.

I'm just going to be totally straight and honest, I think it's awful and I don't like it. Sorry!!
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Lol fair enough, what don't you like about it Rob?
 
  • your logo top left is poorly finished and looks cheap
  • the constantly running slideshow on the HP makes it very hard to see any of the text
  • The menus on the HP are barely visible and 3 of them don't appear to do anything
  • I don't like pressing the X top right to make the text appear and disappear.
  • You have colour popped images in your slieshow.......JUST NO!!!!!!!!
  • Your 'About' page is written as if it was written by a 3rd party but then signed off by Phil & Jay so I assume you actually wrote it yourself
  • The 'About', 'News' and 'Contact' pages are better but the boxes with actual content in them start half way down the page for no apparent reason.
All in all the whole website looks sloppy and poorly designed. Like I said the 'wedding' menu doesn't seem to work so I can't see any details of what it is you are actually offering but if I was looking for a wedding photographer I'd assume you were bargain basement and move on to the next photographer.
 
Lol, yeah just had a look on our work pc running ie8 and I agree it looks awful.
 
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