New website - any feedback

Ian Boichat

Ian Boichat

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Ian
Edit My Images
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Finally upgraded from my iWeb site and built this using some templates from into the darkroom. I was really impressed with them, couldn't find any mention of them on TP so thought I'd share. Although the main site is flash it also creates an html version for ipads etc. and the CMS was pretty straight forward too. First thing I did was to make sure music was switched off!:)

Any feedback would be welcome, navigation issues, loading issues - also I have only tested it in safari and firefox so please let me know if there are any browser issues with chrome or internet explorer etc.
 
It seems to be Ok in IE8 but one trouble I noticed is that on the opening screen you have to scroll down to see the "Enter Site" button - most sites have the navigation buttons at the top as on your other pages.

Also once you go to Blogs (on the top bar) then you can't get back to the main site.

Don't have time to check the rest but those two things stood out.

.
 
Thanks Peter, as you can probably guess it was done from a template, might have to get my hands dirty and play with the code so that "home" on the blog goes back to the main site - thats why I made it launch the blog in separate page as it bugged me too. Will see how far that enter button is, it was easily on every screen I tested!!
 
splash screens, just say no..

otherwise i like the fact the flash site lets you use forward and back, its clean, reasonably responsive.

dont like the way the blog loads over the top of the main site then theres no obvious way to get back without clicking back.
 
Thanks Neil, agree on the blog issue trying to sort that. Thats strange Barry - it works on mine - that was the main reason I used these guys for the dual version - I have another question perhaps someone will know the answer to should you resharpen images after you have resized them for the web, I realise the compression must take something away but some of the images look too soft. Not sure if I should ask it in a separate post?
 
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Boich said:
I have another question perhaps someone will know the answer to should you resharpen images after you have resized them for the web, I realise the compression must take something away but some of the images look too soft. Not sure if I should ask it in a separate post?
Click to expand...

Well I use a free program called Easy Thumbnails which can resize and apply sharpening all in one go with very little loss of quality (depending on the compression setting).

See here:

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=3499210#post3499210

.
 
You know that game where you have to turn over cards to get matching pairs? That's what the front (well second to front after the splash screen - why do people still use them??) page navigation is like. Want to go to the blog? Shoot, was that the woman or the old man? Contact you - I think that was the two girls, no wait, they're products apparently. Ohhhhh, to contact you I have to click on the surprised baby, obviously. Site navigation shouldn't feel like a puzzle set up to annoy the user.

Some links appear only in the menu up the top, some only in the Puzzleboard(TM) front page, and some in both. I'm not sure why.

On a more technical note, while it's a change to see a flash site that makes a half-hearted attempt to behave like a proper website when it comes to navigation (the /#/ fake urls), it still breaks from standard behaviour in just about every other way. You're probably not doing yourself any favours with search engines, blind users, people that don't like interacting with puzzles, the significant percent that run with Flash disabled by default, etc.

I know the above may sound harsh, but I see so many sites fall into the same flash-as-a-website trap where style reigns over usability. What do I generally do once I hit one? Close the window and move onto the next link.
 
Thanks Peter. Will check it out when I'm back at the computer. I guess there are probably photoshop actions around that might work too ( haven't tried creating any myself yet). I've got one of those that resizes for facebook, perhaps a little tweak to that.
 
Ray, have to admit I'm no fan of flash but as you said this does at least have some underlying HTML and options for alt text, tags etc. I know it's not perfect and many of the flash templates aren't great but I haven't got the know how or the budget to get one built in HTML.

Take your point on the navigation. Think I will add all the links to the menubar.

I'm in two minds about the splash screen. For most websites they are pointless but I think it's a good way to show some images which is the focus of the site and it can be skipped. I might try a split adwords test to see which landing page gets the highest bounce rate.
 
I do like the crisp clean look.
When I look at the blog and then click home it just stays on the blog page.
I don't have super fast broadband but I don't like the countdown at the start (call me impatient :lol:)
The jury is out on the home page as first thoughts are its too busy with images, why show them twice, i.e. home page and portfolio.
I'd like to see bigger thumbnails. I'm probably a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to presentation (call me neurotic :lol:) but I prefer to see the pages the same size.

On the whole I think it has the making of a good site :)
 
Hi Teresa - thanks for your feedback - sorry about the load times, I have already compressed the life out of the images!! I do need to put some more images up. Not sure I can change the size of the thumbnails but if I could I guess it would impact on the size of the main picture. Which pages aren't the same size though as I thought they all were? I'm usually just as neurotic!! :)
(or do you mean the difference between the main site and the blog page?)
 
mattyh said:
Sorry, if I was a customer, I'd have given up before the site got to 50% loaded - Took far too long on my (admittedly) slow broadband
Click to expand...
Hi Matt

Ouch but fair - I've heard it said it needs to load within 7 secs to stop people clicking off. Out of interest what sort of broadband speeds are you getting as it seems to be ok for most people (ducks behind sofa and waits for complaints:))

Will get it redone in html 5 when I've made some more cash - but that won't help with the file sizes of images most of which are around 150 to 200k.
 
Thanks for the feedback Matt, think I might just have to resize the images again and see if it helps. Going to try that easy thumbnails suggested above.

Just cleared my cache and checked it on mine and the site was up in around a second but then my current connection is 4.5mbps which is probably above average for this time of night!
 
I like it, nice and clean. Normally don't like first large image pages but do in this case. Totally agree Ray re turnover cards, add menus and even may be text on each image and job done.
 
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