New Website Design - Feedback & Constructive Criticism

[tinite]

Hi, I've just designed a new website for my photography. I would love your feedback on the look and feel of the site, and how you feel it works. All constructive criticism welcome.

tinite.com

Thank you!

 

[sponner]

I like it a lot.

The navigation on the portfolio and recent pages took a bit of getting used to.

Love the journalism shots.

 

[tinite]

Thank you!

Navigation on portfolio and recent is something I'm looking into - and looking to make as user friendly as possible. It would be really useful if you could be any more specific at all on how you found it? Thanks again!

 

[dejongj]

Is the black, grey, white background changes intentional? I find it a weird and confusing experience...Edit: I see what is happening, you have full screen images that take quite a while to load for me. I find that off-putting, and wouldn't be happy if I was on a mobile connection. And then going to the about pages it is solid grey on the left and black on the right...Sorry doesn't work for me at all.

The word photography looks rather coarse in the logo, I think it is too thin a font...

Blog vs normal site has different logo sizes, it is jumping about...

 

[tinite]

Thanks Jean-Paul,

Indeed - many of the pages use full page backgrounds, which can take a little while to load. I'll look into seeing if there's anything I can do to improve load times on this.

That's interesting on the logo. What browser/system are you running, out of interest? It renders smoothly on all browsers/systems/resolutions I've tested it - so this may well be a compatibility issue I'll need to address.

Again, I think the logo moving about on the blog must be a compatibility issue - thanks for flagging this up. I'll look into it.

 

[dejongj]

Thanks Jean-Paul,

Indeed - many of the pages use full page backgrounds, which can take a little while to load. I'll look into seeing if there's anything I can do to improve load times on this.

That's interesting on the logo. What browser/system are you running, out of interest? It renders smoothly on all browsers/systems/resolutions I've tested it - so this may well be a compatibility issue I'll need to address.

Again, I think the logo moving about on the blog must be a compatibility issue - thanks for flagging this up. I'll look into it.

I'm running OSX Maverick with Safari.

The logo size between the normal site and the blog is most definitely different.

 

[tinite]

I'm running OSX Maverick with Safari.

The logo size between the normal site and the blog is most definitely different.

Oh I wasn't aware Mavericks was available yet! That's cool.

Are you referring to the change in logo size between the main page and other pages? Or do you specifically see a difference between the blog and other pages (excluding the main page - which does intentionally have a larger logo).

 

[Jez2011]

Home page title - "tinite photography" is not descriptive or meaningful enough

 

[tinite]

Home page title - "tinite photography" is not descriptive or meaningful enough

Sorry? What do you mean?

 

[theurbanclown]

Sorry? What do you mean?

For SEO. Nobody is likely to search for that term.

 

[Jez2011]

Sorry? What do you mean?

'Tinite photography' doesn't tell me where you are based or what type of photography you do - this is important for SEO, usability, accessibility etc:

http://www.feedthebot.com/titleandalttags.html

 

[tinite]

For SEO. Nobody is likely to search for that term.

'Tinite photography' doesn't tell me where you are based or what type of photography you do - this is important for SEO, usability, accessibility etc:

http://www.feedthebot.com/titleandalttags.html

'tinite photography' is the company name (it's not just a website name), which I've used for several years now and has served me well. There's no way I could change it because it represents me professionally and has an associated brand identity. It is known by customers and clients that I've worked with. Changing it would be totally confusing - and unnecessary!

The title of the page precisely follows those rules you've linked - it concisely and accurately describes what the page is, i.e. the website of tinite photography.

 

[dejongj]

Oh I wasn't aware Mavericks was available yet! That's cool.

Are you referring to the change in logo size between the main page and other pages? Or do you specifically see a difference between the blog and other pages (excluding the main page - which does intentionally have a larger logo).

Maverick is at beta 6, i run a developers version on my laptop to check apps.

Yes on the main site pages it is fine and consistent. But once switching to the style sheet for the blog the logo size in the top left corner which is the same location changes to a smaller size. Not a biggie however my eyes are drawn to it instantly

 

[tinite]

Maverick is at beta 6, i run a developers version on my laptop to check apps.

Yes on the main site pages it is fine and consistent. But once switching to the style sheet for the blog the logo size in the top left corner which is the same location changes to a smaller size. Not a biggie however my eyes are drawn to it instantly

Ahh right, a dev version.

And thanks for pointing this out. It's not happening for me on my laptop or desktop (both latest 10.8 with Safari and Firefox). I'll check it out on some other systems and have another look at the code...not sure what might be causing it. Odd!

 

[theurbanclown]

'tinite photography' is the company name (it's not just a website name), which I've used for several years now and has served me well. There's no way I could change it because it represents me professionally and has an associated brand identity. It is known by customers and clients that I've worked with. Changing it would be totally confusing - and unnecessary!

The title of the page precisely follows those rules you've linked - it concisely and accurately describes what the page is, i.e. the website of tinite photography.

That is all well and good if people are searching 'tinite photography', but they're not. Even if they were, it would be a sad state of affairs if you weren't top for that search term.

You can have a nice-ish looking website, but if nobody can find you what's the point of it? Target things like 'London portrait photography' or similar, stick it in the title, or at least the sub-title and then incorporate it into the meta description.

 

[tinite]

That is all well and good if people are searching 'tinite photography', but they're not. Even if they were, it would be a sad state of affairs if you weren't top for that search term.

You can have a nice-ish looking website, but if nobody can find you what's the point of it? Target things like 'London portrait photography' or similar, stick it in the title, or at least the sub-title and then incorporate it into the meta description.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean in your first point....the site is (obviously) top for that term.

The point is that I get 42% of my traffic from referrals - social media, links to my website, advertising etc etc - and 49% directly, i.e. from seeing a link somewhere. And the stats are looking perfectly healthy. I'll bear in mind your recommendation, though.

 

[theurbanclown]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean in your first point....the site is (obviously) top for that term.

The point is that I get 42% of my traffic from referrals - social media, links to my website, advertising etc etc - and 49% directly, i.e. from seeing a link somewhere. And the stats are looking perfectly healthy. I'll bear in mind your recommendation, though.

That's what I mean, you're top for a term that nobody searches for. It's ultimately pointless and a waste of a site title.

SEO is free (minus your time) and doesn't take a lot of work. It's great that you're getting work from other areas and good SEO is not the only way to drum up business, but it's certainly a very useful one and unless you are booked up throughout the year without it then there is no reason not to invest a little bit of time into it.

As for the look of your site, I'm not a fan of full page sites as the large image size makes for a low res looking image.

I'd cut out some of your weaker images. The quality varies hugely so just keep your best ones to make a better impact.

The loading circle on the portfolio page makes it look like something will load beneath the images, but never does.

The HelveticaNeue font used for the menus looks untidy, I'd opt for something cleaner - maybe even just a change to all capitals would help.

The border around the images in recent work looks strange. Just the image with a small caption in a nice font would be better.

The whole blog would benefit from being full width, it would allow the images to be a lot bigger. The black border around the images is not pretty, neither are the captions. They'd be better off as images titles, displayed only when the user rolls over the image.

No images load on the home page of the site, when viewing on a mobile.

 

[dejongj]

Maverick is at beta 6, i run a developers version on my laptop to check apps.

Yes on the main site pages it is fine and consistent. But once switching to the style sheet for the blog the logo size in the top left corner which is the same location changes to a smaller size. Not a biggie however my eyes are drawn to it instantly

I'm not entirely sure what you mean in your first point....the site is (obviously) top for that term.

The point is that I get 42% of my traffic from referrals - social media, links to my website, advertising etc etc - and 49% directly, i.e. from seeing a link somewhere. And the stats are looking perfectly healthy. I'll bear in mind your recommendation, though.

Sorry I was misleading you I think...I've just looked again...The home page has the big logo and all other pages have the smaller version...

 

[Jez2011]

'tinite photography' is the company name (it's not just a website name), which I've used for several years now and has served me well. There's no way I could change it because it represents me professionally and has an associated brand identity. It is known by customers and clients that I've worked with. Changing it would be totally confusing - and unnecessary!

The title of the page precisely follows those rules you've linked - it concisely and accurately describes what the page is, i.e. the website of tinite photography.

Not saying you should change it completely - just add some more info. A much better home page title would be "Portraiture, fashion, theatre, street and photojournalism - Tinite photography" or similar. You need to front-load the keywords in the page title for best results:

http://searchengineland.com/nine-best-practices-for-optimized-title-tags-111979

Also agree about the font - there's not enough typographic contrast - uses the same font throughout (I think)