New website - opinions please

D

DDP

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784
Name
David
Edit My Images
No
Hi all,

Been a while since I posted on here, mainly because I've been so busy pulling everything together for my new website.

In a nutshell, the old site was terrible for SEO so it was time for a new brand identity and website.

So, your thoughts please ladies and gents: http://www.daviddarephotography.co.uk

Happy to take all feedback, whether positive or negative, so don't hold back ;)

Thanks
Dave

P.S. I think there are some 'issues' but I'm not going to highlight them as I'd rather people went to it 'cold' rather than being on the look-out for something.
 
Only had a quick look - nice and clean looking but the thumbnail bar at the bottom is a bit tricky to use. Very Nice though
 
I'd put a colour image or at least one with a more distinct 'edge' to it at the top of the three on your index page, the current b&w one seems to fade off into nothing.

I agree with Geoffd70 about the thumbnail nav bar, it's a nice idea but if you can find some way to slow the scrolling speed it would be much easier to use.
 
Dave,

Nice website - clean and easy to navigate. Well done! :)

On the "link" page, the navigation tab is overlapping the "link" frame which means I can't see the first letters on each line.

For example the first line, I get "re you'll find a selection of recommended suppliers:"

I also ran a CSS validator and got the following:

"93 #content Value Error : background-repeat x-repeat is not a background-repeat value : x-repeat x-repeat"

You might want to look into that.

But overall, very nice indeed. :thumbs:
 
I notice the jagged edges on the angled photos that are dotted about. To get rid of that, don't rotate an image with a strok on it in photoshop. JUst create a couple of rectangles (one inside the other) and use a clipping mask on the inside one then rotate the whole group.

Other than that, it's a nice clean site.

As for the validation, you have the odd few unclosed meta tags and img tags, a few instances of p tags within h tags and as zoomspot says, x-repeat should be repeat-x in your css.
 
This is really useful stuff guys, thank you :)

Zoomspot - what OS and browser are you using? Not heard of the text being chopped like you describe.

flicker - I have dreamweaver myself so in theory can change that coding. Is it as simple as it sounds, just change that bit on each page or is there more to it than that? Thanks
 
DDP said:
flicker - I have dreamweaver myself so in theory can change that coding. Is it as simple as it sounds, just change that bit on each page or is there more to it than that? Thanks
Click to expand...

Yeah - just use code view and make sure your meta tags and img tags have a space and forward slash to end them.
e.g.
HTML: 
<img src="123" alt="123" />

Remove the p tags from your h tags but you will probably have to shift the class into the h tags to keep the styling.

If in doubt, duplicate the page before making changes so you can always revert back to it.
 
I noticed the overlapping nav issue in IE8 on PC too. Not too sure why your links seem a few pixels further left than every other page but to fix the problem of them being obscured, remove this line from your css in #nav
background-color:#ffffff;

OR just add this to your ie7-8.css file

#nav{background-color:transparent;}
 
That's a very attactive website. Nice job.

I too find the thumbnail gallery a bit tricky though.
 
DDP said:
This is really useful stuff guys, thank you :)

Zoomspot - what OS and browser are you using? Not heard of the text being chopped like you describe.

flicker - I have dreamweaver myself so in theory can change that coding. Is it as simple as it sounds, just change that bit on each page or is there more to it than that? Thanks
Click to expand...

I was at work and tested it on an XP machine running IE6.

I'm at home now and the site looks fine in Chrome. :thumbs:
 
Really nice site with some really nice colours and photos.

People are mentioning the gallery thumbnail issue, this only seems to be a problem on the weddings gallery. It shoots back and forth to random spots. However, the portraits one works fine :)
 
i love the site and your shots :D

buuut as an english geek i have to point out that your navigation bar says "portait" instead of "portRait" - sorry :cool:

(and i know i never use caps, that's just me being lazy :lol:)
 
I just had a look and overall I quite like it, it's clean and has a simplistic feel, all good web sites should be simple IMO.

Only thing perhaps I would change is the colour scheme, I always think a dark grey / black always shows photo's off, but it just could be personal preference.
 
flicker said:
I noticed the overlapping nav issue in IE8 on PC too. Not too sure why your links seem a few pixels further left than every other page but to fix the problem of them being obscured, remove this line from your css in #nav
background-color:#ffffff;

OR just add this to your ie7-8.css file

#nav{background-color:transparent;}
Click to expand...

Excellent, I'll give it a go - thank you

backstage pass said:
That's a very attactive website. Nice job.

I too find the thumbnail gallery a bit tricky though.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I think the problem is due to the fact I have 85 images in the wedding gallery - think I've been a bit greedy and will reduce it which should help the erratic scroller.

zoomspot said:
I was at work and tested it on an XP machine running IE6.

I'm at home now and the site looks fine in Chrome. :thumbs:
Click to expand...

Thanks!

Harvey_nikon said:
Really nice site with some really nice colours and photos.

People are mentioning the gallery thumbnail issue, this only seems to be a problem on the weddings gallery. It shoots back and forth to random spots. However, the portraits one works fine :)
Click to expand...

Thank you - the wedding gallery scroller is the thing I have the biggest issue with so will reduce number of pics.

creamykiwi said:
i love the site and your shots :D

buuut as an english geek i have to point out that your navigation bar says "portait" instead of "portRait" - sorry :cool:

(and i know i never use caps, that's just me being lazy :lol:)
Click to expand...

Thank you! Can't believe I didn't spot that typo - I'm normally good at that. Thanks for pointing that out!

CruisingComet said:
I just had a look and overall I quite like it, it's clean and has a simplistic feel, all good web sites should be simple IMO.

Only thing perhaps I would change is the colour scheme, I always think a dark grey / black always shows photo's off, but it just could be personal preference.
Click to expand...

Interesting. Most togs sites are either black, white or grey (my old site was too) and I wanted to create a point of difference and stand out a bit. The site is primarily aimed at women (95% of my enquiries are from the fairer sex) so we went with some nice colours that aren't too girly, but hopefully are approriate for the target audience and allow me to develop consistent branding across all communications that is just a little bit different.

Thank you all very much, you've been really helpful :beer:
 
flicker said:
I noticed the overlapping nav issue in IE8 on PC too. Not too sure why your links seem a few pixels further left than every other page but to fix the problem of them being obscured, remove this line from your css in #nav
background-color:#ffffff;

OR just add this to your ie7-8.css file

#nav{background-color:transparent;}
Click to expand...

Flicker - if I add that bit of code to my ie7-8.css file, does the code have to go in a certain place or can I just add it at the bottom?

Thanks - I'm a total noob at web code!
 
Sorry flicker - me again. I just changed the x-repeat to repeat-x in the css file and it made the layout go funny. It makes me think the guy that built it has fudged something! I'll ask him.

Cheers
 
Hi Dave,
I agree with the comments on the wedding thumbnails - they do seem a bit fast an erratic (a bit like my focusing!)

My only other observation is that it would be nice to see more images on your home page. a simple fade animation of 3/4 images within the images boxes would look great. You have some great images and you can show more on your homepage!
G
 
gmehje said:
Hi Dave,
I agree with the comments on the wedding thumbnails - they do seem a bit fast an erratic (a bit like my focusing!)

My only other observation is that it would be nice to see more images on your home page. a simple fade animation of 3/4 images within the images boxes would look great. You have some great images and you can show more on your homepage!
G
Click to expand...

Funnily enough that's what my web designer wanted to do, but having done some reading on SEO I decided (rightly or wrongly) that having some static images (i.e. jpegs with alt text) was worth doing. You're right though, it would look nicer, so it's something I'll consider for the future.

Thanks for the comments.

Karlos said:
the links need to stand out more from the text, and there's no real call to action
Click to expand...

Not sure I agree, the links within the text are merely the same as those in the main navigation bar so a person viewing the site will either look in the nav bar or if they read all the text on the homepage they'll come across the links there.

As for call to action; I agree it's an established practice to have a strong call to action, however I'm not selling cheap plasma screens or iPods and I've chosen to avoid big phone numbers or "CALL NOW" anywhere as I'm crediting my potential customers with the intelligence to find my contact details if they want them (whether they have or not is another matter ;))

I appreciate your thoughts though :thumbs:
 
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