Re-designed my website....

off the top of my head:

The blue weird background is horrid.

The Main page needs a tweak in layout, your paragraphs have different widths that make it look untidy, I would make everything the same width as the header.

You don't need links at the bottom as well as the top.

"Available during the day and evening he can always offer a sitting to suit around your own schedule." may need 'suit' changing to 'work' (suit doesn't read correctly to me)

"I have been taking photographs for over 3 years of mainly landscapes and plant-life." needs changing to "I have been taking photographs for over 3 years, mainly of landscapes and plant-life." I would also remove the part about using all or some of your portable studio equipment. By all means mention it, but a customer doesn't need to know how much of it you use.

Only minor tweaks really but ones that should help the site out. I like the gallery software, what are you using? You may also consider future proofing it by making sure you can easily add other subjects to your galleries that are easy to move through.
 
It's clean, easy to navigate, says on the front page where you are. I would consider putting an email address on the home page and also a land line number. Cambridgeshire area gives a rough idea, but an area code helps potential customers pin point where you are. I've always been slightly nervous when only a mobile number is supplied and not a land line number.
 
Looks nice and simple, what you want.
However, I would ditch that blue texture background. Both around the image on your homepage, and as a background in the about page, being honest, its horrid.
Apart from that you have done a good job :thumbs:
 
To be honest, prospective clients are not interested in your life story. They want to see images, your work, your creativity. They won't read why you do photography, when you started and what equipment you use. They couldn't care less. That's the honest truth.

Your entry page should shout out to them. Get them sucked in, get them wanting to see more. This is the key factor. Get rid of the whole introductory, the about and links at the bottom. If you want an about page, put in with the contact page, share the space.

At the moment your site simply says (no offense): "I'm just another photographer". In this day and age it needs to be different, catchy, creative and appealing.

Again, no offense intended, just giving you my 2p's worth.

EDIT: And to be honest, when I read you did photography for 3 years I would have expected 60-80 photographs to be displayed. At the moment the site seems to be fighting with itself from within.
 
Im going to give my honest opinion, i dont wish to offend and apologise if I do.

As this is a business site as such, I really think it looks to amature

I like the logo (minus the connected phone number)
Im not a fan of the blue background
Centred text is not good for a professional site, always left aligned

None of the pages appear consistent, for example the text is all different sizes and it the main content is differently aligned on each page.

If i was a prospecitive customer and I saw your site, I wouldnt be impressed.

Again, apologies if I have offended you or the designer but as a website designer myself, i must be honest

Looking at the code, i suspect the site has been created in Dremweaver using the programs built in tools.
Whilst this may work, website designers get much better results coding HTML and CSS by hand, from scratch
 
King_Boru said:
To be honest, prospective clients are not interested in your life story. They want to see images, your work, your creativity. They won't read why you do photography, when you started and what equipment you use. They couldn't care less. That's the honest truth.
.
Click to expand...

I would normally agree with you on this, however, I've had two recent portrait shoots who both commented that they like the reason I do my photography from my website. So I guess it depends on the customer in question.
 
I agree with the comments above. I would add that I dislike the homepage being written in the third party...it should be 'I' and not 'Chris' or 'He'. The 'About' page makes you sound like an amatuer who happens to have fallen into portrait photography rather than a professional (no offence). It is also hard to identify your products and your proposition (i.e. what really sets you aparts and would choose you over all the others).

The site is simple and easy to use but lacks impact and is very poor at selling you and your products.
 
Having read these answers the marbled blue background is now going lol ... the text is Verdana and changing that to Arial which is websafe as prospective clients may not have fancier texts etc installed so staying web compliant. the home page text below the Welcome will be left aligned and all sizes consistent. am working on some flash for the home age to blend the images a bit to give more impact... anything else? as for images to be honest through research 60-80 images is not necessary just soem of the best works better as clients will not scroll through 60-80 images to make a decision in fact far far less.
 
With regards to the 60-80 images. Analyzing my Google analytics it would appear that the average time spent browsing my site (which contains over 150 images) the user is spending anywhere from 6 to 15+ minutes browsing. These hits are turning over into contacts and sales. Although some are anywhere between 1 and 3 minutes. I simply put this down to a lack of interest in my style of work. Which is inevitably going to happen. I wouldn't put it down to a lack of interest in the site itself and the amount of images it presents.

<snip>Need to re-write it</snip>
 
thanks for all your feedback, so far, this is why i put it out there to see what your ideas were for any improvements......:thumbs:

The reason for the small amount of photos in my portfolio, is cos i haven't done very many paid jobs so my portfolio is a bit starved, unfortunately thats the bug of just starting out, not many jobs under my belt yet, but it will grow with time..... :p

Thanks again for the feedback, we will go back, have another go, come back and go through this all again... :D
 
King_Boru said:
With regards to the 60-80 images. Analyzing my Google analytics it would appear that the average time spent browsing my site (which contains over 150 images) the user is spending anywhere from 6 to 15+ minutes browsing. These hits are turning over into contacts and sales. Although some are anywhere between 1 and 3 minutes. I simply put this down to a lack of interest in my style of work. Which is inevitably going to happen. I wouldn't put it down to a lack of interest in the site itself and the amount of images it presents.

If you are going to show from 10-15 images to try and sell yourself as a photographer the work needs to be on par with the top professional photographers of the world. This in turn sets the standard of the webpage requirements so high it is barely obtainable by the working / semi working and or aspiring amateur photographer.

I am fortunate to have a brother who works in internet marketing. His portfolio is vast and ranges from Expedia to Tesco. He ranks my site very well (and that's not because we are brothers, my previous designs were shot down like sitting ducks with many swear words). Yes my advice is second hand but it comes from an insiders / knowledgeable source.

I personally think your re-design needs a lot of work. It doesn't show creativity, professionalism or more importantly individuality. There are a billion and one sites that look the same be them blogs, basic layouts or how they are presented. Break the mold and it will pay off in the long run.
Click to expand...

out of interest is your site the view photography?
 
thread cleaning brush applied
 
Too many images in most opinions is a no no. If you have too many you will end up with too much filler, and people generally will not look through the whole images due to boredom.

You need to put your best in your gallery, no more than 25 images per subject is best. This is what most professionals will tell you, and any more or new stuff on a blog, unless it beats what you have in your portfolio, which means time for a change.

Honest opinions:

Background is horrible.

Logo is very amatuerish and does not really show a branding.

Front page image does nothing for me and looks soft.

3rd person annoys Carl, Carl doesn't like it. (see how silly it is)

Copyright should read 2010

About me is boring, and makes you seem very amatuerish, like you like to do landscape and plant life, but someone asked you to do portraits, and it means you get paid. You do not like sound like you love portraits.

Portfolio does not have enough in it. Mostly Black and white, you need colour and more images in there. Not having much paid work is not an excuse, as unless you have a better portfolio you will not get more work from this site. Do some freebies for friends, whatever it takes, get more images, and esp. more colour.

Contact page is fine. Not very exciting but fine.

Overall site is not very exciting graphically, or photographically, so many will leave and never come back.

Sorry, just my thoughts, but you should seriously look into it if you want to get more clients from it.
 
Front page image does nothing for me and looks soft.


re-doing a flash animation for this

Background is horrible.

although positive feedback from some people has definitely been given (not here) I will redo this as plain black

Overall site is not very exciting graphically, or photographically, so many will leave and never come back.

will address this with some decnt graphics and links to make it more exciting but plain simple and easy is what works best for a site too much can be a turn off but will redo some to make it more visually more capturing...
 
I'm not a fan of the blue background, it looks too dark and dated. I also don't like the idea of a "fixed background", where it appears like the background is staying in the one position and the text moves over the top of it.

Although the white text contrasts well with the blue background I still don't think it works, but this is due to the background no the text itself.

I'm not a fan of the font used in the "Gaskin" logo, it's too difficult to read.

I think overall the website needs more structure and consistency too it. I feel bad saying all this as you have just "Re-designed" it. Have a read through everyone comments, take their advice and try to improve your website.
 
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