Smugmug website

Messages
918
Name
Jenna
Edit My Images
Yes
Hey everyone, so glad it's Friday!

I was wondering if you guys would mind taking a look at my website and giving me some constructive feedback?

I've just redesigned it all and set it back up. It's the place where when I shoot an event people can head over and purchase the pictures and also a place to find examples of my work.

Anything that could be improved? How does it look on different computers/monitors/tablets?

Much obliged guys!

Jenna
www.ravenphotography.co.uk
 
Hi Jenna, firstly the site looked good - nice and clean, generally easy to navigate* and the layout were fine on a 24" uncalibrated IPS monitor.

Just a couple of bits of critique:
1) the contact tab makes a box pop up a la facebook style. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's different from the rest of the site and might confuse some users who can't understand why they can't reach the toolbar that was at the top.
2) the images change just a little too quickly for me. That may be because I'm looking at them as a photographer and trying to study them, rather than flicking through an album - I would prefer 1 or 2 seconds longer. Nice images generally BTW although the first image of a black horse that comes up in Equestrian possibly has a little too much motion blur for a first image in a portfolio, and the subsequent 3 or 4 would sell me your photography more easily.
3) feel free to disagree with me, but the watermark across the images was overly intrusive in many of the studio shots. It's probably hard to get completely right, but even though pale grey, I still found it spoiled the image, rather than just ensuring copyright was clear. This is just IMO.

Hope that's useful.
 
Hi Jenna, firstly the site looked good - nice and clean, generally easy to navigate* and the layout were fine on a 24" uncalibrated IPS monitor.

Just a couple of bits of critique:
1) the contact tab makes a box pop up a la facebook style. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's different from the rest of the site and might confuse some users who can't understand why they can't reach the toolbar that was at the top.
2) the images change just a little too quickly for me. That may be because I'm looking at them as a photographer and trying to study them, rather than flicking through an album - I would prefer 1 or 2 seconds longer. Nice images generally BTW although the first image of a black horse that comes up in Equestrian possibly has a little too much motion blur for a first image in a portfolio, and the subsequent 3 or 4 would sell me your photography more easily.
3) feel free to disagree with me, but the watermark across the images was overly intrusive in many of the studio shots. It's probably hard to get completely right, but even though pale grey, I still found it spoiled the image, rather than just ensuring copyright was clear. This is just IMO.

Hope that's useful.

Thank you very, very much. I will work on the contact page, I may just have a generic contact page with my name and number, e-mail etc, wish I could customise that one more -_-

I have slowed the slide show down so that should be better now.

The watermark is literally to stop people thieving, there generally is no way to make it look good. I hate it, but when you do a horse show or something like that and people will screen shot them and everything to steal them so they don't have to pay.

Thank you again!

Blocked by my office web filter as social networking :(

I genuinely don't understand this, I will look into it though, thank you! It may be the social plug in for sharing that's triggering it.
 
The layout is a bit chaotic. I'd put the blurb about yourself below the image rather than above.

There's one shot of a child on a sofa but the background is dreadful and there's bits of rubbish/dirt/dust on the floor. I'd pull that one out. Attention to detail. The ones with the fabric background and the same red leather sofa are much better. The girl in the cafe shot is also a bit weak. It's too soft.

Studio work is head and shoulders above anything else on there. Make more of that. The city scapes and Stoke shots are a lot weaker and I'd be inclined to hide those away a bit as the portraiture is much, much stronger and has more of a personality.
 
The layout is a bit chaotic. I'd put the blurb about yourself below the image rather than above.

There's one shot of a child on a sofa but the background is dreadful and there's bits of rubbish/dirt/dust on the floor. I'd pull that one out. Attention to detail. The ones with the fabric background and the same red leather sofa are much better. The girl in the cafe shot is also a bit weak. It's too soft.

Studio work is head and shoulders above anything else on there. Make more of that. The city scapes and Stoke shots are a lot weaker and I'd be inclined to hide those away a bit as the portraiture is much, much stronger and has more of a personality.

Thank you!

The Cupcake shoot is an event, not my portfolio, but I have removed that one on the sofa from the front page, and the soft shot and replaced them with more studio work in the slide show.

In regards to the Stoke shots, I have removed them from the slide show but I do get quite a bit of business from them being purchased from the site :/
 
I think smugmug has a subdomain feature so you may be able to build a microsite for the Stoke images. It would then be easier to expand them without diluting the main thrust of the business if that is more on the portraiture and equestrian side of things.
 
I think smugmug has a subdomain feature so you may be able to build a microsite for the Stoke images. It would then be easier to expand them without diluting the main thrust of the business if that is more on the portraiture and equestrian side of things.

Interesting, do you know how I would go about doing this? Or should I just integrate another page at the top and remove them from the main screen?
 
Interesting, do you know how I would go about doing this? Or should I just integrate another page at the top and remove them from the main screen?

Not a scoobie unfortunately. The online help on the smugmug site is quite good. It should give you an idea of whether it can be done and how.

Putting them on a separate landing page accessible from the top might be the quickest and easiest solution.
 
personally i would remove the water mark from your slideshow images but leave it on the galleries, thats what i do on my smug site.

I would love too! How do you do that?
 
set up a gallery for just slideshow pictures, then just link that to your slide show with pictures that have no watermark. you can put the slideshow gallery in a separate section say under other or groups etc so its not on your home page
 
Back
Top