Question

Topic: Website Critique

Pros And Cons On Our Redesign Www.creative4u.com

Posted by Anonymous on 9/28/2006 at 7:11 AM ET 125 Points
I need your valuable knowledge on our soon to be re-lauch web site... As some of you can see I have change the original version considerably.... Feel free to be objective.... Thanks in advance.... Felix

www.creative4u.com
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Frank Hurtte on 9/28/2006 at 7:22 AM Member
    Felix..
    Artisticly done with a nice feel...
    Here are some issues:
    I am working from a hotel over the business service internet provided to the room not my normal office.
    1) the front page took so long i finally skipped it
    2) the graphics pages opened in what i normally would not feel is an aceptable time frame
  • Posted by Harry Hallman on 9/28/2006 at 9:43 AM Member
    I am on DSL from home and the pages opened quickly.

    I do have a problem with the all black look. It doesn't look inviting and the photos are very good and should be framed in a more modern look. All black has a 1996 kind of look to me, which in Internet years is 100 years old (:-).

    Also the Flash slide show does not show off the photos in the quality they should be shown. The photos are excellent.
  • Posted by whimziequiltz on 9/29/2006 at 5:10 PM Member
    I liked your website overall. When I looked through the Portfolio slideshow though, the sports photos were so far towards the back that they surprised me (like, Wow, he does sports photography, too, not just weddings). Maybe the Portfolio pictures could be mixed up a bit more so a little bit of everything you do appears earlier in the slide show?
  • Posted by Jesse on 9/29/2006 at 7:27 PM Accepted
    I think the black background works - you have some beautiful photographs.

    I'd tweak the slideshow a bit - the thumbnails are too small to be useful and the interface is a little awkward.

    Add your contact details on the footer of each page - make it easy for potential clients to email you. You don' t have it on your contact page.

    Specials page - 10% is a great offer. Add a little excitement around it (photo, little more copy, maybe a PDF download or Word doc of items to start the consultation, or common questions clients will have). Also - give them the next step: email link and phone number, "Get Started Today, I'd love to hear from you" type of thing.

    I realize the goal of the site is to demonstrate your photography skills, not your website skills but a couple wins here will go a long ways (especially for search engine - but also human readers)

    1. Unique page titles for each page tag.

    2. Consider using HTML text instead of putting your website copy in graphics.
  • Posted by jpoyer on 10/5/2006 at 3:30 PM Accepted
    Felix,
    I agree about the slideshow - that is neat feature, and your music choice is good as well. Only one section - it was toward the beginning, there are three or four photos of one bride where the quality is just not good. ... it just looks like the resolution is too low or something. Consider fixing this - esp. since it is near the beginning of your slide show.

    On the company profile page, your photo looks a little dark - you might bump up the contrast a bit to make yourself look a bit friendlier.

    I'm surprised that no one mentioned this, but your text on your pages is made up of graphics instead of text. Considering it is Times New Roman, you should really think about using actual text instead of graphics. There are so many things you can do with CSS (stylesheets), you can make it look exactly like this, but it will load faster and be search engine friendly. This will also help with better search engine indexing and results pages and will be helpful for accessibility issues. Also, you site is in frames, another search engine result killer.

    The black color really doesn't bother me; I think it complements your photography, which is swell, by the way. However, the site structure really needs to be updated. The trend of using frames and graphics for text is passé, about 5 or 6 years old. ... Something you don't want to convey in your practice I believe.

    And just a note: not totally sure about this because I didn't really get into the coding of your site, but if your site is built with "older" technology, you might be able to find a slide show application or programming that will load a lot faster. This might be something you would consider creating with Flash ... ? Just an idea.

    Best Regards,

    Jennifer
    XPRT Creative
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