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New Website Design

JDubJDub Registered Users Posts: 171 Major grins
edited February 11, 2007 in Mind Your Own Business
Hello all!!

After designing this for about two hours, I finally have one last website upgrade/change! Please let me know whatcha think. The page I am concerned with is the contact us page (in dreamweaver the form is at the bottom of the webpage, however in MY browser the form is in the correct location). Just curious if everyone sees the form in the right place, and what they thought. As of writing this the slideshow galleries are being written, but they might be up when you see the site.

Thanks everyone!!

www.joshuawestbrook.com
Josh Westbrook
---
Atlanta, GA

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    JBurtJBurt Registered Users Posts: 175 Major grins
    edited February 4, 2007
    JDub wrote:
    Hello all!!

    After designing this for about two hours, I finally have one last website upgrade/change! Please let me know whatcha think. The page I am concerned with is the contact us page (in dreamweaver the form is at the bottom of the webpage, however in MY browser the form is in the correct location). Just curious if everyone sees the form in the right place, and what they thought. As of writing this the slideshow galleries are being written, but they might be up when you see the site.

    Thanks everyone!!

    www.joshuawestbrook.com

    Looks clean. The form is in the center right for me in FF1.5
    Tis sometimes better to be a big fish in a small pond than to be shark bait.

    http://jburtphotos.com
    http://jburtphotos.smugmug.com
    Basic but makin' changes
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    Michael RayMichael Ray Registered Users Posts: 48 Big grins
    edited February 5, 2007
    JBurt wrote:
    Looks clean. The form is in the center right for me in FF1.5
    It's tough to talk about a photography web site that has no photography on it yet. From an SEO stand point, it's weak. And I'm not a big fan of those type of contact forms either. The colors and everything are nice.

    Good Luck

    MR
    Michael Ray

    Food Photography How-to site
    http://www.foodportfolio.com/blog

    Self-Proclaimed Photography SEO Guru
    http://www.foodportfolio.com/seo

    Commercial Photography How-to site
    http://www.professionalphotography101.com
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    StustaffStustaff Registered Users Posts: 680 Major grins
    edited February 5, 2007
    Michael Ray wrote:
    It's tough to talk about a photography web site that has no photography on it yet. From an SEO stand point, it's weak. And I'm not a big fan of those type of contact forms either. The colors and everything are nice.

    Good Luck

    MR

    Some text doesnt fit on/in my browser, for eample under 'studiportraits'
    I see
    "Here is a simple slideshow, of some select studio portraits. Please remember, these are just t
    of our style and are small to keep the site quick loading. Enjoy the photos!"

    Yes I could resize my browser but... the text could also be reined in a bit?

    This actually happens on all pages!

    makes it very frustrating to read for me your menu bar on the left is FAR too wide, should be at least half that, which would allieviate the text problem.

    I do like the choice of colours and fonts but at the mo its not nice for me personally to browse!

    using IE on a 15" monitor at 1024x768.
    Trapped in my bedroom taking pictures...did i say bedroom? i meant studio!

    My www. place is www.belperphoto.co.uk
    My smugmug galleries at http://stuarthill.smugmug.com
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    JDubJDub Registered Users Posts: 171 Major grins
    edited February 5, 2007
    Thanks everyone for your valuable input on the site. I need to fix a few things, as you have suggested, to improve the site flow, and all. I appreciate the feedback!!
    Josh Westbrook
    ---
    Atlanta, GA
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    jjohnstonjjohnston Registered Users Posts: 1 Beginner grinner
    edited February 6, 2007
    Is the design you have on there currently the final design, or are all the pages placeholders. Right now, you just have one image for all the content on each page which *technically* works but has a lot of downsides:

    1. Slow connections can't see anything as your images load because that's where the text is.
    2. No SEO - you've got metadata, which is great, but metadata has been abused so badly that it's near worthless to search engines. The most important information to search engines is your content, and right now your pages look practically empty to search engines because your content is inside images. Images should be sparingly used for text. At the very least, the images should have alt attributes.
    3. Painful future updates. Without a system in place that separates content from presentation, you're making future iterations of your site more difficult to accomplish.

    -Julie
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    kapaluakapalua Registered Users Posts: 45 Big grins
    edited February 11, 2007
    website
    hi Josh,
    I'm not going to sugarcoat this - that wouldn't help you much - but I think your site needs a major redesign.

    As an overall comment, there are waaaaay too many words on your site. As a photographer, your product is your photographs, which speak much louder than words. The image on your home page is lovely, why not let it speak for itself? Make the picture as large as possible, with some simple menu tabs like "portraits", "weddings", "info", and "contact".

    You don't need to say "weddings. we have done quite a few weddings! Select some images". Instead, just have a simple tab that says "weddings". your potential customers will know what to do.

    Take a look at this site: www.livebooks.com . then on the table of contents, under "select wedding clients", look at the sample sites from these wedding/portrait photographers. That's what you should be striving for. Hope this helps and best of luck,
    Larry
    _________________________

    www.laurencekim.com
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