Pls: Critique my new business site

largelylivin

I've been in this new business for 3 weeks now. I am far from having everything in my site that I want, but I thought it might be worth it to stick my neck out and ask: "What is urgently or fairly important that's wrong with my site?" www.smile-123.smugmug.com

It always helps to hear someone else's view, especially when you normally work alone.

Please, just the BIG problems.

ALSO NOTE I am posting a different thread concerning the photos themselves.

Thanks in advance.

largelylivin

Pls: Critique my "EVENT" Photos
SO, I have taken on this challenge of event type photography at the ocean. Three weeks into it and I do have some sales but nothing that matches the personal reception that I get out on the water.

Never having attempted mass production of images for sale, I am seeking advice from anyone that wants to offer it.

My original goal was to not actually touch any of the photos, using Photoshop CS2 and Star Exporer to do all the heavy lifting. Well, that was the plan anyway. This weekend was light, I uploaded 345 pics which is about 85% of the ones that I took. There's still probably a turkey or two that needs to come out.

Specifically about pics, any criticism of the cropping, color balance, "pop" - keeping in mind that I cannot afford the time to handle every picture?

Fire away! www.smile-123.smugmug.com

scwalter

I'm getting stuck in some kind of loop when I load your page with google-analytics. It appears to be trying to access google-analytics tens of times per second. I looked at the source and couldn't see the problem. Maybe someone else can find the problem

-Scott

bsvirginian

the only glaring problem I see is that the dialogue area on the right bleeds over the images when you click on them. The site has the look of a personal site it really doesn't have the message of what you do like "Hire me to photograph your beach events". Otherwise everything looks OK.

Camon Crow

Hi Blue Dog, good luck on your new venture. I visited your site and would make the following suggestions;
the site takes a very long time to load, normally I would be gone before the site ever opens.
once opened the right hand text overlaps the picture box
opening a full size photo from a thumbnail produces a blank page with tables but no pictures
the front page is very busy with pictures , text and key words
Sorry but the site screams amature, but you have a great idea well worth going after.
Getting a page up and running can be a very time consuming job sometime it is well worth the expense to have a pro design the site.
Please don't take these comments as personnal, I truly would like to see your site be a winner.
Keep plugging way

largelylivin

scwalter wrote:

I'm getting stuck in some kind of loop when I load your page with google-analytics. It appears to be trying to access google-analytics tens of times per second. I looked at the source and couldn't see the problem. Maybe someone else can find the problem

-Scott

Thanks Scott. I am not sure what you are seeing. It doesn't seem to happen for me. However, I moved the Google analytics from the footer to the head section and it still seems to work.

Let me know if you still see it.

largelylivin

Camon Crow wrote:

Hi Blue Dog, good luck on your new venture. I visited your site and would make the following suggestions;
the site takes a very long time to load, normally I would be gone before the site ever opens.
once opened the right hand text overlaps the picture box
opening a full size photo from a thumbnail produces a blank page with tables but no pictures
the front page is very busy with pictures , text and key words
Sorry but the site screams amature, but you have a great idea well worth going after.
Getting a page up and running can be a very time consuming job sometime it is well worth the expense to have a pro design the site.
Please don't take these comments as personnal, I truly would like to see your site be a winner.
Keep plugging way

Camon,

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

I get three issues: (1) slow and (2) overlapping text on the right hand side and (3) too busy.

I don't get the amaturish comment and I don't know what to do about it. Can you be more specific? Is it just the technical execution, the graphics, what?

Thanks again.

Camon Crow

Please disregard the amature comment and good luck to you

scwalter

largelylivin wrote:

Thanks Scott. I am not sure what you are seeing. It doesn't seem to happen for me. However, I moved the Google analytics from the footer to the head section and it still seems to work.

Let me know if you still see it.

It appears fixed now.

One other comment is that your background does not fill my window if I make my browser window really big. Your three headers (left-banner, center-banner and right-banner) only add up to 275+850+375 = 1500px and I see a big black strip along the right side of the window. And by fixing the width like this, if my window is smaller than that, I get a horizontal scrollbar. You can probably fix this by using a repeating header for your background. Another way to make it less obvious would be to change this in your them:

Change this:

#bodyWrapper {
   background: #667bff;  /* deep blue */
   color: #ffff33;  /* bright yellow */
}

to this and the black bar will at least be blue, not black:

#bodyWrapper, body {
   background: #667bff;  /* deep blue */
   color: #ffff33;  /* bright yellow */
}

-Scott

com3

the site is way too bright. looks like a children's toys site or something. use the same colors, but make it more earthy to give it a more professional appeal, IMO. it was bright to the point where i had to squint to see it.

largelylivin

Thanks for the critique
Really, thank you.

First, it is slow. Any suggestions how to speed it up? I have cut way back on the volume of material that I show o the home page and I have (thanks to you all) fixed the google analytics problem. Still pretty slow.

The color scheme and brightness are intentional. I use the same elements and colors in my print ads and have gotten lots of big kodu's for them.

1. My 21' foot boat is my primary advertising vehicle, excuse the pun). Being on the bay and ocean it is very important that I am distinguishable from all of theother boats out there.

2. #1 problem is making sure that when someone see's me taking there picture they intuitively know that they can see them and buy them on my website. I have a 16' www.smile-123.com on my 21' boat that is bright orange. Tha,t plus the big stupid smiley-123, makes me easy to recognize even by people who have only heard a rumor of me.

3. The ocean is Vacation! Fun!, etc. etc. I don't regret the color scheme, especially when you see it at 1/4 page with all those other subtle ads.

Finally, I landed two contract gigs and sales are picking up. I want to redesign the navigation and add some features but I no longer see that there will be time before fall.

Thanks for taking the time to give me your advice!