Branded! Finally.

Penrod

After several itterations of my site, I FINALLY figured out how to fully brand everything within the bounds of smugmug. In the past 24 hours, I have changed the.... well, everything.
:barb I would love to hear your opinions and suggestions for improvement....

http://penrodstudios.com

Art Scott

VERY CLEAN AND NICE.......Looks FAntasticthumbbowbow

Markjay

So far so good...
A few suggestions:

1. in your contact form, make it EASY for a potential customer to contact you through a means other than the form itself... make a direct email link obvious but, do it the way it is suggested in the Dgrin forum to avoid spam.

2. Your tag line (Life, Camera, Action) could be placed right where it is on the right side of your home page where it is now but, instead put it inside the geographic line that runs horizontally across the page.

3. Remove the choice of blog and website.......
just have enter website and put the blog link in a header menu top of your page inside the blue graphic line...that could be your menu choices area both on that splash page and, website. Just a "cleaner looK' in all I'm suggesting.

However, it does not look "bad" with your two choices there all in all.

That's all I can think of quickly... I have to run but, will look more later.
BTW, you have a great jump start on a great looking page!

Penrod wrote:

After several itterations of my site, I FINALLY figured out how to fully brand everything within the bounds of smugmug. In the past 24 hours, I have changed the.... well, everything.

Markjay


I would love to hear your opinions and suggestions for improvement....

http://penrodstudios.com

Art Scott

Markjay wrote:

A few suggestions:

1. in your contact form, make it EASY for a potential customer to contact you through a means other than the form itself... make a direct email link obvious but, do it the way it is suggested in the Dgrin forum to avoid spam.

2. Your tag line (Life, Camera, Action) could be placed right where it is on the right side of your home page where it is now but, instead put it inside the geographic line that runs horizontally across the page.

3. Remove the choice of blog and website.......
just have enter website and put the blog link in a header menu top of your page inside the blue graphic line...that could be your menu choices area both on that splash page and, website. Just a "cleaner looK' in all I'm suggesting.

However, it does not look "bad" with your two choices there all in all.

That's all I can think of quickly... I have to run but, will look more later.
BTW, you have a great jump start on a great looking page!

You forgot something..........what did I forget YOU say......well asking Cindi if she has gotten her free PowerBuss Power ad yet....great site and business needs advertising

Ok...I'll give her the plug....

Cindi....follow this LINK to the thread that MarkJay started and if you have not gotten you FREE Planet Buzz Power Ad...then You probably should while you can still get it for FREE.

Penrod

Thanks Art, but I got a personal invite via my website's contact form from Mark

Thanks for the suggestions, I massaged the splash page a bit more and.... well I had to do it..... added music. :P


http://PenrodStudios.com

Hikin' Mike

All and all it looks good, but I don't care for the 'floating' logo on the bottom. Also, when I clicked on your website, your photos (I assume they were photos) never loaded. Also I couldn't find a way to turn off the music, so as a cusomer...I would have left. I don't like music...sorry.

Markjay

Thanks Art
Thanks, Art.. it's Planetbuzz.com PowerAd and I appreciate your plugging away for me.

Markjay

Art Scott wrote:

You forgot something..........what did I forget YOU say......well asking Cindi if she has gotten her free PowerBuss Power ad yet....great site and business needs advertising

Ok...I'll give her the plug....

Cindi....follow this LINK to the thread that MarkJay started and if you have not gotten you FREE Planet Buzz Power Ad...then You probably should while you can still get it for FREE.

rich56k

Hikin' Mike wrote:

All and all it looks good Also, when I clicked on your website, your photos (I assume they were photos) never loaded. Also I couldn't find a way to turn off the music, so as a customer...I would have left. I don't like music...sorry.

here's a screen shot I'm on my iMac; tried with both FireFox and Safari same 'no image' result.....

also agree about the blog not being on your home page...otherwise it's clean and sweet!!

rich56k

Scott Crouse

Good points by everyone above, put the blog in a link elsewhere, don't like choosing between it and the website. But the biggest problem is the images are not loading. Running a Mac G5 with the latest Firefox and Safari. No go.

Otherwise the template looks great!

Penrod

Ugh. Can't figure why its not loading in mac.... its the standard smugmug slideshow, with only a few images & all loaded web-sized. I'll check that out. I'm starting to agree with the thought that blog need not be on the splash page.... but just "enter site" alone seems a redundant click.. dunno... Its late now & my brain is mush. I'll hit it again with a fresh eye in the morning. Thanks so much to those who have commented.

denisegoldberg

The slideshow is not running in IE7 either.

I'm another person who will immediately leave a web site with music. You do have a stop button to turn it off, but I believe it needs to be more prominent.

Your entry page should go directly into your site. The blog can be selected from your navbar, and the extra click required to enter your site is unnecessary. I've never understood the reason behind a site that opens with a page that says "enter site". I entered the URL to enter the site - requiring another click is just annoying.

The floating PS logo along the bottom of the screen is distracting and unneeded since your logo is in both your header and your footer. And the bottom banner/footer really should line up with the header. It is positioned against the left side of the screen in my browser.

"The Boutique" entry in your navbar goes to the smugmug home page. If your page for that entry isn't complete you should at least have a placeholder gallery within your own site.

The gray background on the YOURPICTURES page really does not play well with the background of your overall page. While I'm not sure that a patterned background would work well here, I'd recommend at least choosing one of the lighter colors in your background to use instead of the gray.

Is there some reason why you chose to use YOURPICTURES as the navbar entry? All of the other entries use mixed case with spaces between the words. I would think that "Your Pictures" would look better than YOURPICTURES.

You have a great start to the look of your page - it just needs some fine-tuning...

--- Denise

Scott Crouse

ok problem goes way beyond mac. Checked my windoze box and no images in Firefox or IE7. Let me keep digging, I wonder if an adblocker or something might be killing your slideshow.

Scott Crouse

Nope still not getting the slide shows with anything I've tried. Is anyone able to see them? If not I suspect you have coding problem somewhere.

Hikin' Mike

Penrod wrote:

Ugh. Can't figure why its not loading in mac.... its the standard smugmug slideshow, with only a few images & all loaded web-sized. I'll check that out. I'm starting to agree with the thought that blog need not be on the splash page.... but just "enter site" alone seems a redundant click.. dunno... Its late now & my brain is mush. I'll hit it again with a fresh eye in the morning. Thanks so much to those who have commented.

It's not a MAC thing as I 'm using a PC, but I'm using Firefox.

EDIT: I just checked using Opera and no slideshow either.