Website Launch - Soliciting Feedback

maxwell1295 · 05-31-2009, 01:57 PM

Well, I finally got around to building and launching my new website. It's still in the developmental stage and I need to add/tweak some of the content and pages, but it's live and there for all to see. I gave myself a June 1st deadline for the launch and made it by 1 day.

It's a Wordpress-based flash blogsite, which is something that's becoming more and more popular for photographers. Many photogs feel that these types of websites (and blogs in general) are even more popular than their actual image galleries. This is new to me because my previous sites were a Blogger blog and a Zenfolio gallery. This site has elements of both as well as a client area for proofing (not visible yet), a calendar, a video section (not shown), and a bunch of other stuff I haven't gotten to yet.

Anyway, I'd love to hear what you guys think. I'm sure there are some typos and grammatical errors that I may have missed, so feel free to point those out. I'm really more concerned with the feel, speed, and ease (or lack of ease) of navigation throughout the site. Feel free to either comment here or hit me up with a PM if you'd like....

LINK: http://www.alanabramsphotography.com

sluggo913 · 05-31-2009, 03:19 PM

Nice clean site, nice images maybe for the pages you are still working on place a coming soon or the like on the page so people know you are working on it.

larryinlc · 05-31-2009, 03:42 PM

I like it a lot. Very professional. Even on slower than dirt dsl(512), it works smoothly and fast.

Larry

mithrandir · 05-31-2009, 11:55 PM

Very professional and easy to navigate. Animations are engaging and not enraging.
Good Go Alan!

Rob

kevinschoenmakers · 06-01-2009, 03:29 AM

Very professional looking, clear and easy-to-navigate website. It radiates a trustable and high quality feel, which -I guess- is what you wanted to achieve.

Some minor things I noticed:

- Some of the mainpage foto's that rotate next to the logo are/look a little soft. (Most of them are stunning though).
- In the galleries some of the images lose their top and bottom white border.
- I'm not a fan of the bigger font you used the for the Investment->Weddings page.

Good luck with business!

maxwell1295 · 06-01-2009, 09:13 AM

Thanks for the feedback.....I'm glad to hear navigation and site speed are up to snuff.

Kevin: The soft photos bugged me too. It seems as if the images are stretched on larger monitors. I think recommended max width was 900 pixels on the main page headers. It's either that or they lose resolution during the upload process.

The top/bottom borders are dependent on the aspect ratio of the image. I didn't notice that, but seeing it now doesn't bother me enough to change anything. I could tweak the image sizes, but some images look better at one aspect ratio than another.

The font was a holdover from our "under construction" placeholder.

MJB DIGITAL · 06-01-2009, 09:40 AM

Maybe it's just on my monitor, but I have to scroll up and down when I'm looking at the different pages. It takes the photos out from under my nose.....

And. I'm not an expert by any means on search engine optimization, but I think you'll want to make much more of that text say 'photographer' 'yourlocation' 'yourstyle/specialty'
that way when people google, the search engine has something to grab.

good luck

timbo13 · 06-01-2009, 11:04 AM

I like the site Alan, it loaded very quickly for me. I enjoyed looking through your gallery, lots of familiar images!

maxwell1295 · 06-01-2009, 01:31 PM

Originally posted by MJB DIGITAL

Maybe it's just on my monitor, but I have to scroll up and down when I'm looking at the different pages. It takes the photos out from under my nose.....

And. I'm not an expert by any means on search engine optimization, but I think you'll want to make much more of that text say 'photographer' 'yourlocation' 'yourstyle/specialty'
that way when people google, the search engine has something to grab.

good luck

Thanks...

Which text are you referring to? I loaded up a bunch of keywords to help with SEO. I guess I could add something to the intro paragraph and on the 'About' page.

Since it's a blogsite I don't think there's a way to get around the scrolling. Or are you talking about the gallery pages?

Kornbread · 08-07-2009, 03:34 PM

Looks good. I totally dig your photography, and I love the behind-the-scenes shots. I often time wonder what things look like behind the camera.

Wombat · 08-07-2009, 05:42 PM

Nicely put together, Alan. Looks like you really did your homework.

May I suggest you make it clear who Silke is? She seems to be an important part of your team but I couldn't find anywhere that said she's your business partner/wife/lover/whatever. (Maybe she's all three!).
Most of the pages loaded reasonably quickly on my 3-year old laptop but the Fine Art page started to load, showed one image then simply stopped. I'll try it again later, in case it was a connection problem, but on I'm on pretty reliable broadband. You might want to check it out at your end.
I loved the series of the engaged couple. You really captured how totally in love they are and it made me smile. I think there are far too many shots, though - it seemed to go on and on and I eventually lost interest. The behind-the scenes sequence was a nice idea - a bit of fun and shows something of you and your obvious rapport with your clients.
Great effort. I hope it brings you lots of business.

K McCall · 08-07-2009, 06:41 PM

Alan, I can't believe you didn't have a site like this before; your photos and business certainly warrant it! I loved seeing the behind-the-scenes - I hope that this is a regular feature

Overall, I really liked the style of the page. My only points of contention:

The font on the menu bar across the top doesn't go with the polished sans-serif of the rest of the site. You might also want to make sure that all page titles and text have the same fonts and sizes throughout the page (and if they somehow matched your logo, all the better!).
The stationary part - the menu and the rotating photos and the welcome blurb - is a bit large. I know this may sound silly, but some people might not realize that there's more content below unless you make it obvious.
In the 3rd paragraph of the "About" section, it reads: "I truly love photography, it is a passion for me" which is technically a run-on sentence. If you use a semicolon instead of a comma, you're all set to go (sorry about that, but I have a BA in English that I never get to use!).
You might want to consider adding an RSS feed button for those of us who would want to add it.

Otherwise, I love how the borders change colors in your galleries and how dynamic the whole site is without being annoying. Kudos

Wombat · 08-07-2009, 06:57 PM

Originally posted by K McCall

[*] The stationary part - the menu and the rotating photos and the welcome blurb - is a bit large. I know this may sound silly, but some people might not realize that there's more content below unless you make it obvious.

I agree with that.

FullertonImages · 08-17-2009, 02:03 PM

I think it's alright, but I think there's way too much going on with your homepage. I think your first paragraph on the home page are what happen when you focus too much of SEO and not enough on creating sentence that a human being would ever actually say. And a huge pet peeve of mine with photographer webpages, is referring to yourself as a plural entity or taking on your business name as your identity. If there are multiple people involved in your operation, then great. But if it's just you, loose the plurality and be more personal. People want ot get to know you, and who you are, on a personal level; not this business front that represents what you do. There has been a massive business trend going on that is swinging back to very personal interaction, andreferring to yourself as Alan Abrahms Photography puts a big block between you and the clients trying to know you. The Pictures look good.

George Lama · 08-17-2009, 08:02 PM

Love your photos and the simplicity of your blog setup. Very smooth.

One suggestion: trim down the quantity of photos, particularly where you show 3-5 variations on the same image/concept.

Case in point, your disco-dancing dude. Love the black & white landscape shot - beautifully composed/cropped, and your logo placed in the perfect spot! First words out of my wife's mouth - "Looks like a magazine cover." And that's coming from a professional graphic designer.

However, you have two other shots of the same guy. Basically the more versions of the same photo you have the more diluted the message becomes.

05-31-2009, 01:57 PM	#1
maxwell1295 Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Long Island, New York Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,703	Website Launch - Soliciting Feedback Well, I finally got around to building and launching my new website. It's still in the developmental stage and I need to add/tweak some of the content and pages, but it's live and there for all to see. I gave myself a June 1st deadline for the launch and made it by 1 day. It's a Wordpress-based flash blogsite, which is something that's becoming more and more popular for photographers. Many photogs feel that these types of websites (and blogs in general) are even more popular than their actual image galleries. This is new to me because my previous sites were a Blogger blog and a Zenfolio gallery. This site has elements of both as well as a client area for proofing (not visible yet), a calendar, a video section (not shown), and a bunch of other stuff I haven't gotten to yet. Anyway, I'd love to hear what you guys think. I'm sure there are some typos and grammatical errors that I may have missed, so feel free to point those out. I'm really more concerned with the feel, speed, and ease (or lack of ease) of navigation throughout the site. Feel free to either comment here or hit me up with a PM if you'd like.... LINK: http://www.alanabramsphotography.com

08-07-2009, 06:41 PM	#12
K McCall Veteran Member Join Date: May 2007 Location: Dallas, TX Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 808	Alan, I can't believe you didn't have a site like this before; your photos and business certainly warrant it! I loved seeing the behind-the-scenes - I hope that this is a regular feature Overall, I really liked the style of the page. My only points of contention: The font on the menu bar across the top doesn't go with the polished sans-serif of the rest of the site. You might also want to make sure that all page titles and text have the same fonts and sizes throughout the page (and if they somehow matched your logo, all the better!). The stationary part - the menu and the rotating photos and the welcome blurb - is a bit large. I know this may sound silly, but some people might not realize that there's more content below unless you make it obvious. In the 3rd paragraph of the "About" section, it reads: "I truly love photography, it is a passion for me" which is technically a run-on sentence. If you use a semicolon instead of a comma, you're all set to go (sorry about that, but I have a BA in English that I never get to use!). You might want to consider adding an RSS feed button for those of us who would want to add it. Otherwise, I love how the borders change colors in your galleries and how dynamic the whole site is without being annoying. Kudos

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05-31-2009, 03:19 PM	#2
sluggo913 Inactive Account Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Upton, Ma. Photos: Gallery Posts: 108	Nice clean site, nice images maybe for the pages you are still working on place a coming soon or the like on the page so people know you are working on it.

05-31-2009, 03:42 PM	#3
larryinlc Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Wisconsin USA Posts: 993	I like it a lot. Very professional. Even on slower than dirt dsl(512), it works smoothly and fast. Larry

05-31-2009, 11:55 PM	#4
mithrandir Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Maryland Photos: Gallery Posts: 1,895	Very professional and easy to navigate. Animations are engaging and not enraging. Good Go Alan! Rob

06-01-2009, 03:29 AM	#5
kevinschoenmakers Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Shanghai Photos: Gallery Posts: 1,509	Very professional looking, clear and easy-to-navigate website. It radiates a trustable and high quality feel, which -I guess- is what you wanted to achieve. Some minor things I noticed: - Some of the mainpage foto's that rotate next to the logo are/look a little soft. (Most of them are stunning though). - In the galleries some of the images lose their top and bottom white border. - I'm not a fan of the bigger font you used the for the Investment->Weddings page. Good luck with business!

06-01-2009, 09:13 AM	#6
maxwell1295 Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Long Island, New York Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,703 Original Poster	Thanks for the feedback.....I'm glad to hear navigation and site speed are up to snuff. Kevin: The soft photos bugged me too. It seems as if the images are stretched on larger monitors. I think recommended max width was 900 pixels on the main page headers. It's either that or they lose resolution during the upload process. The top/bottom borders are dependent on the aspect ratio of the image. I didn't notice that, but seeing it now doesn't bother me enough to change anything. I could tweak the image sizes, but some images look better at one aspect ratio than another. The font was a holdover from our "under construction" placeholder.

06-01-2009, 09:40 AM	#7
MJB DIGITAL Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: st. louis Posts: 1,170	Maybe it's just on my monitor, but I have to scroll up and down when I'm looking at the different pages. It takes the photos out from under my nose..... And. I'm not an expert by any means on search engine optimization, but I think you'll want to make much more of that text say 'photographer' 'yourlocation' 'yourstyle/specialty' that way when people google, the search engine has something to grab. good luck

06-01-2009, 11:04 AM	#8
timbo13 Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Northboro MA, USA Photos: Gallery Posts: 1,007	I like the site Alan, it loaded very quickly for me. I enjoyed looking through your gallery, lots of familiar images!

06-01-2009, 01:31 PM	#9
maxwell1295 Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Long Island, New York Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,703 Original Poster	Originally posted by MJB DIGITAL Maybe it's just on my monitor, but I have to scroll up and down when I'm looking at the different pages. It takes the photos out from under my nose..... And. I'm not an expert by any means on search engine optimization, but I think you'll want to make much more of that text say 'photographer' 'yourlocation' 'yourstyle/specialty' that way when people google, the search engine has something to grab. good luck Thanks... Which text are you referring to? I loaded up a bunch of keywords to help with SEO. I guess I could add something to the intro paragraph and on the 'About' page. Since it's a blogsite I don't think there's a way to get around the scrolling. Or are you talking about the gallery pages?

08-07-2009, 03:34 PM	#10
Kornbread Forum Member Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 61	Looks good. I totally dig your photography, and I love the behind-the-scenes shots. I often time wonder what things look like behind the camera.

08-07-2009, 05:42 PM	#11
Wombat Veteran Member Join Date: May 2008 Location: South Australia Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 901	Nicely put together, Alan. Looks like you really did your homework. May I suggest you make it clear who Silke is? She seems to be an important part of your team but I couldn't find anywhere that said she's your business partner/wife/lover/whatever. (Maybe she's all three!). Most of the pages loaded reasonably quickly on my 3-year old laptop but the Fine Art page started to load, showed one image then simply stopped. I'll try it again later, in case it was a connection problem, but on I'm on pretty reliable broadband. You might want to check it out at your end. I loved the series of the engaged couple. You really captured how totally in love they are and it made me smile. I think there are far too many shots, though - it seemed to go on and on and I eventually lost interest. The behind-the scenes sequence was a nice idea - a bit of fun and shows something of you and your obvious rapport with your clients. Great effort. I hope it brings you lots of business.

08-07-2009, 06:57 PM	#13
Wombat Veteran Member Join Date: May 2008 Location: South Australia Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 901	Originally posted by K McCall [*] The stationary part - the menu and the rotating photos and the welcome blurb - is a bit large. I know this may sound silly, but some people might not realize that there's more content below unless you make it obvious. I agree with that.

08-17-2009, 02:03 PM	#14
FullertonImages Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Boulder, CO Posts: 883	I think it's alright, but I think there's way too much going on with your homepage. I think your first paragraph on the home page are what happen when you focus too much of SEO and not enough on creating sentence that a human being would ever actually say. And a huge pet peeve of mine with photographer webpages, is referring to yourself as a plural entity or taking on your business name as your identity. If there are multiple people involved in your operation, then great. But if it's just you, loose the plurality and be more personal. People want ot get to know you, and who you are, on a personal level; not this business front that represents what you do. There has been a massive business trend going on that is swinging back to very personal interaction, andreferring to yourself as Alan Abrahms Photography puts a big block between you and the clients trying to know you. The Pictures look good.

08-17-2009, 08:02 PM	#15
George Lama Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Buffalo/Rochester, NY Photos: Albums Posts: 1,133	Love your photos and the simplicity of your blog setup. Very smooth. One suggestion: trim down the quantity of photos, particularly where you show 3-5 variations on the same image/concept. Case in point, your disco-dancing dude. Love the black & white landscape shot - beautifully composed/cropped, and your logo placed in the perfect spot! First words out of my wife's mouth - "Looks like a magazine cover." And that's coming from a professional graphic designer. However, you have two other shots of the same guy. Basically the more versions of the same photo you have the more diluted the message becomes.