We recently launched our new webpage and would love some feedback. We are going for clean, modern, simple and bit of a higher end feel if that is possible through a site.
We wanted it to be image focused and pretty to look at .
If I am going full screen on my browser its 2560x1600 for me and all the images are way to pixelated so I would suggest dropping the full background images for something smaller. Everything else like the menu and contact section is really nice IMO.
The "Hello and welcome to our page" seems a bit early 2000s to me, reminds me of the geocities sites everyone started out with. Other than that wording, the site looks good, I haven't seen that scrolling method used before.
Your site and brand feels "expensive" I mean that in the best way. Colors are good and the log/design is strong.
I viewed this on a 30 in monitor and the first image looked like sh!t. I realize I'm in the minority here, (we all are as photographers) but still. Have it resized for larger monitors. Your contact page needs a better image of you. You should lose the polo and add a bit of creativity to the shot. Very snap shotish.
Pages other than the blog should not scroll. I like the look otherwise. The blog needs work.
There is a rule in design to keep things simple but when it is so simple that there is no design then the rule has been misunderstood. Style the blog a little.
The way the header looks when you scroll up and it becomes static. I would make that the look across the site and keep it static or keep the larger version and make that static. Having it scroll then become static is not a good look imo.
I like the full-screen effect. Vanishingly few customers will have 30-inch displays, and no-one with a 30-inch display should be using the full display for a browser window anyway, so don't worry about pixelation at that size. However, ideally there wouldn't be pixelation or softness at smaller sizes, and there is a bit; maybe you could upload larger photos to avoid that?
I didn't realise I could scroll through the photos, since the right and left arrows appear only if you go to the edges. Nor did I immediately realise I could scroll down. Maybe I would have noticed these things if I'd looked for longer.
I like the Baskerville you've used, but I'm not sure it goes well with the Georgia body. Maybe if you italicised the Baskerville, the contrast between the heads and body would be more satisfying.
I'd use a slightly smaller font for the body, again to get more contrast between heads and body (contrast is good!).
High-end is always about the details, so I'd standardise on a form of capitalisation and stick with it strictly (compare the heads on your Rates page and Blog entries.)
Your Blog page uses centred heads, a centred rule below that, but then an off-centre image and left-aligned type to the right of the image. There's too much going on. Is there any way you can centre everything, for example?
Each Blog entry has a similar problem: the type at the top is left-aligned, but everything else is centred. Since there's typically only a few lines of type at the top, you could easily get away with using centred text there, for a more cohesive look. If you stick with left-aligned type, you should align it to the left edge of the photos below, if possible.
You're a young, good-looking, and interesting team, and you're competing against many photographers who are none of those things. Make the most of that by presenting a better portrait of yourselves on your About page. The current one is a bit bland in terms of lighting and background (it's also a bit soft, because your uploaded image was small).
It's clear you've given the design a good deal of thought, so I think you'd really benefit from reading a design book such as Robin Williams' excellent Non-Designer's Design Book.
amonline wrote:
Branding is nice. Sizing is crap. Images as FS are terrible. Stick to specific width.
Or go with a system like on my site that picks up huge originals (in my case 2500px) and resizes them to the confines of the screen they find themselves on.
Agreed though, in the current form these images look really pixellated. The branding is great though, agree with Sam, it feels high-end.
tonyhart wrote:
Or go with a system like on my site that picks up huge originals (in my case 2500px) and resizes them to the confines of the screen they find themselves on.
Agreed though, in the current form these images look really pixellated. The branding is great though, agree with Sam, it feels high-end.
Problem with that is it kills slow connections.
Site looks good. Viewing on my iPad the logo/menu at the top looks way too big though. Kinda covers lots of the photos. Also the quote in the about sections seems truncated.
ai3x wrote:
Problem with that is it kills slow connections.
Site looks good. Viewing on my iPad the logo/menu at the top looks way too big though. Kinda covers lots of the photos. Also the quote in the about sections seems truncated.
Looking good though and different to the rest.
Alex
I may be wrong Alex, but I think the resizing is done server side so it shouldn't be too much of an issue. Anyway, I pity not the roaches on 9600 baud modems
I have no technical advise on the resizing but I will agree that it doesn't quite work for me. On my 1920x1080 screen they look soft, artifacty, like the resolution has been bumped up unnaturally.
One comment would be that you might want to consider putting a direct email on your contact page as not everyone likes using forms/boxes.
Other than that I think you've got a great site. Everything is really well integrated, navigation is pretty simple and the layout clean. Oh and I completely missed the scroll down on the homepage the first time around, but that's probably because I'm an idiot.
Thanks everyone for all the comments! I have already fixed the typos and removed passion from the about page (gah, I even knew better and it snuck in there!).
Full screen intro (with a scroll) was one of my main requests so it has to stay. I will get better quality up tonight though and try to find a happy medium between image upload size and picture quality. Site-speed is a big factor for Google in page rank and authority so I don't want to hurt myself too much with a slower site. Any recommendations on image sizes? Since everyone commented on it, it definitely needs to be addressed!
@S Dilworth - I will pass your suggestions along to my designer.. Thanks
@alex - you should see it on a iphone! (thats going to be tweaked)
Off to work, if anything else is noticed, I am still open to suggestions/fixes
I was just about to say "looks very nice but there's no gallery and I didn't want to have to look through the blog" and then I saw you can click the background.
That's really not obvious. I'd put some wording on the first image. The large background images looked rather low res too.
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