Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Would love some feedback on my website. It is for a small photography business that has expanded into shirts, prints, and gifts.

I use outside businesses to manufacture and distribute my goods, and use my website to centralize them.

It was voted as a "Favorite of the Four States" by readers of our local newspaper, but I would like to make sure it reaches farther.

http://krazeimages.com

 

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KRAZE-IMAGES for a Crazy Life! http://krazeimages.com

Oh, and I built it myself...and am fairly new to web design...this is my third edit....

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KRAZE-IMAGES for a Crazy Life! http://krazeimages.com

The buttons on the top are really large ... on my screen, they push everything else down so all I`m seeing is navigation. What you want is the bulk of your important info to be "below the fold" ... ie don`t make me click down to see the important part.

I read Nikole`s comment before I saw the site and I thought, "how big can
the buttons be?" Holy cow, man! I`m all about bold imagery but you
ought to tone it down. You have very little basic content and navigation
on your homepage that there is no need to have to scroll down. Make it
all visible at once.

Also, I click on Portraits and I want to see samples. I don`t want to have
to click again to see photos. You are a photographer and it takes too
many clicks to get to the breadth of your work. Put more of it up front.

I don`t really get the arrows thing. I click on a right arrow that says
Portraits, then get a left arrow that says Samples. Arrows on websites
that lead to other pages work in a linear fashion, meaning if I click right, I
should be able to click left to go back. If I were you, I`d ditch the arrows
for rectangles or something.

The main thing I would suggest is to model your site on some other sites
you like. For example, the series of links at the bottom of the pages to
navigate your site should be easier to access, like along the top or left
edge.

I know it`s a start and you`re still learning. Keep going!

Alright...I`m taking notes...but gonna wait till I get more feedback before making major changes....

1. Tone down buttons.

2. Main page should have instant access/presentation to products and images. (Not specifically mentioned, but I think I got a hint of that.)

3. Keep buttons and site travel linear.

Did I miss anything? I`ve gotten good results from the site as it is, but i want all the feedback I can get to improve things....:)

 

And thanks for the feedback so far....I am totally open to critique.

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KRAZE-IMAGES for a Crazy Life! http://krazeimages.com

Oh....and the modeling my site off of others....what sites I really like, I am not code savvy enough for...and frankly I cannot afford a web designer yet....

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KRAZE-IMAGES for a Crazy Life! http://krazeimages.com

I understand you`re not a web developer and you do the best you can.
There are lots of us in that same boat. :)

My suggestion was not to make the site navigation linear where you go
from one page the the next, and if you want to go back two pages you
have to click the back arrow twice. The web browser itself supplies that
kind of navigation. My comment was that the arrows are confusing
because they symbolize linear navigation which is not a good way to go.
I`m not suggesting your site map be one straight line of pages.

What I suggest is to do away with the arrows and have more links
(buttons or plain text) that can take you to the various pages on the site.
Understanding you don`t have a lot of technical skill, you still know
enough to create a set of links to navigate around the site from any page.
I hope that made a little more sense.

The idea is that it`s a WEBsite and not a book.
You want people to skip around and design your navigation that way, not just all in a line like you are flipping through pages.

So on each page, can they get to all the other pages?

It`s a good question to ask yourself.

Some of the buttons worked quickly. Others, like the "Prints & More" took forever to load. Then, when I got to that page, I clicked on an image and it too, took a very long time to load.

I get the idea that you don`t have a lot of money for a developer. But the problems you`re dealing with are about how to make pages load faster, how to make the site design pleasing to the viewer, and so forth.

In my opinion, rather than going for clever gimmicks as you`re learning how to code a site, go with something easier to use instead. After all, what do you want to do for the rest of your life---be a Web page developer or a photographer?

There wasn`t any written content to make you a person, to make you interesting, or to build a relationship with me as I looked at the site. It was "just another image gallery" from what I saw.

Personally, I think you`d do much better to use a basic template for the site, but spend your time writing better and better, interesting content. Not many people really care that much about the aesthetics of the site, excepting when they`re really annoying. Instead, I think people are captured by the meaning of the words they`re reading.

Someone, a while back, brought out two basic concepts for a Web site:

• Customer journey -- the path you lead the viewer to follow as they enter your site,
• Call to action -- the stop points throughout the site where you try to engage the viewer in some way.

I see neither concept really taking place on the site. It`s partly the big buttons, but they`re not all that terrible. It`s that they`re taking the place of the actual content. Even so, why am I looking at that content? See?

 

Each page has a site map, so to speak, at the bottom of the page for quick links to any page.

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KRAZE-IMAGES for a Crazy Life! http://krazeimages.com