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Rattles2Rings Photography is requesting a community critique for attractiveness, navigation and appeal

 
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bookerdl

posts: 2

Sep 30, 2008 3:10 PM ET    Quote  Report Abuse
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I am a recent graduate of the Washington School of Photography and have decided to start my own photography business.  Limited startup funding meant that I needed to find ways to save money and one of them was to do my own web development. 
 
My business` primary focus is wedding, portrait and event photography.  As my company name suggests, I want to be my clients choice for photography service from your childs birth to marraige.  I hope I at least got that part down.
This is my first attempt and web development so I`m hoping for the best.  The purpose of the site is essentially a web presence.  Eventually, it will be tied to my online viewing and ordering section.  My goals are to get people interested in my abilities and interest them in calling me.  I can close from there but if there`s no contact then there`s no sale to close.  I am also working to correct some SEO issues and making progress but this is a new concept for me.
 
I am looking for all critiques, to include, what I did right, what I did wrong, what I got almost right and what`s unbelievably annoying.  I know that you can`t please 100% of the people 100% of the time, but I need to find something that works.
 
Thank you in advance.  I am appreciative that there is a community that is willing to take the time to assist me in my endeavors.  Hope to hear from you.
fsav

posts: 2

Sep 30, 2008 3:41 PM ET    Quote  Report Abuse
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I surfed around your site a bit. Overall, very clean and professional looking, to my taste. Nothing I saw was "unbelievably annoying" :P Just a couple of interface details I noticed:

- Nothing appears when I click Gallery -> Commercial (other sections work, though)
- In the "Services" section, some longer links are truncated (ie. I don`t see the end).
- The music controls seem to have a couple of bugs. The pause button doesn`t seem to pause, and when I click stop the pause button doesn`t turn into a play button, even though that`s what I need to click to make it play.
bookerdl

posts: 2

Sep 30, 2008 3:47 PM ET    Quote  Report Abuse
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Thank you.  I have to figure out the code behind that.  Some syntax errors.  The commercial part is a known bug, the images weren`t sizing right.  they should be back up by tonight.  I appreciate the feedback.

fsav

posts: 2

Sep 30, 2008 4:24 PM ET    Quote  Report Abuse
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My pleasure. Sorry I couldn`t comment on SEO, I`m trying to learn about that myself :)

Best of luck to you.
Webline

posts: 687

Sep 30, 2008 5:40 PM ET    Quote  Report Abuse
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Also,  links in the "Services" pages are not doing anything that I can see.

Being in flash, or whatever it is, you may have some SEO issues. Go to seochat.com and run your site through the spider simulator; it looks like your site is nothing but keywords, no actual content made for viewers. If spiders are now crawling flash, this may be a drawback ( just guessing, as I haven`t researched this much lately ).

Overall I think it looks pretty nice. I do think your logo is a bit much; a camera, nice text, and a neon area. To me, it tries to convey too much whaen you should be going for simplicity.



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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons


Videography

posts: 672

Sep 30, 2008 5:59 PM ET    Quote  Report Abuse
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Playing music automatically without being asked is annoying.  People planning weddings or other photographic events sometimes do it from the office or after the kids are in bed.

Your landing page is slow, very slow, and you don`t give anyone an opportunity to skip it.  Pretty annoying if someone bookmarks your site and returns to it later. 

Your site is all flash.  No text for the lesser search engines to find and index (Google does read Flash).  It`s pretty, but slow.

I never saw a "call to action" anywhere.  What do you want the viewer to do?  Figure that out then tell them.




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Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email


oboy

posts: 17

Sep 30, 2008 7:17 PM ET    Quote  Report Abuse
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I think so too that your landing page should show more of the services that you offer.
Are this link or just bullets on the Service page? If you have animated bullets list then most viewer will think that theses are links.

When searching on Google for "Annandale Photography" your website is not coming up. You don`t have any meta takes for keywords and description.

Some of the font you are using looks at least on my screen a little fussy.



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H. Lehnerer Photography
Photoblog: Photo Infos
CraigL

posts: 9051

Sep 30, 2008 8:00 PM ET    Quote  Report Abuse
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Way too slow for me. I don`t think I`m all that unusual from fairly average online shoppers. I`m a bit older, and tend to have a pretty significant amount of patience, but even for me, if I`d found your site via Google, I would`ve just clicked away.

Setting aside that I can`t turn off the music, it just is so slow I had no idea what that site`s supposed to do. You definitely need a meta tag "description" so before people go to the site from the search engine, they at least know it`s a photography site.

On the music, I tend to listen to music a lot when I`m at the computer, using Internet radio and so forth. The worst thing about noisy sites is that they conflict totally with the music I`m listening too. One or the other has to be muted. Since the site usually tells me nothing with their noise, I mute that one.

The exception is when there`s an embedded video with a reason for my wanting to watch that video.

All in all, it`s a slick looking site, but it offers mostly form and no real substance. I could hardly read the tabs, gray on black, and basically just lost interest.
CraigL2008-9-30 20:1:10
stonesledge

posts: 1093

Oct 01, 2008 12:58 AM ET    Quote  Report Abuse
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I think it is hot, hot, hot!! Love it from a visual standpoint and the photos are gorgeous, great talent!!

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