Early website work critique please!

[Tobyh]

Hey all,

I'm in a quandary and need the experienced eyes of the WAB populace to cast an eye over the start of my web site please.

A little background - it's far from finished but before I go too far I need some feedback from the people that share the same passions as I do.

Although I have a Zenfolio site, I wanted a site that allowed me to control the size and sharpness of the images and specifically I wanted to be able to show large, hi-res images. However - this comes at a cost. Many people wont fit them in their immediate browser settings and being higher res will mean they are slower to download. Early feedback from some web type peeps is suggesting this is a bad idea.

This is where you come in! If you jump to birds Gallery 2, I have added 3 chiffchaff images at a smaller size for comparison - 800 pixels longest side as opposed to 1200. Do you prefer to be able to see large images, lots of detail or is it too much? Are you ok with larger download times if it means decent images? Does it annoy you having to use the Gallery control to view the full size image (assuming you don't have a very large browser window to start)

I intend completely removing the landing page as it adds nothing to the site.

The address is Toby Houlton Wildlife Photography

I'd appreciate any comments at all.

Thanks in advance.

TobyH

[PMG]

Ok I'm probably not the best person to answer as I dont have a customised website (cos I havn't had the time or got a clue how to do it ) but here's my two penneth for what its worth!

a) Love the look of it - you shouldn't remove that first page (if I've understood this is the 'landing page' you refer to?) Its VERY IMPORTANT that first impression and I like what you have done. If you kick off with the second page as the first its not appealing and I would not carry on as I would not feel that what was coming was worth it - I know thats a mad way to think but thats it - the visual pull in matters to a lot of folks - images on the first page make folk carry on and see. Without it they won't bother even looking. Just my HO!

Love the feel of the About Me - you've pitched that well - I would want to walk up and say hello!

I'm quite happy to see thumbnails and click for a larger resolution when I really want to see something big and clear. You know yourself that no matter how good your stuff no-one is going to look at all your work assiduously - they will pick and choose according to mood when they have time to visit and thats how it should be.

Will hop off now and look for your chiffchaff sizings and let you know - more power to your shutter finger Toby - your efforts are looking good!

Pauline

PS Just had a look at test images - personally I like large and the larger the better but thats just me and it may or may not be practical but they all jumped up fast when I clicked on so there is no waiting time at the min - whether it will slow down as you add more content I don't know - I don't know enough about it all!

Remember this tho - a website is a living thing and one thing that you decide upon now, you may want to do differently in x amount of time - so it grows and expands (or declines ....) in direct proportion to your mood, state of health etc - its a very personal thing even when the subject matter is x.y.z its still a representation of you and how you feel about x.y.z It would be very unlikely to arrive at a fully formed finished website and self defeating - its meant to be an on-going thing (like risk assessments - subject to continual updates!!!!) so relax - I know how much effort and thought you put in and you're level-pegging me in the 'lets beat ourselves into our best shape' stakes ..... its no use me telling you to relax and go with it - you're about as capable of that as me ......... !!!!!

PPS I've linked to your opening page on my zenfolio so let me know if you do change it so we don't get broken links if poss - err I'm not trying to make you keep that page btw (tho I think you should but I might be the only person who thinks that!!!)

[Tobyh]

Pauline,

Really appreciate your input, that's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for.

Interesting to note that the larger images didn't take too long to load. I assume you expanded to the full 1200 pixel size? (not that it affects the load time for that) and your comment on the landing page - yes that is the first page with the "click here to enter" on it - I remember why I put it there now!

Having the larger images affects the load time when you click that image only.

Look forward to hearing how others feel.

TobyH

[Jim Ford]

The small green type on a black background isn't very easy to read, even on a 23 inch monitor (calibrated). It might be clearer on an uncalibrated LCD monitor, because they're usually excessively bright. If I hit the 'superbright' button on the monitor it's better, but that's not the way to go.

Jim

[Tobyh]

Jim,

Thanks for your comments - i'll bear that in mind.

Anyone else?

TobyH

[mbaldw]

Hi Toby,

it looks good, well done. You've already mentioned about removing the landing page, which I would agree with as I don't see that it adds anything to the site. Jim makes a good point about the contrast, although I don't find green font on a black background too bad (the blue font 'click here' link that you have is, however, difficult to read). I personally find it much more difficult to read white font on a black background (e.g. on your 'About Me' page) - I find this to much of a contrast and usually end up highlighting it to reduce my eyestrain. The blue links against the black background are also a bit of a strain. This may, however, just be me! The only other thing I can think of would be the Gallery organization -- perhaps looking at splitting them into 'raptors', 'waders' etc. rather than 'Gallery 1', 'Gallery 2' etc. -- but, again, that's personal preference.

Overall the site looks good and you have some fantastic photos. I'll be sure to add a link from my site when it's done.

Cheers,
Marc.

[maggot at toad hall]

Hi Toby
Testing website using Mozilla Firefox 3.6.15
The landing page: imagery good; green on black lettering good visibility and readibility; green font with redish tinge very poor as it is not good visibility on green part of background also anyone with red/green colour blindness (affects about 10% of men) or poor sight will have difficulty reading it. Generally pretty, but not necessary and adds nothing to the website. Search engines look for good written content but there is very little so again adds nothing. Users tend to spend limited time on websites picking and choosing to suit their mood or needs, so an extra unnecessary page of no value can put some people off. I must confess to this..if the first page does not show me that I have found the correct site then I do not waste time clicking on yet another button.
Other pages: Again the red glow around green font is as previously noted. The red background on a green font is difficult to read for some viewers.
check out: Colour Blind
also this website: Vischeck
Headings such as Home, Galleries, Articles, none of these 'clickable ' links work - if not clickable then they should not change background colour.
The green horizontal line is positioned so that it starts half way above the 'm' in 'Home' - should be at the start of the 'H'.
'Contact' or 'email me' clickable link starts 'Outlook' by default which I do not use, so I have to go through the process of several more clicks to stop the process. If I hover over the links I can read your email address in the bottom left corner of the screen, however it does mean that contacting you is not simple and straightforward.
I agree with mbaldw comment that headings eg Gallery-1 could be phrased to have more meaning to the user, this will also help search engines.
The search engine finds your name very well, but I entered a few other possible search criteria eg: Wildlife and Landscape photography. I had no results in the first 3 pages nor the first 10. I tried several search options including some of the titles applied to some of the 'enlarged images', but to no avail. Suggest you have a look at your 'keywords' in the meta tags. The keywords need to be relevant to the content on the page and work better if those chosen keywords actually appear in the text on the page. Try not to use generic words like 'photography' be more specific like 'Wildlife and Landscape photography'.
I notice that all images have no description on the page;unless you click to enlarge, which you cannot assume. This tells the user nothing about the image they are viewing and nothing for the search engines to use either. I'm very happy with the images and how they enlarge.

Overall I like the website. A few simple improvements will make viewing more enjoyable and easier to read and navigate. The images are a pleasure and load quickly. I have bookmarked your website and I look forward to returning at a later date to see how you progress with it.

Hope my input helps you.
All the best.

[Tobyh]

Thanks very much for your thorough feedback. I'll take some of those points on and try to amend and incorporate when I have a bit of time.

I've been really struggling with search engine optimisation and especially the images. The site is designed with Xara which is a wysiwyg editor but is pretty powerful. I'm not a coder so have to try and work round how to do some things within the product.

The images use highslide editor to display and I did amend some of the alt / meta tags to try and keep the image names as I wanted them and more descriptive as the software just wants to call them a number which doesn't help at all. I didn't know if I need to somehow readvertise them to the engines to ensure it picks up the new info? I made changes to Birds Gallery 2 some weeks ago and hoped that would be picked up so that I knew I was correcting the right thing. If i right click and view source info in firefox I can see that the name of the image is at least more representative, however it doesnt seem to be getting to the engines. This information is available to the thumbnail image also.

The nav bar was fun to get working but using firefox and IE the top link ie My Favourites, Links etc do work as a link in their own right. Point taken though, I guess i could link the galleries text to one of the galleries but didn't see it as necessary as the choices were all in the drop down.

The default mailto link I thought was connected to whatever choice you have on your machine. If this isn't the case then I have no idea how to change that. One to look into.

Thanks again for the feedback.

TobyH