Website feedback please.......

[tzimmerman]

Hey guys, finishing up the new website and getting the wife's business off the ground, was wanting some opinions as well as wanting alot of people to hit the site to see if anything was buggy. It was built with joomla, online proofing is the full version of ProofBuddy 2.0.

Crossroads Photography

Couple things I know will be criticisms.....

1. The portfolio has only one session per portfolio.....I know we just haven't been through our work to get our favorites chosen for all the galleries, so I just tossed in some I had ready.

2. The wedding slider and portfolio aren't created yet.

3. The main portfolio page from the top is blank.....working on that.

One other question I had...we are struggling with the about us or our story type page, does everyone think this is necessary? BTW the blog is built too, just needs content, is that sufficient for people getting to know you, bi-weekly blog posts?

If anyone has problems with the animations not being smooth, or any other bugs, I would be grateful if you would let me know.

[CharlieJ]

Nice website! I've been looking at a lot of photographers' websites lately.

A few things... just my .02 worth on some; experience on others.

On Crossroads Photography - Contact Us, you set yourself up to be spammed by having your email addresses there in plain text. I would suggest a clickable IMAGE file, without any ALT text, so your email addresses are not bombarded with spam.

Regarding email, maybe just one email address, for the business, on the Contact Us page... and individual addresses on blog posts, etc. If I were a new client, when I saw that page, I'd wonder, "Hmmm, which one will respond faster?" Or, "I have a question, but I'm not sure if I should send it to Jayme or Thomas." Does that make sense?

You might consider a Rates page... or something that offers the customer an idea of the sitting fees, session costs, etc. Not everyone does that (see the second sentence at top), but a lot do have some sort of Rates page.

Right-click doesn't work.

All the images have your logo.

It looks like the site is developing nicely, Thomas. Best wishes to you both!

[tzimmerman]

Charlie,

The emails cannot be spammed...if you look at the source code they are not in there, its nifty script that allows it to display on screen, but crawlers cannot grab it. Works pretty well on all my other websites, that and all my email routes to gmail....which has the best spam filters in the industry by far in my experience.

Yes...rates page is in the works...shoulda mentioned that. We are hashing out on whether to do rates as a single page, or describe the different rates we will offer for each type (IE seniors, weddings, before and after baby, general portraits...etc).

I do like the idea for a single email address, in all actuality both go to the same inbox anyways, I'll have to think on that one.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Brittany Allison]

All in my own opinion of course!

But.....

I think the types of photos on the contact page should coincide with the the types of portfolios. Ex. "Babies" portfolio but "Infant" on contact page. Also, since you list that you do family and senior portraits, then have a portofolio on each of those.
Also, not a big deal, but I don't really care for the different colors on the tabs across the top of the page. I don't think they go with the "flow" of the rest of the page. The blue is a pretty neutral color if you just had that for every tab (since you only see it on one tab at a time anyway.)
But other that that I like it. I really like the side bar of portfolios on the left and the fade out of the pictures once you're in the portofolio. Nice work.

[tzimmerman]

Originally Posted by Brittany Allison

All in my own opinion of course!

But.....

I think the types of photos on the contact page should coincide with the the types of portfolios. Ex. "Babies" portfolio but "Infant" on contact page. Also, since you list that you do family and senior portraits, then have a portofolio on each of those.
Also, not a big deal, but I don't really care for the different colors on the tabs across the top of the page. I don't think they go with the "flow" of the rest of the page. The blue is a pretty neutral color if you just had that for every tab (since you only see it on one tab at a time anyway.)
But other that that I like it. I really like the side bar of portfolios on the left and the fade out of the pictures once you're in the portofolio. Nice work.

Hey thanks for catching some things for me, yes infants babies should be the same verbiage....I'll ask the boss which we should go with.

We are taking our first pay for sets of senior and family pictures here within a couple weeks, so those portfolios will be added at that time. The current sets we have on those I didn't get permission to use it, even though I don't think I need it for my own use....I like to have it in writing. Same with wedding which is why there is nothing there yet until I get the say so. Our business so far has been word of mouth and friends and family, and it kinda turned into a business on its own so we are getting things ready and legit and going to see where it takes us, hence the sketchy portfolio at this point.

The colors on the top is a feature we both like....adds something unexpected to the webpage...but thats a subjective thing, thank you for your honest opinion. Glad to hear you enjoy the sliders and image fades and lightboxes....they are my favorite part of the website. The other nice thing about the portfolio pages is the images are in a random order every time you bring up or refresh the page, which allows us to have a ton of pictures in there, and not have people potentially see the same 10 pictures at first every time.

[Brittany Allison]

Originally Posted by tzimmerman

The other nice thing about the portfolio pages is the images are in a random order every time you bring up or refresh the page, which allows us to have a ton of pictures in there, and not have people potentially see the same 10 pictures at first every time.

VERY good idea!!!!