Honest Feedback about website

[AmyMarieBoyd]

Hi all I am looking for some honest feedback about my website Amy Boyd Photography Thankyou in advance for taking the time to look

[Jim Poor]

Originally Posted by AmyMarieBoyd

Hi all I am looking for some honest feedback about my website Amy Boyd Photography Thankyou in advance for taking the time to look

The landing page is okay, but once I clicked on website, it was slowish to load on my fiber-optic connection.

Your "FAQ" page title has cut of text.

Don't list three brands, 5 memory cards and 4 batteries. A simple "Yes" will do for the question of backup equipment.

"How long have they been photographing f̶o̶r̶"

The "about me" needs a lot of work. "I aim, my aim," etc appear way to often in such a short text. You're missing a lot of punctuation and your text reads as something very contrived. Almost as if someone who doesn't have a lick of sophistication is faking it. Basically, it sounds fake.

In the text on the weddings page don't use "congrats" it doesn't sound professional, nor does it instill confidence. You mispelled "can be" as "canbe." Don't use "as" so much - "as this will be, as you will want to . . . " etc.

"Please have a look at my packages I offer below" is poorly written. Would you really offer packages other than your own?

"Photographers assistant" should be "Photographer's assistant," but you go back and forth between that and "Photographer assistant" which is even worse.

Your $50 travel charge is a nice start if the location is 55 miles, but what if it's 100?

I pretty much stopped reading there, but you could REALLY use a proof reader. So much is wrong with the text. Passive voice, mixed styles (bullets or complete sentences - pick one) and much more combine to form a picture of an amateur rather than someone I would hire to photograph my wedding.

Your "portfolio" galleries are pretty repetitive in terms of the actual subjects. This creates an appearance of lack of experience. Your weddings gallery, in particular shows almost exclusively one wedding. I think there were maybe 3 photos from a second wedding thrown in at the end. You need more variety.

Your work on white backgrounds needs work in the lighting and post processing department. There are dark spots left in many of the white backgrounds that won't be readily viewable on a monitor that is not properly calibrated, but will show as a weird color in print. In the newborn gallery, the one with the baby in the blue nit cap is particularly bad in terms of an unclean BG. Pull it down, drop it into PS or another program and darken the whole thing. Anything in the bg that shows up as anything but pure white still, is a problem.

On the testimonials page, even if the client wrote it like a hillbilly with no proper capitalization, you need to either correct that, or leave off their testimonial.

I'm sure there is more, but that's enough for now.

[AmyMarieBoyd]

Hi There

Thankyou so much for taking the time and I will definately take what you have stated into account and re-look over my website it is great to have someone elses take on it

[karen_s]

+1 to everything Jim said, especially in regards to your writing. I would strongly encourage you to find a writer or at a minimum, an editor.

I'll add that I first tried your site on my phone and while the first page worked, your website did not. The flash based webpages may be very popular but beware, as more and more people choose to surf with iPhones and pads and other small devices, your flash based pages will be seen less and less.

You have misspelled Canon on your site (and your DPS signature). It has only one "n."

Your logo is not bad, but to my eyes it first read "My Boyd Photography." It took me a few moments to get register the "A." Of course, it may be that I wasn't wearing my glasses. Along with that, and this is a bit nit picky and more along the lines of personal preference, I don't think those fonts look that great together. Your name looks ok but I might try picking a san serif font for the word "Photography." In the end, it's not all that bad, it could just use a bit of tweaking.

[Biomech]

iPhones and pads and other small devices, your flash based pages will be seen less and less.

no no no no no no no no...with "iPhones and iPads"; everything else supports flash

[RyanSandsPhotography]

Originally Posted by Biomech

no no no no no no no no...with "iPhones and iPads"; everything else supports flash

I hope your not trying to tell her that she can keep her Flash based website and that caring about iPads and iPhones isn't important? Almost every single one of my clients visits my website through their iphone and ipad at one point in time. Where it be at work, on the go in the car or when they are out at other vendors. Do you know how many countless times I have been told how nice my site runs on an iPhone/iPad? DO NOT KEEP YOUR FLASH SITE...HUGE MISTAKE!

[bhursey]

Flash sites are a big no no.

1. They are harder for search engines to crawl..
2. 10% of my traffic is via an iOS device so they would not be able to see it.
3. They way the little text boxes scrolled I stopped reading.

Basically redesign without flash.

[karen_s]

Originally Posted by Biomech

no no no no no no no no...with "iPhones and iPads"; everything else supports flash

My little Palm Pixi (for the most part left to it's default settings), doesn't support Flash and it's not an iProduct so that's where I was coming from. You are probably right to a degree though that it is mostly Apple products that seem to shun flash. The issue is iProducts have a rather large share of the market at this point and time so I'd still consider an alternative to flash if possible.

[prince]

The good thing is you are consistent with your font size and type on most of the pages.

There is a lot of information on your website. Do you think your potential clients will have that much time to go through all that while they are browsing other photographers' websites too?

I would make your content lean and clean.

Your Business name is in different style on the home page, your website, and your client viewing section.

This is more personal preference but I don't think it gives a lot of value to have a home page with 3 main buttons like Website, Client Viewing, and Facebook.. what if you have more social media? Also, the search engines look at your index page and your index page is not offering much.

Your contact page has a very busy background which makes it harder to read as well as type in the contact form.

Be patient and keep at it

[Biomech]

I hope your not trying to tell her that she can keep her Flash based website and that caring about iPads and iPhones isn't important?

Oh of course not. Just pointing out yet another another reason why iProducts aren't worth the money