Website Opinion...

[bigrobo89]

Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of putting together a webiste at the minute, & would really appreciate it if you could take the time to have a look and let me know what you think. I'm primarily looking to use it as a space to host some of my work that allows me more control than offered by websites such as Flickr.

I'm not looking to monetize anything yet, although the odd bit coming through the contact form wouldn't be turned down! So for now I'm just looking to get opinion on the layout & feel of the site.

The site is at: www.pmrcaptures.com

Thanks for taking the time out of your day.

Paul

[CheaperKings]

As soon as I saw the loading animation, I left - don't dig flash...

[jerome.oneil]

Hi Paul,

I don't see anything I would change, the jquery slider on the front page maybe too much for some visitors; so many images and the shear size of the image but IMHO it works. My opinion is based on being a web developer and the current technologies. CheaperKings was tricked into thinking this was Flash, but Flash is taking a well deserved retirement. Using js, JQuery, CSS3, and HTML 5 there is no need for flash anymore. Because you used js instead of Flash this site should work flawlessly on Mobile devices.

Wordpress, Joomla, and my favorite Drupal, make it easier for lay persons (though you do have to have some skill in the field) to develop sites like yours.


1. Also move your Google Analytics Script to the bottom of the page (Tracking scripts should always be the last thing to load). This could also be slowing it for some visitors.

2. Remove the reference to the script on pages where it is not needed.


Good job,
Jerome

[Ambrosia76]

May just be my server but the pages take forever to load.

[OsmosisStudios]

I'd change "nature" to "animals" or something similar. That page also took a very long time to load. Rest of it works very well.

[dakwegmo]

What kind of feedback are you looking for? I like the KingSize theme, but it seems to be flawed in that it downloads all of the images at once. With the images as large as you have in the rotator, and as many as you have, you've got a couple of megabytes of photos downloading before the javascript can start to run. That's going to turn a lot of people away. I'd figure out a way to reduce the image size, and use fewer images on the main page, so you don't get people leaving before they have a chance to see your site.

[jerome.oneil]

Originally Posted by dakwegmo

What kind of feedback are you looking for? I like the KingSize theme, but it seems to be flawed in that it downloads all of the images at once. With the images as large as you have in the rotator, and as many as you have, you've got a couple of megabytes of photos downloading before the ********** can start to run. That's going to turn a lot of people away. I'd figure out a way to reduce the image size, and use fewer images on the main page, so you don't get people leaving before they have a chance to see your site.

The initial start of sliders seems longer than the following images, that happens because the visitor eyes haven't been trained on the transition time. Preloading images also may have an effect but from my end everything I did not see this.

Delete the EXIF or XMP data from the image and compress the JPEGs a little more as your files sizes are 300+ kB. That's not bad but preloading upward to 20 images could take sometime for some visitors' internet connections and computers. If you can get them down to 100kB you'll increase the speed by more than 100%. I increased the compression on the attached and it doesn't appear to have lost any screen quality.

Condensed:
drop the exif
do not sharpen color edges
reduce quality to 70%
smoothing of 2
remove unused colors

[dakwegmo]

Originally Posted by jerome.oneil

The initial start of sliders seems longer than the following images, that happens because the visitor eyes haven't been trained on the transition time.

Or it could be that it takes several seconds for the page to load before the transition script begins to execute.

[SwissJon]

Hmm..
The site is very slow to load. I think you need to look at the size and quality of your photos. Do you really need full sized high quality images if you're not providing them for download and are only showing them at xxx pixels wide? I really wouldn't offer a photo at anything more than that. And for non-printable images, you can afford to lower the quality.

Your thumbnail for the pigeon is screwed up. Didn't notice any others, but then I didn't see any others that are portrait oriented.

The menu at the left is difficult to navigate, the menu doesn't make a lot of sense, you expect a menu item to highlight when you mouse over and respond to clicks, yours doesn't.

You've mixed domestic animals in with wild animals together with one of a pigeon. You need to separate them. Photos of the dogs (Add a cat or two and perhaps a canary or something) under "Furry Friends" and you might b able to sell pet portraits. I really don't know if that pigeon photo deserves to be up at all.. It doesn't tie into anything else.

However I really like the supersized background. I would be a little more choosy about which one you use, and get one to load randomly on page load, but not make it change over time.

[jerome.oneil]

Originally Posted by dakwegmo

Or it could be that it takes several seconds for the page to load before the transition script begins to execute.

I said that...

Originally Posted by jerome.oneil

Preloading images also may have an effect but from my end everything I did not see this.

The script what is preloading the images. Very first line of the first function of the script...
// image preloading jQuery.fn.onImagesLoaded = function(_cb) {