My business / website

[DexterPunk]

Its not finished yet, but i just registered the domain today...

i thought id post here as bit of bug testing and comment / criticism. If you have any issues Id like to hear about them.

Things im aware of:

condensing the window pushes the logo into the menus.. not sure what could be done about that.
Content missing from quite a few areas
some photo restoration stuff in the photography area, it will eventually be a selection of my fav shots.
White borders on some and not all photos
Some thumbnails look a bit wonky and odd because they are different aspect ratios.


Would like to hear what you think... dont know if im 100% happy with the logo.. (top left) maybe a bit plain? but i like the template.

Oh and my email in contacts wont yet work... w00dsy already tried that.

http://www.mitchellimaging.com.au

[YnoT]

looks good and professional and it's also very easy to nagivate which is good

Here are my comments, viewed in firefox, only see 2 things so far, so hope I can help

1) The text below the headings has a weird colour and it's very hard on the eyes, is this supposed to be white? and also the footer text colour

2) The 'Mitchell Imaging & Photography' heading at the top, I think it will be a good idea where you can click on it and it goes back to the first page. Like the arse heading on the top left, you can click on it and it goes back to the main page.

good luck with your new business

[Gusto]

My main criticism is that the first photo in the slideshow (the breaking globe) is too low a resolution - looks fuzzy and low quality, when you want to show sharpness and high quality.

[DexterPunk]

I concur.... I was a bit lazy tbh... i grabbed the reduced size JPG off my flickr instead of grabbing the RAW file from my archives and doing it in higher res.

Ill fix that, thanks Gusto!

YnoT, I think thats a great suggestion regarding the text bringing you back to the index/home page.. ill see if that can be done. I dont get odd colours though! Would be interested to know if anyone else is getting that!

[durbster]

Ooh, a Flash site. Did you build it?

I like the layout and simplicity of the interface. That's exactly what's needed on a site like this. You don't visit to be wowed by a heavily-designed, unuseable interface; you go to have a look at something specific. You can get to what you want to see very quickly here, so the site will work.

A few points, if you wanted a full critique :
- The logo doesn't look like a logo as it doesn't stand out from the body text. It looks more like a page title to me, so it's worth doing a bit of work on that.
- The font size used for body text is too small. If you're going to go with a full Flash site then you're compromising accessibility so you should do all you can to counter that. Johnny Potentialcustomer might have bad eyes and be looking at the site on a crappy monitor in bad light. If it were a CSS site he could use the browser text size or zoom to read it, but your site is immune from those things. If that doesn't make sense then do a mousewheel scroll with Ctrl held down on ARSE and then on your site to see. It might seem an irrelevance but it's surprising how many people will simply leave the site in those circumstances.
- The image gallery bit is a bit shaky. I managed to break it and leave a photo hanging by clicking too quickly. Not the end of the world but if you want to appear professional these things can really have an impact. It's also a bit sluggish to use - there's often pauses between an action and some feedback, i.e. you click on an image but nothing happens for a second, and then the load bar appears.
- A minor one but that sluggishness seems to be throughout the site, when clicking on the menus at the top there seems to be a small delay. One of the advantages of Flash sites is their response speed.

by the way, you can draw the white borders in Flash quite easily which would save you having to do it on every preview image. It's only a couple of lines of code if you built it / have access to the source files.

I don't have my debugging software at home so I can't see but do you have any tracking in the site? If not I would suggest putting some in. It costs nothing and will help you get loads of user feedback which is absolutely critical to a successful website.

Website aside, the photos are fucking awesome

[DexterPunk]

Cheers durbs!! And thanks for all the feedback! I'm not actually making the site, a mate who is a webdesigner is, bit I have a lot of input... So all the slides at the homepage are jpgs I've created...

I agree about the logo... I'm not much of a graphic designer though, and wanted something simple. If anyone feels bored and wants to have a go at making the logo, feel free it can only be 32px high png though.

Yeah I agree some of the text is a bit small, specially in the 'about' section. One thing that I did find a bi annoying was that scroll wheel scrolling doesn't work. My mate said there's not much that can be done.. A limitation of the template being used... Maybe some of the repsonse issues etc are similarly to do with how the template is coded? I'm not brilliant at web stuff so I'd have no idea. I'm guessing also that it's hosted in aust. And may possibly be a little slower for UK users?

I wouldn't mind doing a CSS alternative for people who can't use flash. My iPhone for example won't be able to use it. Some sites I've been to won't work as they are flash bit give you a second option for non flash.

Oh, what's tracking in the site??

[ysu]

First of all the flash site is not a very good idea for many reasons. (seo being just one)
Second; there's no design, it's just a black page (which is dark and thus not a 'happy' page) with images.
The fonts are rather bad choice too, they are nearly unreadable, and not matching.

The thing looks like a job of an amateur, sorry.

I'd ask a professional desinger at some point to create something based on the impressions and requirements you give them, and stick to html - maybe with flash insets if you really need moving parts (which most people don't really like if/when they actually looking for information, but everyone likes it on their own page - go figure.)

[schuey97]

Yeah thats true about flash with websites.

When I make websites for clients we always leave out flash ....it just gets in the way. Plus there are still heaps of people who dont have fast internet access and flash just makes everything go slower. A website should be informative, clean and easy to read, good use of colour. They then want to be able to get the information quickly ....not wait for things to load.

Just my two cents ....shit cant afford that, one cent then

[DexterPunk]

First of all the flash site is not a very good idea for many reasons. (seo being just one)
Second; there's no design, it's just a black page (which is dark and thus not a 'happy' page) with images.
The fonts are rather bad choice too, they are nearly unreadable, and not matching.

there is still much work to be done remember ysu, which fonts do you mean? would be handy to be more specific? the only fonts that have been put there on purpose for now, is the slides on the home page.

There was heaps of 'design' in the default template with loads of colour etc.. That isnt recommended when you are displaying images, its distracting. Photos are always better on neutral backgrounds... and i personally prefer simple websites. I also really like flash. So perhaps some personal differences in opinion there?

[schuey97]

I also really like flash. So perhaps some personal differences in opinion there?

Absolutly .....the world wide web would be bloody boring if everyone kept to a design standard.

Pretty well you make the website to how you think would be best for people to interact with it and display the right type of colours and graphics so that it will not put-off users. .....Then theres the other way of making sites, do what you want and dont give a shit what people will think , my first personal site was like that, what a piece of crap.

[Nigel]

I like it. My only real criticism is that the images switch a little too quickly to read what you are highlighting next to them.

[ysu]

First of all the flash site is not a very good idea for many reasons. (seo being just one)
Second; there's no design, it's just a black page (which is dark and thus not a 'happy' page) with images.
The fonts are rather bad choice too, they are nearly unreadable, and not matching.

there is still much work to be done remember ysu, which fonts do you mean? would be handy to be more specific? the only fonts that have been put there on purpose for now, is the slides on the home page.

There was heaps of 'design' in the default template with loads of colour etc.. That isnt recommended when you are displaying images, its distracting. Photos are always better on neutral backgrounds... and i personally prefer simple websites. I also really like flash. So perhaps some personal differences in opinion there?

there's some, definitely

The flash usage is not a question of opinion though, it's a question of accesibility & usability. Your choice, but you've asked for opinions, this is my professional one as a web programmer.

On the opinions side:
I hate dark sites.

On the facts side:
as far as i know very dark (black!) websites give out a negative vibe, for a lot of people. (lighter sites won't do that by default) - This I've heard from a couple of web designers. On the other hand, paper-designers generally have no such observations. Strange.
But most of all; black on the monitor is hard on the eyes. (not as bad a RED background but bad enough)
(to test this; try to work on some doco with the color scheme on your site; black/white. Your eyes will be sore pretty soon. )
But we can't have all sites light gray, eh? (that's one of the most pleasing ones as bgcolor)

I like clean sites, but with light or pastell general colours; eg my old "company" site
http://www.ysuprogramming.com.au/
(this was designed by a professional designer - smartersoft is sadly a different affair, I don't have 100% decision over that)


The fonts prollem:
the menu (top right) and content fonts. Both are messy font types, and the content is extremely tiny.
Many people overlook the font, font- & line-spacings and margins in the presentation of their site. It's one of the most important parts in fact.

[DexterPunk]

the content hasn't been put there yet, as you can see.. and yes it will be bigger.

I also like the menu font size as it is. At least on my screen.. the menu sizes are not much smaller at all to the ones on your website.

I might try a light gray background to see how that looks though. thanks for the suggestion. I am open to C&C, but you did call it amateurish, which is a bit of a kick in the bollocks when its something that isnt finished, im still working on, and is also being paid for. The web designer suggested flash because theres some nice templates around for displaying images. Quite honestly i dont think that decision could be changed now, unless as i mentioned, i give the user a choice in flash or html on a title page.

I think there is also a fair bit of difference of opinion, as I find your site quite messy and a little sparse.

[KNAPPO]

Correct me if im wrong but if a site is completly built in flash dont you run into issues with it being able to be googled?

I recall one of the designers here built this beautiful site completly in flash and when it was time to go live she had to rebuild the thing as the mamagement boffins wanted it to googlable...

I found this on a quick search - http://www.antezeta.com/blog/flash-still-bad
But some of you blokes would know more about this stuff than me. I wont touch web page design with a 10 foot clown pole.

[DexterPunk]

not sure Knappo... ill ask and find out.

[pab]

Yes, flash is an issue for search engine indexing (that's what Ysu meant by SEO problems).

If you view source on your site you will see what the search engines will see when they index your site.

[DexterPunk]

I just spoke to him... (web designer) and said, yeah their used to be issues.. but he knows some ways to get it working etc.

[markus]

Flash. Meh, next site.

[DexterPunk]

geez thanks.

[markus]

geez thanks.

Don't take it personally.

Like others have said, a flash only site isn't necessarily the best option for a business site.

[DexterPunk]

well i dont see why really, the menus work, and will take you to information thats needed. And flash does look better for galleries in my opinion.

As i said, ive paid for that template.. and the web designers time to do this much... I don't think i can turn around and tell them to scrap it now.

geez thanks.

was not as much taking it personally, but that your comment wasn't exactly helpful. I did suggest before that perhaps i could have a html version, and let the user decide which they want to visit. you could have responded to that statement and said something like "yes, i think that would be a good option, as i don't like flash personally."

Thats a little more constructive.

[schuey97]

I must say Dex, your a hell of a lot better than me at letting people see a work-in-progess website.
Im too worried what people think and worried that they are going to dump on it. Most of the time, I build the site, confer with upper management about it and then release it.

[DexterPunk]

hehe well Im not building it, im just contributing content.... as im the business owner, not the web designer.

I thought it would be a good way to have lots of people test it on many browsers and systems to see whats broken, and what people like/dislike.

although i didn't count on it turning into a debate on flash websites, and thats something about it that im not really willing to change.

[pixelboy]

Mate you are going to get nowhere in google.. absolutely NOWHERE!

If you want people to find you via searches get rid of the flash.

Flash has its place but I am knee deep in SEO and analytics most days of the week and fully flash sites just don't get anywhere!

Check this out.. your site verses.. say norbs blog.

Those links show ALL pages google has index on your site.. bookmark yours.. I bet it goes nowhere.. Its not possible for pages to show up, its all the one page..

Sorry mate, but if you think google traffic is worth anything you'll dump the flash now.. If you don't care about people finding you via google then .. as you were..


Dex, don't take this as an attack.. its intended as helpful advice, I've been building websites for 14 years and do SEO on a site that gets 2mill unique users a month.. just think about it.

[wabbit]

Jesus christ, It's in fucking Flash! Your dead to me Dex