My new website

Hi,

I can't really comment on the elements of your site, but can I suggest the option to have a non-flash version of the site available? I'm not anti flash but I do live on my iPad these days and I don't own a laptop. Therefore I cannot view your site. I use weebly to build my site. Not feature fantastic, but it does what I need it to do and it's free.

Fiona

Matt, I really like the style of the site, the only problem I have is the speed it loads the images and the general navigation speed is a bit frustrating. This is clearly not your issue, it is the technology used by the site. If I were a potential customer I would probably not spend too much time on the site, not because of the way it looks or the photos, but simply due to the speed and frustrating way it defocusses images and takes a long time to open them. Would you be better with something like foliopic?

Regards
David

Dunno about the speed, seems OK down here in Cornwall! You only load a HQ image once clicked. Having a progress circle is more informative than waiting for an image to load after clicking it. You are not staring at a placeholder, you can see the rough image transform into a lovely sharp full screen image. The site is about quality images, after all, its not about speed of loading? If they zoomed slightly faster it might be better but it is smooth at the moment and faster might make it more jerky.

I'm ambivalent about the words. I can take or leave them but it shows you have a bit more about you than somebody who can't spell and can't be bothered and if it set you apart from the rest, it can't be bad.

There was one image which bounced when I clicked it( (Vietnam, Advertising). Now that did irritate me. And one that made a noise (Australia, Ayres Rock) . Meh.

Overall, it has a style, the typeface has a certain "news" style and some of the images have a "journal" feel and I think its in keeping.

I would suggest making the text slightly brighter, the grey is difficult against the black. Just a shade or two.

It just depends who you are aiming your site at and setting it at that level. You can always have a non-flash site in development for when flash is abandoned and HTML5 takes over.

Its wayyyy better than mine and you have some great images.

It's a massive issue and will only get bigger.

The killer reason here is that Adobe will not be supporting flash on mobile devices anymore, if flash gets more features they will not be usable on mobile devices. Flash on mobile devices is DEAD. Also, flash is not a standard.

Mobile market (i devices, smart phones, tablets) is expanding at an exponential rate, it's not just the 250+million of i devices that are affected but all of them will be. Why support a dead plugin in a new device? Add Android and all other options and that number is already around a billion, just too big an issue to ignore.

The fact that WIX uses flash is a good reason to not use it in my opinion, for all the reasons pointed out above and many more.

Free and easy is attractive but if you are trying to sell your work from it, you need to look professional.

Mine is based on the Wordpress platform and is also my first go at building my own site. It's hard work, can be a steep learning curve and there are thousands of pre-made themes all over the net ranging in price from free upwards.

Get rid of www.wix.com/mat..... and get www.mattbishop.eu or www.mattbishopphotography.com instead, both of which are available and will give a far greater impression / make it easier to remember your site etc. Will also look better on a business card.

Get rid of the 'enter site' for all the reasons mentioned above.

Make your images easy to view, not hard. They are the reason for your site and you are trying to sell them.

Change your email address to whatever your domain name is, so matt (at) mattbishopphotography.com or something similar.

Less is more. Keeping it simple is hard, bloody hard but worth it.

The typeface may be the style you are looking for and the poetry helps define you as an individual so will not say you should get rid as personality is what helps define your photography. Others may not like it, striking a balance is difficult to do.

People go to a photo website to look at photos not to hear something! Turn off the music and any other sounds. If you want to add say a youtube slideshow video to music that is fine as we can choose not to click it rather than have it forced upon us.

ChrisA may have come across a little OTT, but strip away the vitriol, try not to take it personally and the points he makes are all valid. He basically said your photos were quite nice but your site is quite awful. That is a valid and shared opinion.

My website is just for sharing at the moment, not for business but the thought process was definately to get the base platform or that dreaded word 'branding' right from the start, less to worry about later.

You already have a logo and colour choice within it, that's a good start but would use fewer text colours throughout the site. Personally I prefer a white background to black but if the black is definately your style then stick with it.

As the site is flash based the text size changes with the window size, to me that is awful.

Hopefully that is a little more constructive for you than the 1st post, it may have come across a bit 'snarky' but that is genuinely how I treat sites these days so please don't take it personally.

Having asked the same question as you recently I do know how important constructive criticism is so thought you deserved a more in depth response than I first offered. The points may not be in the right order as I just typed them as I thought of them but gives you an idea of how I approached mine.

If there is anything on my site that you have questions about that might help then do ask, will help as much as I know how to!

Unlooker, I really appreciate the time that you have made to go through these points and I agree with you entirely. It helps so much when one can look at things more constructively and I will be sure to take them all on board. Being new to this website thing isn't as easy as it seems. May have to change from wix to another as suggested. Thank you very very much

Thank you so much for your kind comments. It feels good to know that certain aspects of the site you appreciated. I will be certain to take the negative parts on board to. From what has been said, I think the major issues that need to be dealt with are: getting rid of the open page and music, increasing the font size and tone so that it is more legible, maybe cutting back some of the word parts to keep things more simple, and decrease the image upload size so that they load up faster. See how I go from there but in the long run I am better off changing website for one with more options.

Thanks everyone so so much. Really big learning curve

Matt, I am glad you are taking on board the comments made. I hope you manage to make a really good website - as I said the basis is there, and it stands out from the crowd. I think it is great that you are trying to do something a bit different, and to make your own site.

I don't have a website as such, I just use a domain name we own for other purposes and use jalbum on it, but then my photos aren't for public consumption or for sale so it is fine for what I need.
I'm not sure I could be as creative as you (or Danny) if I were to try and make my own site.

Have just had a look on my phone. First thing to bare in mind is the majority of views to your site will come from social networking sites... If you do some promotion it will most likely be through social network sites. 40% of the mobile phone market are smart phones 80% of these smartphone users use smartphones purely for social networking, from their they will visit websites.

So for that reason wix is not a good idea. The best compromise is a wordpress blog. Wordpress is easy to implement but more importantlywhen viewed on a smartphone wordpress s will resize to fit the small screen and also resize images to reduce bandwidth.

Back to your site. I could view it but it was cumbersome clunky and dysfunctional. Excellent photography but poorly presented. Music on a website is so 1997 could you imagine amazon or play. Com having music???

Blue text is also not a good idea makes it hard to read.

Sorry if it sounds harsh but I think you are truly underpresenting your fabulous photography

I found the text difficult to read, so didn't go any further. Please don't think I'm being negative, just trying to be honest and helpful.

Right, I'm drinking coffee, and I'm not in the mood to be much more diplomatic than I was last night

I've had another look at the site, and another look at what I wrote, and I pretty much stand by it.

What I said was in no way intended personally - it was an honest expression of the way it struck me, and as such, given that the OP seemed to be looking for honest feedback, that's how I couched it.

I'd make a couple more observations.

Firstly, the OP's stated intent was to professionalise his photography. Not to create a personal expression site, for poetry and images that would appeal to kindred spirits. If someone wants to express themselves with their own style of poetry, that's perfectly fine, and though I may find it a bit yucky, it's basically none of my damn business.

However, for a money-making site, it's a bit different. You have to be prepared for some people to like it, and for others to think it sucks. It's then down to you to decide whether appealing to the ones that think it sucks is important to you. It may not be, of course, and that's perfectly fine too, and entirely within your right.

Finally, I'd say this:

If I ask for feedback from someone I'm not paying, and they generously give of their free time to consider what I've submitted and take the trouble to write something, then whether I agree with their view or not, or like the way they express their view or not, I should at the very least appreciate the fact they've bothered. They've done me a favour, even if I didn't enjoy it

I do, of course, wish Matt the very best with both his site and his business - I said I like many of the images, and I stand by that too.

Chris, your opinions are fine, but there's no need to be downright rude and aggressive with them. A bit of courtesy goes a long way. People tend to reject aggressive stances and then any message of value does not get through.

Thanks John, I am glad that you understand and appreciate, as always, the views to the subject. I very much appreciate the help and feedback, as I do to others in need on this forum, Chris, and would normally be so grateful to anyone who finds the to sit down and right on this forum. But for me this blunt offensive way of writing on this forum is not on.

First years of photography for me were average then I improved. First years of website building is obviously following the same path (let's hope). Luckily with all your kind help I have learnt a lot and let's hope others have too.

Like my photography, with the website I am trying to be creative and different, let's hope that refining it makes some progression forward?

Again thanks everyone so so much

No problem!

Can assure you Gwyn that it wasn't my creativity, I paid for it! That's one advantage with Wordpress and others in that there are literally tens of thousands of pre made themes out there, the one I bought is called The Cotton. and cost $35.

They also have a good support forum, so where I have tweaked it, they have helped really well. The other places where I have put in my own input include the logo as it has the exact colours in it that the theme came with, and sticking to a standard large size on the photos of 960x600 as this way, when viewing images the lightbox will only change size for portrait images and make it easier for the viewer to flick through the photos.

It's not perfect though, mainly due to the way the theme is written to stick to it's theme. This is noticed over time as you get used to it and want to tweak it in a certain way. As an example Ken mentioned about easy navigation between gallery pages that the theme does not support also in my review if you click on one of the images, they are not linked together for easy navigation.

Having said this, themes are a great start as you can have a great looking website without knowing how it works, do be prepared to spend a lot of time on it though!

You will get there but remember that the more simple (and therefore professional) it looks, the harder it gets!

I agree mate, great site. Very simple and straight forward. Keeping it simple doesnt distract the viewer from the intention of simply viewing your photos. Lets hope with a few tweaks I can improve mine. Gonna have a look at the co. that you used your site through now and see what I can come up with

I know this will not go down well, but your size ticks most of the boxes for "bad practice" in web design (music, cumbersome navigation, poor readability, landing pages with no function). The good thing is, I think your pictures deserve better.

If you are semi serious about it, I would suggest you to 1) pay for a domain and 2) forget about the flash stuff. Apart from the short comings already mentioned by others (which I support) flash is also poor with search engines, meaning Google etc. have a really hard time making any sense of it and therefore can't index it properly. It is no coincidence PPG have been ditched - it was all flash!

OK, it will cost you, but it is after all amazingly cheap compared to what you have paid Pentax over the years for the gear with which you take the pictures. So why not spend the 30 bucks/year it might cost to promote and show your pictures on a site in your name?