Finished designing front page of my website

[bestfromnw]

tell me what you guys think :o
http://groupshotphoto.com
Critique will be greatly appreciated
Thank you

[souporman]

Overall, I like it! It's nice and simple, but I do have some suggestions.

1. It's a fixed size, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's slightly too wide for 1024x768 resolutions. I would endeavor to make it fit at least that resolution without getting that horizontal scrollbar along the bottom. If you like the wider look for your site, then going with a percentage width might be better so that is scales down for smaller screens.
The downside of that being it may cause havoc with your image based menu.

2. Couple things about your menu:
The font sizes are all different which makes it seem odd to me. Find the largest size you can use that still lets you fit Landscape/Automotive in the frame and use that across all of them.
Sports is all caps
What happens to this menu when you get to the inner pages of your site?3. You've buried what seem to be important links in the body of your home page (rates, etc). These should be in a menu of their own, visible at any point in your site. Given the layout you have, I would suggest a little horizontal menu along the base of your black header bar.

4. Nit-picky things:
The photo of you (I assume) in the top left seems like a disembodied head & hands holding a teeny camera (relative to the size and way you're holding your hands). It sort of weirds me out, but that may just be me :smile:
The landscape image along the bottom should have a border along the top edge of the image. Purely because you've got borders everywhere else on the site.One more thing that I sort of like and could be done with your site are rollover images. I half expected when I moused over your menu images that they would swap to their colour counterparts, which I kind of like even though it's a bit overdone :smile: Have a look around for some free javascript mouseover scripts, there's loads of them out there!

Hope that helps!

[Redfish]

The first sentence is hard to read. Group Shot Photography is Portland, OR photography and design services company. Shouldn't it be is "is a Portland"

Also the print sizes 9x10 do you mean 8x10

The first sentence has Group Shot. The last sentence has Groupshot

Do not end sentences with a preposition (to.) Most sentences are run on's and hard to read. Consider revising and making the sentences shorter and to the point. People will lose interest if the sentences go on for ever.

Keep fonts consistent

I like the overall layout - be sure and let us know when the site is complete

Steve

[bestfromnw]

i'll work more on it today. as far as sentences - i'm foreighn so english is not my first language :(

[shannyD]

i like it. clean. everything is right infront of your face so will be easy for people to navigate through, and its not hard to look at because of a ton of flashing things, and strange colors. looks great.
shannon

[bestfromnw]

do you guys think left side menu navigation would look better than picture box navi?

P.S. i just noticed that fonts look different on menu :)

[shannyD]

i personally like the picture box things.

[ImagesByInku]

I don't like this sentence: "Our services are guaranteed, and we have the highest client satisfaction levels." Can your claim be back up with numbers/evidence? When I read this, I feel like you are making a bold claim just to "wow" some people, not because it is necessarily true.

[souporman]

do you guys think left side menu navigation would look better than picture box navi?

Honestly, it wouldn't hurt to do both...on the home page anyways. Then those links won't get lost when people browse further into the site, and your menu structure will remain consistant throughout the site.

[jbrow375]

I think there is too much text on the home page, it has a very info commercial feel to it. Consider side bar content for snippets of important content. If the link is important enough to be on the home page it also must be in a navigation bar as well. Give people 2-3 ways to access the same content.

Minimalist is my favorite style (hense my website design in the link in my signature) where the space also says something. Keep it simple, yet informative and guide your user to where you want them to end up.

It is a good start, and lots of feedback here to keep going on.

Let us know how it works in revision.

Jessica