New wedding site/blog, please critique

My top 4 goals for my site and blog are (in no particular order) that it be:

Fast
Easy to navigate
Professional
Shows quality of work


I'm still working on two things, getting the drop down menu to not be so spaced, and adding more photos to the portfolio sections.

Would love to hear things you like/dont like. If you have trouble loading it or if it is slow please let me know, and let me know what browser and type of connection you have. Thanks!

http://www.stevenandli​lyphotography.com/

I actually REALLY like it. Simple, easy to move around. To the point. "NO MUSIC". Good job!
Can I ask, how many of those shot were taken with your 7D and an "L" lens?

DanFrank wrote in post #14695996
I actually REALLY like it. Simple, easy to move around. To the point. "NO MUSIC". Good job!
Can I ask, how many of those shot were taken with your 7D and an "L" lens?

Thanks! Out of everything (blog, portfolio, etc) probably 25% were with the 7D, 75% with the 5d2 and probably 90% with an L lens and 10% with the 85 1.8.

Love the design. Beautiful. Clean.

Few things I noticed:

Right away, when I load your site the first thing I see is your logo and not your slideshow, which is slightly cut off on my screen. I like to see a large image first. I also have to scroll down to see the portfolio thumbnails. I'm using a 22 inch widescreen monitor at 1680x1050 for your reference. It might look more put together if you could see it all at once (my website has this same problem and I'm trying to fix it).

When in a section like Weddings, if you use the drop down menu, the first option sometimes cuts off the title of the section you're in. I thought the large spacing was purposely used to avoid obscuring most of the title, but if you plan on making the menu spacing smaller, I'd look out for completely covering the section title.

I think it's a little weird to have a facebook comments section on your pricing page.

While looking at any of your main pages (info, about, contact, blog) I wish there was an option to directly select a portfolio, like weddings, instead of making me click the Home page, scroll down, and click on the Weddings thumbnail. Also might not be intuitive to some visitors.

Really like the Contact Us drop down. Cool!

Also really like the way you set up portfolio galleries. I love having a mini preview (can those be a bit bigger?) so I can select what I want to see, instead of being forced to sit through a slideshow or clicking --> repeatedly.

mirrorrim wrote in post #14696243
Love the design. Beautiful. Clean.

Few things I noticed:

Right away, when I load your site the first thing I see is your logo and not your slideshow, which is slightly cut off on my screen. I like to see a large image first. I also have to scroll down to see the portfolio thumbnails. I'm using a 22 inch widescreen monitor at 1680x1050 for your reference. It might look more put together if you could see it all at once (my website has this same problem and I'm trying to fix it).

When in a section like Weddings, if you use the drop down menu, the first option sometimes cuts off the title of the section you're in. I thought the large spacing was purposely used to avoid obscuring most of the title, but if you plan on making the menu spacing smaller, I'd look out for completely covering the section title.

I think it's a little weird to have a facebook comments section on your pricing page.

While looking at any of your main pages (info, about, contact, blog) I wish there was an option to directly select a portfolio, like weddings, instead of making me click the Home page, scroll down, and click on the Weddings thumbnail. Also might not be intuitive to some visitors.

Really like the Contact Us drop down. Cool!

Also really like the way you set up portfolio galleries. I love having a mini preview (can those be a bit bigger?) so I can select what I want to see, instead of being forced to sit through a slideshow or clicking --> repeatedly.

Excellent tips and I completely agree with all of them! I'll be making some changes to address some of those.

I like the canvas texture background. I would have like to see some more variety in the portfolio. It's needs more formals...

Of the 17 shots in your wedding album, I like numbers 6, 8, 9, 10, and 15. Favorite probably the jumping photo. I would lead with that one or a new shot of a couple at the alter. Some of the other ones I would not include in the portfolio (thinking numbers 4 and 11) I would fix the colors in 13 and 14. The greens look off to me.

Like the layout and agree with the above poster regarding functionality.

I think you need a menu for galleries. It took me a minute to find them, hidden way down low on your home page. Also that huge header pushes the content down heaps, i'd make it smaller. Put more text on your home page for SEO, see mine for details. I might change the page title so it doesn't have the page name at the start, it doesn't make much sense that way.

Overall I like it.

I like it. The whole page shows up at once on my 17" MacBook Pro (which is always set to its max resolution of 1920 x 1200) and I like the large images in your slideshow.

tim wrote in post #14697971
I think you need a menu for galleries. It took me a minute to find them, hidden way down low on your home page. Also that huge header pushes the content down heaps, i'd make it smaller. Put more text on your home page for SEO, see mine for details. I might change the page title so it doesn't have the page name at the start, it doesn't make much sense that way.

Overall I like it.

I agree with this. Either that or make your Gallery icons appear on each page. For instance, if I go to your "FAQ" page and then want to look at your wedding portfolio, as it is right now, I have to go all the way back to your home page. It would be great to be able to just move from one page to the next without backing up.

What a beautiful, uncluttered site. Did you do all the work on it?

I agree with the idea of putting links to your portfolio on each page and adding some copy to your homepage for SEO purposes.

The one thing that stands out in a weird way is the word "Blog" up top. Any reason it doesn't match the other buttons? I'm assuming this isn't a browser issue (I'm using IE 9). The buttons look great, but did you play around with making them a different shade? Right now they kind of fade away into the background, but we obviously know where to find them because menu options are typically at the top of the page. Same goes for the Facebook link on the far left. I use a widescreen, and it gets lost over there, mostly because it is very close to the background color.

But overall you did a really nice job with the site!