New Wedding Website critic

Hi,
We have just updated our wedding photography website, album photos and expanded galleries are to be added shortly.

Hoping for some feedback.

Thanks.

http://www.lovestories​photography.com.au

A very classy looking site! Easy navigation & a superb gallery of images.I think you can tell thats a thumbs up from me!

I love the overall L&F of the site. From my usability expert standpoint, I wasn't sure what Take a Tour or Downloads were. As a bride, I wanted to see a link for portfolio and client testimonies.

Stacie

Thanks... definetely add ons..
Take a tour is not up yet.. but will incororate these aspects...
portfolio is not up yet, there is a link fro mevery other page to gallery.. and front page from bottom.. will probably have to incorporate portfolio / gallery link from front page..
Tah

My first impressions:
- Quite busy.
- Lots of red
- Quite busy.
- Looks like it needs to be centered.
- You need to do some search engine optimisation. There was a great thread about this here a few weeks ago - search wedding thread titles for seo.
- Links are spread out - i'd like to see a single menu. Gallery should be more prominent.
- Turn your gallery animation speed up. I also like the way bpuppy (I think) used the caption properly to tell people they could press N for next slide.
- I'd like to see multiple weddings, each in their own gallery.

Hope that helps

tim wrote:
My first impressions:
- Quite busy.
- Lots of red
- Quite busy.
- Looks like it needs to be centered.
- You need to do some search engine optimisation. There was a great thread about this here a few weeks ago - search wedding thread titles for seo.
- Links are spread out - i'd like to see a single menu. Gallery should be more prominent.
- Turn your gallery animation speed up. I also like the way bpuppy (I think) used the caption properly to tell people they could press N for next slide.
- I'd like to see multiple weddings, each in their own gallery.

Hope that helps

It may look like it needs to be centred but soft images will be placed on right similiarly to the about us page so hopefully all pages should look balanced...

Search engine optimisation, as i said not completely finished yet. meta tags will be added in due course but to be honest all of our work comes via referrals and direct links...

There is a single menu on every page top and bottom. Exept for front page which has links to all pages more prounounced and described. Admit nothing for gallery on front page yet but that is coming.

categorised photo and album galleries will be put in place.. its phase two of the design process.

But youve highlighted some good points. Thanks.

Also a quick note to add to Tim's comments. I'm not a fan of having my images easily copied or "right clicked and saved as" so I would be careful how you present your gallery. Your image previews are large and they can easily be "taken".
Overall I like your concept though and your colors. Quite busy yes but it's a great start. Now.... I need to go through all the images I took from you....JUST KIDDING!!!

Ditto the comments above, the content really has to be centred.

Packages has a box on the right that's blank?

CSS use it, you have declared your background in the document unnecessary.

Use meta-toolbar to stop people being able to bring up the image toolbar in IE. Also in meta tags optimise for the search engines it won't do much but it won't really hurt your site either.

Alt tags, especially for navigation elements. This is important to users who switch images off or those who are blind (speech browsers).

Your script font is exhibiting a lot of jaggies, and it's very hard to read. The rollover won't really be visible on some screens especially if the brightness is turned up.

Contrast, critical in making readable content. You have grey on grey in some parts people with poor vision/colour blindness, etc won't be able to read it. Those with normal visible will have a headache after 5 min of straining to read the text.

Reduce overall reduce page clutter, brighten up the scheme a bit (use more vibrant colours) and edit your code. You have a promising start especially that you're one of the few people who I have seen use contact forms!

Hope this helps.

Points taken... thanks, but is there really 5min of reading on our site.. i wouldnt have thought so... in anycase will consider a lighter font colour for text on lighter grey backgrounds.

Also will experiment with font type to see if there is anything else that works and is perhaps more readable.

Colours... i think is not an issue as i am able to envisage the final look in my head.

Thanks for the critique... Keep them coming

My first impressionw as that there is too much going on already on the home page.. even though it looks quite elegant.

The "Tour" didnt work for me and the gallery took so long to load that I eventually canceled

VERY nice!!! I love the font and the pictures that you used. Extremely high class!! You did a great job.

Very professional looking website! It seems to me that a lot of “Professional Wedding Photographers” have one major weakness – their website. Some look as if they were thrown together in a couple of hours. Visit any top business/product website and it’ll be top drawer. I believe a lot of photographers don’t realize that the very first contact most of their clients have with them is via their website. If it looks amateurish or third rate it’s on to the next site regardless of the photographer’s ability. Visiting some of the top “Wedding Photographers” sites shows what’s possible! The internet may be the most important “tool” photographers can utilize yet some brush it off as inconsequential. Word of mouth is important but before they call they’ll probably check out the website. It had better not look like a high school student threw it together for a class project or else the desired phone call is never made.

I think your site will generate prospect calls.

I LOVE it! Wow. I love the font for your logo and carried throughout the home page. Your images made me wantto delete all mine from this forum because mine are so inferior. Beautiful work. Only problem is you will be swamped with clients!

One thing - I have no idea where yuo are. I have looked over your content and can't seem to find what market you are in - I would think you would want that easy to find so that people know where you are.

Thank you very much to those who have contributed their thoughts, ideas, suggestions, likes dislikes, observations..........​.

Very much appreciated, will be considering all of these with the hope of implementing the improvements.

I was going to comment that when I clicked on an image in the gallery, the imaged loaded in the same window, totally alone! I had to keep back-clicking to get back to the site. Now, after X mins, when I click on an image there's a flash thing that shows the image. I went back to check the first images I clicked on, and now it works like (I assume) it should.