Sam Decker posted on his DeckerMarketing Blog that he would be doing website reviews for his readers who had websites. I jumped at the opportunity – friends and family will always say they love your work and since I am re-designing the website, I thought I could use some good advice from someone who doesn’t know me at all and would review the website in an unbiased way. This is what he had to say:
- The rollovers on the home page – bad idea. . I want to see the links to your clients, portfolio, and about. Suggest you put images on the home page with the text or put the top navigation on the home page
- The images on the front are inconsistent in quality and tone. Doesn’t look like they came from the same photographer (you?).
- Copy font is way too small.
- No html text or links on the home page. No title tag that’s relevant. This site will perform poorly on search engines.
- Good to have the email and phone number on top. Link the email address.
- So what do you do? Photography, design, etc? Not clear on the home page. How are you differentiated from any other designer?
And my response to the same:
“Thank you for the wonderful feedback! I agree on most points 😀 The new thing that I am planning can be seen in this blog entry.
I am keeping the images on the home-page – want to keep the continuity – a drastic change might adversely affect people who’ve visited the website in its current state – might lose it’s identifiability. But yes, no more roll-overs. Instead, I am using the title tag and adding a common navigation bar on all the pages.
The current website is completely image based [ sliced and diced in Photoshop ] – in spite of that I managed a PageRank of 4 – imagine if the website had been search-engine friendly – I’d have a PageRank of 7 by now! But it’s never too late.
And all the photographs on the website have been shot by me. The ones on the homepage are cropped and uncropped versions hence the discontinuity in the quality.
Even the “copy font” is actually a Photoshop sliced image! Not so in the new design – am changing that to include real text – easier for search engines to pick up ].
And I am a designer/photographer. The new website has this bit of Flash [ will be much smaller when put on the website ] just above the navigation bar on all pages – it gives that bit of differentiation argument and also lists what all I do.
This was a wonderful exercise and I thoroughly appreciate your feedback!”
