[kiska]

My son Kelly, a photographer, has a new website. My daughter, Liz, did the site, her first, while learning. All photos are by my son, except the one on the info page. Please give HONEST critiques. The site is.....www.khmphoto.com....

Thanks
kiska

[JustChecking]

i like it, the simple design fits it well...
only, the "pure vertical" main menu seems a bit empty, and i don't like the empty buttons (i mean, you have to place the cursor over them to see where they point to... kinda disorienting)

btw, nice photos...

[Janet Petty]

I'm with JustChecking. Having the website essentially blank is disorienting and leaves you wondering whether the page has loaded or not. Good photos. Good concept. Work on the layout a bit.

[kiska]

Thank you, guys. These helpful suggestions have been passed along.
kiska

[Hunter]

Kiska, here's my *honest* take on it I tend to be a bit blunt in these things, mainly because beating around the bush isn't going to help - it's just like the challenges here. Honest critiques help us all hone our abilities; less than honest critiques may make the critiquer feel better by "not being mean," but they actually do a disservice to the other person in my opinion. I do understand that this was the designer's first site, and many beginner's mistakes were made - that's all normal and to be expected. The designer does show great potential... that said, here we go:

1) there is no usefulness in a splash page - all it's doing is adding a level between the customer and the info they want. From an Accessibility point-of-view, there is no ALT tag data on the bitmaps, thereby rendering the page useless to search engines, people with poor vision, those who have images turned off in their browsers, or those using a pure text browser. Yes, I know that photography sites deal with a visual medium, but not everyone can see. Why discriminate against them? Would you have a sign at the photo studio saying "Well-sighted people only; blind people or people with glasses/poor vision need not enter"? That's essentially what you're doing when you design your site to be inaccessible.

2) upon entering the site, all you've got is blank squares. This is what's known as "mystery meat navigiation" in the industry. The designer is not giving any impetus for the customer to go any further. Why should I click on something that I don't know what it is (especially these days where just visiting a site can install spyware and viruses)? How am I supposed to know that's a rollover image? It gives the feeling to the visitor that you don't want me here and you don't want to show/tell me anything. You don't build a site to make the end-user have to work or guess at what you're all about. The designer needs to do the work to make it appealing to the customer.

Now while it is a good thing to have negative (white) space, there is no need to have a purely vertical navigation with nothing else on the page - This can all fit horizontally. Some people in a hurry won't bother to scroll down a page; they'll just see what comes up on the first screen and if there's nothing of interest, they leave.

Now, again, you've just set another barrier to the customer... i.e., What? I had to hit a useless spash page to "enter" the site, yet on entering I'm presented with yet another splash page. I have to drill down 2 levels just to get info? Why should I bother going further?

3) just choosing a random page, Info, at 800x600 resolution, you've got horizontal scroll bars for no reason. There is nothing on that page that should create scrollbars at that resolution. Again, no ALT tags on the images. Since there is no actual text to give name, address, phone #, etc, no search engine will have anything to index on the subject of the site! The font used is really indecipherable to me. The weight of the font is so thin that it almost blends into the background. That really has to be redone.

4) This is just a big pet peeve of mine. Why, oh why do people go out and get their own domain name (khmphoto.com in this case) and then put up an email address for someplace else? You own the domain name, use it! It's another form of advertising - it should be on biz cards, flyers, invoices, etc - If you just gave me an email address of say, dude@someotherdomain.org, why would I have any knowledge that you had a website of your own at some totally different domain?

5) On the portraits page - "more to come"? Death knell. A website is not a static item. It should change and grow throughout the year. Since it *should* be changing often, it's self-evident that "more" will be coming later. If you're putting up a website, you need to make sure you've got all the content available from day one. If you don't have content for an area, say a gallery, just don't put anything up about it until you're ready. Never, ever use "coming soon" phrases because if it's not up now, why should I come back? I'm here *now*. If I go to the store to pick up lettuce and there's just a sign saying "more later," I'm heading out the door to another shop. I don't want the info/product *later*, I want it *now*. (yes, the average websurfer has the attitude of someone in the terrible twos on stuff like this)

6) Why should I have to go back to the main page just to view something else on the site? A website is not made to be a linear experience. You should have your menu system repeated on all pages so the visitor can branch off to whatever section they want at any time. You have nothing on these pages to let me just around.

That's just my initial gut reaction on these. Hopefully I've not totally upset the designer 'cause that is not my intention here.

[kbeatrice]

As a former programmer and user interface designer, I highly suggest that your daughter get a couple of books on User Interface Design. You get find some good ones at Amazon or Barnes & Noble by searching on User Interface Design in quotes to get the whole phrase. Make sure you look at the customer reviews too so that you make sure you get a good one. It takes practice to make a good web site and you should also take a cue from well done web sites like Amazon to see how they do things. There are also a number of great user websites by members of Retouch Pro, have your daughter check those out to get an idea of what works.

Hunter you make some good points, but your tone is kind of harsh. Having designed online bill pay interfaces, I can honestly tell you that an individual designing a website that is not going to be seen by huge volumes of people and is required by the government would never be able to make their site compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. It is terribly complicated and the testing alone is tedious requiring specialized setups to simulate the other user environments.

Good luck to you, I'd be happy to help on an individual basis if you want.

Karen

[kiska]

Thanks again, guys. I'm sure my daughter didn't even consider 'disabilities compliant'. Ramps, easy opening doors, etc., I've heard of. But, a website? Perhaps that is a bit of a stretch. Needed for certain subjects and useful, but not necessary for all.
kiska

[kbeatrice]

I'm sorry if you misunderstood the second part of my post, I DO NOT recommend ADA compliance for your son's website. It's too complicated.

The company I worked for spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to make our application compliant because our customers (banks) required it. A good analogy would be that the Post Office is required to have wheel chair ramps but your home is not required to have one.

Sorry for the confusion. I still recommend getting a book though, it's really helpful and will make a huge difference to the customers at your website.

Good luck,
Karen

[kiska]

Karen, no,no. I was refering to Hunter's epic above you. I understood what you were saying. Daughter did this as a favor to her brother. I don't know if she's really interested in web design. She's a graphic designer. Thanks
kiska

[DannyRaphael]

Ditto on the no need for a splash screen and empty (until rolled over) menu choices. I, too, like to be able to go anywhere from anywhere vs.

No need to separate BW from color work. My eyes will tell me which is which.

The bio page needs rework content-wise. I realize Kelly is a rookie just getting started and everybody needs to start somewhere, but no need to emphasize that at this point. I'd let the examples speak louder for the expertise at this time than the bio. Something like this, maybe:

"Kelly Moore, a native of Rome, Georgia, graduated from the Portfolio Center of Atlanta with a degree in Commercial Photography. He has worked on marketing and portraiture engagements for high profile New York City clients including MasterCard, Money Magazine, Lane Bryant, Runners World, Brew and the World Trade Center properties."

If nothing else, insert blank lines between paragraphs and rethink the font at the bottom for readability.

Ideally the e-mail should go to Kelly@khmphoto.com. I'm pretty sure you can get that type of address at Yahoo.com (or the like), and have it auto-forwarded to the Earthlink account.

HTH...
~Danny~

[kiska]

Thanks, Danny. Especially for the suggestions on the info page. We didn't want it to sound too 'cheesy', but it did. That part is all mine.I have forwarded your thoughts to the kiddies.

[decaldudecom]

I have been a member of this site for one day now and so far I have gathered more useful information in that amount of time then I have been able to collect from 500 other sites combined.

I would first like to say that I like what Hunter said, it made a lot of sense even for my regular business site and I am going to make the necessary changes within the next week. I did not agree with Hunter 100% but I did like the way that he came across and shared his opinion.

As far as commenting on the site, I like the pictures, and I would like to ask if smugmug was used for the gallery?

As far as the overall feel of the site, other then the ADA part I agree with Hunter.

I just need to fix the mistakes that I have made on my own sites now.