My website. I'm after some feedback.

[jeljones]

Hi guys,

I decided to display my work on my own website. A template for me while I build up my skills.

www.jelphotoretouch.com

Any feedback, comments and suggestions on the look and feel, usability and overall perception would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Joshua.

[TEastman]

You have a great website, with a great portfolio. Everything is nice and clean. Good effects. I'm envious. The one thing that just doesn't work for me is your slogan - "I retouch photographs to a professional standard." B-O-R-I-N-G. Get with a creative-writer type of friend and ask for help re-wording that.

"Professional image manipulations" - or - "Professional retouching with an artist's touch" - for example. Anything that sounds more creative.

Todd

[Veralisa]

I certainly do like the work that you do. Very handsome, effective and skilled. There is, however, one point that disturbed me immediatly upon opening your site.
"Hi my name is Joshua. I retouch photographs...." and this is written over the model's face. To me, it looks like the model's name is Joshua. She's looking right at the viewer as if she were making the statement.

Perhaps, text in another placement? multiple faces? your face?

You are very talented for one so new in their career...best of luck!

[jeljones]

Originally Posted by TEastman

The one thing that just doesn't work for me is your slogan - "I retouch photographs to a professional standard." B-O-R-I-N-G. Get with a creative-writer type of friend and ask for help re-wording that.

"Professional image manipulations" - or - "Professional retouching with an artist's touch" - for example. Anything that sounds more creative.

Todd

Todd, thanks. I agree completely. When concentrating so much to design an appealing site you forget to review things like that.

I'll look at changing it.

[jeljones]

Originally Posted by Veralisa

I certainly do like the work that you do. Very handsome, effective and skilled. There is, however, one point that disturbed me immediatly upon opening your site.
"Hi my name is Joshua. I retouch photographs...." and this is written over the model's face. To me, it looks like the model's name is Joshua. She's looking right at the viewer as if she were making the statement.

Perhaps, text in another placement? multiple faces? your face?

You are very talented for one so new in their career...best of luck!

I have had people mention that it feels like the model is ME. I think now that I'm going to change the text I might just leave my name out of it. That model is much prettier than I am so I wont be putting my face on the front page. At first I had the front page with out an image and just that text. I felt that it needed something, so I put that image behind it.

Thank you for your kind words

[plugsnpixels]

In addition to the above comments, the first thing to strike me was the need to pop the levels on the model's face just a bit (she seems a bit dark overall on a Mac monitor; I think PCs will display it even darker [?]), without blowing out the arm. This will hold true with any other photo you choose.

Next, make sure your slogan doesn't blend into the background photo. The last half of "photographs" is being lost in the model's cheek. Try an Outer Glow, thin stroke or drop shadow. OR, move the slogan to the empty white space (upper right, to the right of your logo) and don't worry about tonal conflicts.

Next, DO NOT have a link to the Home page on the Home page! That's a circular link loop, and I see that often. Makes no sense. Maybe you're using a template and it's hard to edit the standing menu?

What's wrong with that model on the About page? (Just kidding!) Maybe use a photo of yourself at your workstation, shot from above and behind while looking up (showing the Wacom and huge monitor, yes?).

Services page: The light gray, same-size as the copy header font is not working for me. The headers should stand out more than the copy. At the very least, enlarge the header font size and indent/maybe bullet each service underneath.

I like your Portfolio gallery behavior (no overuse of Flash, easy to navigate, efficient placement of the before/after). Fill in that last gray section with another example, or delete it. Is there room for this gallery to grow, or are you stuck with whatever fits on this page?

Contact page: Email and URL should be clickable. I'm not going to type them in ;-). If you wish to retain that font style, use image maps to make those areas clickable.

Hope that helps!

[jeljones]

plugsandpixels. Thank you very much for the detailed crit. Very muchly appreciated.

Home page link: I didn't code the site, just put it together in Photoshop. I'll ask for that link to be removed.

Slogan: I'm looking at changing that.

Services page: You're right about the grey.

Portfolio: As before mentioned, I didn't code the site so I'm not really sure what my friend can do as my portfolio grows. We have discussed this though. I plan on filling out the last grey section very soon.

Contact page: I'll ask about making those addresses clickable.

Regards,

Joshua.

[plugsnpixels]

No worries, mate! ;-)

Since you're designing your site in PS already, have a look at SiteGrinder. It's a plug-in that generates entire working websites directly out of PS, no external friends needed!

A number of other web design packages (aside from the ubiquitous Dreamweaver) can also be considered if you choose to maintain your site yourself (which is the most empowering approach).

It seems your gray fonts are actual text and not images, in which case be sure they will be displayed properly cross-platform (looks OK on Mac, not sure about Windows). In those cases where you are using rendered text, make sure alt tags are in place so search engines can extract the information (I think you're good in this case).

[RLPA]

Nice site. Work on the slogan though.

[myrestor]

A suggestion I'd make on the contact us page is to remove your email address and replace it with a contact us form instead.

The reason I'd recommend doing that is even though you put your information in a picture, (kudos for that) some bots are able to still nab it from a picture(by recognizing that an element of a picture is the same shape as a letter or number), unless its seriously distorted(like those captcha boxes you see) also you have it entered into an alt tag as text which is also seen by bots. basically it will be found by web crawler bots by some annoying ad agency and will be sold to other companies and you'll be seeing more spam in no time. Do a quick search for "php contact form" or better yet use the one I found when looking for one that might work for ya.

http://www.phpeasystep.com/phptu/8.html

basically the first bit of code you'll put in your pagewhere you have your bcard.jpg image. then create a blank php document named "send_contact" and paste the second bit of code provided to you in there. This is by far the best php contact us form tutorial I've seen yet shouldn't take even 5 minutes.

Very nice example of a Jquery site no flash used here.
May your customers flock to you like bees to honey.

[plugsnpixels]

Thanks for that advice, myrestor. Please edit your link to remove the extra "http://" at the beginning.

[myrestor]

Edit complete. Thanks for catching that plugsnpixels.

[plugsnpixels]

Happens to all of us ;-).

[jeljones]

myrestor. Thanks for your feedback and extensive advise. I'll speak to my buddy and see what he thinks. Oh by the way. I can still see an extra http:// on your link.

[myrestor]

woops i edited the one in the code part of the link but not in the text that we can see in the post. That's fixed now sorry about that.

[jeljones]

Site is updated. New frontpage, new portfolio content and a social media icons. Feel better about it now.

[plugsnpixels]

The front page's rollover images are cool, though I wasn't sure what was going on at first. Show starts, ends quickly, which is good. The rest of the site is still awaiting work?

[jeljones]

Contemplating a re-design somewhere down the track. Happy with it for now though.

[plugsnpixels]

It works, of course. And every website can be improved with a redesign, that is true!