New website, critique please

[fen]

Hi everyone!

This is my first website and I would like to know your opinion.

http://www.wix.com/fenneke_retouching/work

I would mainly use it to get a junior retouching position. There are not a lot of images in my portfolio but I'm working on that ofcourse

I think the site might be a bit small allthough I've followed the advice of a 'site dimensions' tutorial and made the size 1024 x 768.

I still have to register a domain but I'm not sure to take fennekeelsink.com or fenretouching.com. Suggestions welcome on this as well!

Thanks a lot for having a look at it!!

[John Wheeler]

Hi Fen

Nice work on the photo retouching.

Take all my advise with a big grain of salt because I have never been a hiring manager for image retouchers (though I have been a hiring manager in other fields).

- If you have not done so already, I would buddy up with some working retouchers and ask what it takes to get a job in this business. I suspect having good contacts and networking may be a big deal as with most jobs.

- I don't know if websites are used as part of ones resume or not for retouching. Assuming that to be the case, your website initially looked more like a photographers website and not a retoucher's resume. If using it as part of your resume is the primary focus of the web site, I would put your best foot forward on the home page showing the before and afters up-front without clicking anywhere.

- Other than that, I would just make sure that your website works with a wide variety of browsers and that the technology you are using works on the devices the hiring manager will use (e.g. not all devices will view Flash)

Great work and good skill / good luck.

[fen]

Hi John

Thank you very much for your feedback!

Ofcourse I'm glad you liked my work.

I especially agree on what you said about my site looking more like a photographers site initially. I'm definitely going to change that by putting the portfolio on the homepage somehow.

On your last point: For the moment I'll leave the rollovers in Flash because I haven't got any Dreamweaver skills

Once again thank you and have a great day.


Fen

[Vernon]

Hi, fen!

Overall I also agree with John's observations.

One item I would remark upon is, while the images in your portfolio are viewable and to an extent show the before and after, I would consider presenting either larger images for the sake of really showcasing the details that many may wish to view, or add inset close ups of some of those details (i.e.: a close up view of the eye area, or the freckles on a cheek, etc).

Otherwise, you are definitely on the right path as a retoucher

On a separate note, do you receive much spam through the contact form? I am curious if that is the case when using flash-based forms.
If you do, look into adding ReCaptcha to the form to reduce robot-spam. This might prove useful if you decide to move away from flash-based pages.

[raster]

Nice and clean work. With regards the website I agree with the comments above. I currently don't have an website but I am thinking for a while now to start with wix and see where this takes me. It's interesting for me to see roll-over feature on a wix website. Did I miss something? I didn't know you can do this...

Anyhow, good retouching job. Keep it going.

[fen]

Hi!

Thanks a lot Vernon and Raster for your feedback on my site!

Vernon: You're so right to point out the that I'l need to include a close up of some sort to show the skin texture. I'll try to work this out today.

About the spam, there's none at the moment but thank you for informing me. I hadn't thought of that at all

Raster: Wix is quite easy to work with and I would encourage you to give it a go. You can upload swf files but unfortunately you can't make a gallery out of swf files so you'll have to insert them manually. It's a bit of a handicap that a lot of the features available on wix only work for jpg files. If you need any help, just let me know!!

I would like to add a video on the home page such as this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snv-q...eature=related

Do you think that would be a good idea? I don't know how these videos are created though.

Have a nice weekend



Fen

[Vernon]

Fen, a quick search on the Wix site pointed me to this link on "..adding video to your Wix creations..":

http://support.wix.com/index.php/The...or/Media/Video

[raster]

Hey Fen,

I assumed that you can do the roll-over kind of behaviour by doing that yourself in flash and just uploading the SWF manually into wix site but I wasn't sure. Now is confirmed Now I have to get myself accustomed with flash and try figure out how to do that. Thanks a lot for sharing.

I believe posting video tutorials on your website is a great idea as long as they bring something new compare with what you can find at this moment...or at least show some of your technique/work-flow etc. Hope this helps.

Thanks for posting the link Vernon...very useful.

Cheers

[raster]

As well, you can watch all video tutorials (from get started to promote your website) on wix website, under help section. Hope this helps.

[fen]

Thank you Vernon for the great link!

And thanks for the tip on the help section Raster!

I've changed the home page so it doesn't look like a photographers site as much. I'm not sure about the text on the photos, what do you think??

http://www.wix.com/fenneke_retouching/work

I didn't have time to enlarge the pictures on the portfolio yet so I would just like to hear your opinion on the home page.

Thanks a lot!!! You've helped me a a great deal allready and I'm really gratefull.

[raster]

I think the home page looks better now. Not crazy about the text over the image but maybe it's the easiest way to communicate. One thing though: I notice elements throught out the pages are not consistent and this might make it look sloppy. For instance, the images in your portfolio are not the same size and sometimes they go over other elements. As well, buttons and links are not in the same place in every page.
Hope this helps.

[fen]

Hi Raster!

Thanks for your feedback. You're right, the buttons are all over the place That's so embarrasing!

This must have happened when I was ajusting things on the home page yesterday. I'll correct it right away.