www.outlawphotography.net

[Outlaw]

Been a long road, but the the new design for my site is now up! Went live last night, and so far, the response from visitors has been good.

I would love to get the impressions of my fellow TPF'ers, you guys always rock with great advice and ideas. I'm an open door for critiques, suggestions, ideas, loves and hates. Your honest thoughts and your time are greatly appreciated. Many thanks!

[rusty_tripod]

It is a decent site. Easy to navigate. I like the set up. Good luck.

Rusty Tripod

[jamiewallace]

Your work is great. Your site doesn't show it off that well though. It is very busy and it's difficult for my eye to know where to go.

Take the first page, visually the most dominant thing is an ad encouraging booking. Next is something encouraging the view to look at one specific on line album. Both of these things overwhelm any thing else on the page, including the text and navigation.

It took me until the 4th page on your site (Home > Photos > Portfolio > Album) to really see your work and decide you were a great photographer. Why are you not showing your beautiful work off on the first page and ever other page?

There's nothing wrong with ads, or pushing people to look at photos of recent events. However, I assume the primary purpose of your site is to get clients to book you. They will do this primarily based on their perception of the quality of your work, not on ads or event photos.

In short, push your photos big and bold from the beginning. That's why people come to your site, and that's what will drive them to book you.

I hope this isn't too harsh. I think your work is good enough that you could drastically improve your sales if you showed it off better.

[Outlaw]

Alton and Jamie, thank you both for your opinions! I really appreciate you taking the time to check it out.

[Slight Clutter]

I like that you place the Prom link front and center on the main page. You are likely to derive a lot of business from that kind of an event, so your decision is probably a savvy one. Also, your "about us" section is very impressive; glad you have it featured at the top of the home page. A small suggestion -- I would think about moving "associations" down below "awards" and "our clients." Additionally, for the sake of parallelism, I would just use "clients" and "history," instead of "our clients" and "company history." Again, very minor changes, and probably something that only I would notice. lol.

The site moves quickly from page to page, it conveys a lot of information, and it has some pretty impressive photos within it. If there is one larger suggestion that I would have, it would be to eliminate some of the redundancy. You have so many avenues for business, you want to be sure your clients get to see them all.

Well done! You should be proud of your work.

[Outlaw]

Thank you, Katya! When you say redundancy, about what part of the site do you mean?

Just want to be clear; thank you for taking a look for me!

[Slight Clutter]

Of course, I apologize for not elaborating. If we take your "online albums," for example -- we see on your home page 1) a link for the discounts, 2) a mosaic of photos that links to the "latest" online albums, and 3) a featured album -- the Bandera HS Prom -- all linking to the "online albums." Then when you click on "Photos" at the top of the home page, we are taken to a page that once again links to the "online albums" first on the top right-hand side of the page and then again at the bottom of the page. I'm just wondering if there might be a way to consolidate a few of these so not to overwhelm the site's visitors.

Please keep in mind, I'm no expert when it comes to websites...just giving a very random opinion.

Overall, though, I really like what you have done. :)

[Outlaw]

Ahhh, I've got'cha now. Thank you again! Duly added to my list of considerations for the next redesign!

[murdog]

Nice to see a well put together site that isn't a flash template. It's fast and navigates well.

[Outlaw]

Thanks Murray! I'm playing around with new ideas as we speak, trying to find a balance between attention to detail and overwhelming maintenance. The existing site takes forever to update every page, again because of the redundancy that Katya mentioned.

We'll see where it ends up... :-) Thank you again!

[Aric C. Hoek]

I love it! Great job!