Photography website feedback

[lindsayanng 4]

Looking for some feedback on the overall look of the website.. The main page does NOT land on the oscommerce section.. you must click on PRINT SHOP to get there.. But i would like to get feedback on the site as a whole..

 

The thing that stands out to me at the moment is the main page of the "print shop" I would like to re-layout the graphic from a strip of photos to something that fits the style more.

 

THanks.

 

Visit My Website

[burtonsnow8 1]

on the main page of your store, the top banner says all your pictures are a click away, making me think I could click each of those banners to get to the desired location.

 

 

Maybe place the links at the bottom of your page under the osCommerce footer bar with the date on it.

 

If there is no shipping and returns page remove the link from the bottom. Also, not sure if you had wanted it to be visible or not, but I would suggest making your contact information on the contact page more noticeable.

 

 

*edit*

 

just noticed a couple other issues. There is no way to get to the "my account" page to view past orders etc. Also, the links to the photographers pages (lindsay, mike, matt) doesn't work.

[burtonsnow8 1]

errr, forget the part about the my account, but maybe make it more visible so its in more than just that drop down menu.

[lindsayanng 4]

I'm confused about what you are saying about the "my account" page.. Did you not think to look in the "print shop" drop down?

 

about the "about us" the little red word BIO is the link to the pages.. but i will make the picture clickable too.

 

the main page picture is going to be replaced with something else. I was going to image map it.. but couldnt REALLY figure out where to map it to..

[burtonsnow8 1]

Yea my mistake on the my accounts part, but I would suggest making it somewhere visible where the user wont have to scroll over the print shop in order to get to their account. Being an experienced user, it took me some time to figure where it was and so it made me think the frustration an inexperienced user may go through.

 

For the bio part, it works fine when you use the about us link at the top, but at the bottom of the page where you have all the links the about us and individual bio pages do not work. i'm talking about these:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*edit*

 

It also seems like a couple of the other links at the bottom are not working. I would suggest going through them all to make sure they go to viable pages. If not it can really hurt your search engine rankings.

[lindsayanng 4]

thank you for pointing that out!! I forgot that i reformatted the file struction AFTER i made those links, so they do definitely need to be updated.. I will fix that ASAP

[kbking 0]

Hi

 

I think your site looks very good! I've been visiting it a number of times (since you're a diligent poster). One thing that I've noticed is that it is loading rather slow. Do you share an account, or is it a dedicated server?

 

I'm also curious about your blog, how do you have it set up?

 

And another thing aside, you seem to be very spontaneous when it comes to ask various types of questions, but as far as I have seen, not that thorough when it comes to monitor the answers given. May I suggest a somewhat restrained approach here!

[burtonsnow8 1]

No worries, i've done the exact same thing with my site lol :)

 

As of now the only suggestion I have is to create a site map page. Search engines love it and it will take away from that blob of links at the bottom (while still keeping the important ones there, like home, about us, conditions, contact us, etc).

[lindsayanng 4]

kbking.. I dont know about you are talking about "restrain" I ask questions and sometimes answer them myself before I get online.. but whats the harm in that.. i come back to tell people what the answer was if i can.. I'm not really looking to "change the way I post" thanks..

 

As for the site loading slow.. I'm not entirely sure why.. Are you not in US? The site has never had an issue except ONCE when the server had a hickup months ago.

 

The plan is the DEFINITELY great a site map. I had started but never got to finish as the design took a completely different turn. Things like the sitemap and some other SEO addons are next now that the design is there

[burtonsnow8 1]

Site seems to be loading fine for me as well.

 

 

 

Not sure if you purposely did it, but the first wedding photos is unblocked so anyone can gain access while the others are locked.

 

I'll do another quick browse through later and see if there is anything else, but as of now SEO looks like you next big project to tackle after all the links are in place.

[lindsayanng 4]

they actually requested that it wasnt password protected. Apparently not everyone on the groom's side of the family knows the bride's first name :o

[kbking 0]

kbking.. I dont know about you are talking about "restrain" I ask questions and sometimes answer them myself before I get online.. but whats the harm in that.. i come back to tell people what the answer was if i can.. I'm not really looking to "change the way I post" thanks..

 

As for the site loading slow.. I'm not entirely sure why.. Are you not in US? The site has never had an issue except ONCE when the server had a hickup months ago.

 

The plan is the DEFINITELY great a site map. I had started but never got to finish as the design took a completely different turn. Things like the sitemap and some other SEO addons are next now that the design is there

 

Thanks for your quick response! And no, my server is in Europe.

 

I can't see your response to my question about your blog implementation! How have you accomplished that? Is it some contribution add-on from the oscommerce download page, or do you call an entirely different and "independent" application, maybe in an iframe?? If so, have you considered the side effects SEO-wise?

 

I've seen that you have asked questions about ways to implement a blog, apparently you've found a way to do that and now I'm interested in the How-To:s!

 

You know, I'm also found of writing (as you seems to be) and although I have the Article Manager implemented I'd also like to have a blog to be able to entirely let loose my pen...

[lindsayanng 4]

ohh sorry.. I was a little frazzle minded when responding.

 

The blog is simply a wordpress blog.. Plain and simple. I created a folder called BLOG and have a sub domain called blog.bscphoto.com or you can just go to bscphoto.com/blog

 

Then, if you have a good host, you can go log in and do a quick ONE CLICK INSTALL of wordpress and design it the way you want it.. OR you can use a premade template. Right now as you can tell.. the blog is not really cohesive with the main side of the websites design. I dont really see this as a huge issue right now because the reason for a our blog is not really to get people to hire us.. but if your blog was based soly on what you sell.. you will probably want a blog that matches the rest of the site.. But if you just want content management thats separate from your "article manager" then just use wordpress.. its SUPER easy to install AND addons are added with a click of the button

[kbking 0]

Yes I like wordpress too! Thanks for your answer!

[lindsayanng 4]

Im confused.. if you are familiar with wordpress.. i would have assumed you would right off know how the blog was done.

[BlastwireVP 0]

site layout looks great, nice pics

 

however WAY too much white.

needs some sort of color for the background, perhaps a light gray, or light/pale blue-gray, would still fit your color scheme and be much more pleasant to look at.

 

white and bright colors tend to hurt a lot of peoples eyes (I am one) which will have them leaving your site sooner that they would if the colors were not as bright.

[tinkerbell46325 0]

site layout looks great, nice pics

 

however WAY too much white.

needs some sort of color for the background, perhaps a light gray, or light/pale blue-gray, would still fit your color scheme and be much more pleasant to look at.

 

white and bright colors tend to hurt a lot of peoples eyes (I am one) which will have them leaving your site sooner that they would if the colors were not as bright.

white background looks good, keep it that way!

[BlastwireVP 0]

yes it does look good,

 

I was merely pointing out that a lot of people are light sensitive and looking at too much white (or bright colors) hurts their eyes and gives them a headache.

more neutral colors are more pleasing to the eye.

 

to each his own, there is nothing wrong with a majority white page, just a minor downfall that it WILL turn people away like me who cannot look at a lot of white for more than a few seconds without getting an eye ache or headache. If your ok with turning away potential customers due to blinding them, then by all means use white, personally I move on quickly and don't look back.

[lindsayanng 4]

my website isnt really for pulling in potential web customers.. MOST of them are already customers and its just there to show them their pictures.. SOME of our clients come from the web, but not once have we had someone say it was hard for them to look at the website.

 

I find that people have a MUCH MUCH harder time reading white text on a black background. I dont really plan on changing the white. If there was a lot of text to read then i probably would make it something more mute like a grey..but since people are focusing on images, they will not be looking as closely and I can't imagine it would really drive people away.. I mean, if i could create a website that literally made EVERYONE happy.. well, i would be a genius and would win the web genius prize of the millenium..

 

as far as the design goes.. did anyone here find it difficult to follow? I have made some MINIMAL changes.. and i keep forgetting to move the links BELOW the black bar. i am going to do that now

[BlastwireVP 0]

as far as the design goes.. did anyone here find it difficult to follow?

 

no. actually as I said above I really like the layout.

[playcraft 0]

As for the site loading slow.. I'm not entirely sure why.. Are you not in US? The site has never had an issue except ONCE when the server had a hickup months ago.

I noticed your site is loading slow mainly because of the size of your images. Also, on your product pages I noticed you have the "add to cart" image containing some red. Although, it does not look too bad you might consider incorporating red into your logo.

Below I have pasted the results of a speed test for your website courteous of http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ .

 

Diagnosis

Global Statistics

Total HTTP Requests: 14

Total Size: 264861 bytes

Object Size Totals

Object type Size (bytes) Download @ 56K (seconds) Download @ T1 (seconds)

HTML: 6588 1.51 0.23

HTML Images: 171305 34.74 1.51

CSS Images: 702 0.74 0.60

Total Images: 172007 35.48 2.11

java script: 74916 15.33 0.80

CSS: 11350 3.26 1.06

Multimedia: 0 0.00 0.00

Other: 0 0.00 0.00

External Objects

External Object QTY

Total HTML: 1

Total HTML Images: 3

Total CSS Images: 3

Total Images: 6

Total Scripts: 2

Total CSS imports: 5

Total Frames: 0

Total Iframes: 0

Download Times*

Connection Rate Download Time

14.4K 208.08 seconds

28.8K 105.44 seconds

33.6K 90.78 seconds

56K 55.59 seconds

ISDN 128K 18.97 seconds

T1 1.44Mbps 4.20 seconds

 

*Note that these download times are based on the full connection rate for ISDN and T1 connections. Modem connections (56Kbps or less) are corrected by a packet loss factor of 0.7. All download times include delays due to round-trip latency with an average of 0.2 seconds per object. With 14 total objects for this page, that computes to a total lag time due to latency of 2.8 seconds. Note also that this download time calculation does not take into account delays due to XHTML parsing and rendering.

Page Objects

QTY SIZE# TYPE URL COMMENTS

1 6588 HTML http://bscphoto.com Header size = 336 bytes

Up to 4415 bytes could have been saved through compression.

View a formatted version of this HTML file

1 Not found CSS bscphoto.com ... /..catalog/stylesheet.css Header size = 232 bytes

Up to 43 bytes could have been saved through compression.

View a formatted version of this CSS file

1 Not found CSS IMG http://bscphoto.com/css/loader.gif Header size = 232 bytes

1 148719 IMG http://bscphoto.com/mainpage.jpg Header size = 330 bytes

Missing width attribute.

Missing height attribute.

1 55026 SCRIPT http://bscphoto.com/js/jquery-1.3.min.js Header size = 342 bytes

Up to 36028 bytes could have been saved through compression.

1 19890 SCRIPT http://bscphoto.com/js/jquery.gallerific.js Header size = 342 bytes

Up to 14929 bytes could have been saved through compression.

1 19655 IMG http://bscphoto.com/bsc_logo.jpg Header size = 328 bytes

Missing width attribute.

Missing height attribute.

1 5255 CSS http://bscphoto.com/css/testimonials.css Header size = 325 bytes

Up to 4138 bytes could have been saved through compression.

View a formatted version of this CSS file

1 2931 IMG http://bscphoto.com/bscphoto_copyright.jpg Header size = 326 bytes

Missing width attribute.

Missing height attribute.

1 2777 CSS http://bscphoto.com/css/galleriffic.css Header size = 324 bytes

Up to 1838 bytes could have been saved through compression.

View a formatted version of this CSS file

1 1968 CSS http://bscphoto.com/css/content.css Header size = 324 bytes

Up to 1380 bytes could have been saved through compression.

View a formatted version of this CSS file

1 1350 CSS http://bscphoto.com/css/nav.css Header size = 324 bytes

Up to 866 bytes could have been saved through compression.

View a formatted version of this CSS file

4 359 CSS IMG http://bscphoto.com/divider.gif Header size = 324 bytes

1 343 CSS IMG http://bscphoto.com/underline.gif Header size = 324 bytes

14 ^ 264861* Total (^unique objects)

 

# This site is not using HTTP compression, otherwise called content encoding using gzip. Consider compressing your textual content (XHTML, JavaScript, etc.) with mod_gzip or similar products.

 

* CSS alternate stylesheets may be referenced in the HTML but are not actually downloaded until they are needed and are therefore not included in the total page size.

Analysis and Recommendations

 

* TOTAL_HTML - Congratulations, the total number of HTML files on this page (including the main HTML file) is 1 which most browsers can multithread. Minimizing HTTP requests is key for web site optimization. Y

* TOTAL_OBJECTS - Caution. You have 14 total objects on this page. From 12 to 20 objects per page, the latency due to object overhead makes up from 75% to 80% of the delay of the average web page. See Figure II-3: Relative distribution of latency components showing that object overhead dominates web page latency in Website Optimization Secrets for more details. Consider reducing, eliminating, and combining external objects (graphics, CSS, JavaScript, iFrames and XHTML) to reduce the total number of objects, and thus separate HTTP requests. Consider using CSS sprites to help consolidate decorative images.

* TOTAL_IMAGES - Congratulations, the total number of images on this page is 6 . Most browsers can send multiple requests, which can speed display of multiple images.

* TOTAL_CSS - Caution. The total number of external CSS files on this page is 5 , consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Because external CSS files must be in the HEAD of your HTML document, they must load first before any BODY content displays. Although they are cached upon subsequent requests, CSS files slow down the initial display of your page. Combine, refine, and optimize your external CSS files. Ideally you should have one (or even embed CSS for high-traffic pages) on your pages. You can optimize CSS files using shorthand properties, grouping, and then minify and GZIP compress them to reduce their footprint. Remember to place CSS files in the HEAD and JavaScript files at the end of the BODY to enable progressive display.

* TOTAL_SIZE - Warning! The total size of this page is 264861 bytes, which will load in 55.59 seconds on a 56Kbps modem. Consider reducing total page size to less than 100K to achieve sub 20 second response times on 56K connections. Pages over 100K exceed most attention thresholds at 56Kbps, even with feedback. Consider optimizing your site with Website Optimization Secrets, Speed Up Your Site or contacting us about our optimization services.

* TOTAL_SCRIPT - Congratulations, the total number of external script files on this page is 2 . External scripts are less reliably cached than CSS files so consider combining scripts into one to minimize HTTP requests, or even embedding them into high-traffic pages. Placing external JavaScript files at the bottom of your BODY, and CSS files in the HEAD enables progressive display in XHTML web pages.

* HTML_SIZE - Congratulations, the total size of this HTML file is 6588 bytes, which less than 50K. Assuming that you specify the HEIGHT and WIDTH of your images, this size allows your HTML to display content in under 10 seconds, the average time users are willing to wait for a page to display without feedback.

* IMAGES_SIZE - Warning! The total size of your images is 172007 bytes, which is over 100K. Consider switch graphic formats to achive smaller file sizes (from JPEG to PNG for example). Finally, substitute CSS techniques for graphics techniques to create colored borders, backgrounds, and spacing.

* SCRIPT_SIZE - Warning! The total size of external your scripts is 74916 bytes, which is over 20K. Consider optimizing your JavaScript for size, combining them, and using HTTP compression where appropriate for any scripts placed in the HEAD of your documents. You can substitute CSS menus for JavaScript-based menus to minimize or even eliminate the use of JavaScript.

* CSS_SIZE - Caution. The total size of your external CSS is 11350 bytes, which is above 8K and less than 20K. For external files, ideally keep them less than 1160 bytes to fit within one higher-speed TCP-IP packet (or an approximate multiple thereof). Consider optimizing your CSS and eliminating features to reduce this to a more reasonable size.

* MULTIM_SIZE - Congratulations, the total size of all your external multimedia files is 0 bytes, which is less than 10K.

[lindsayanng 4]

Thanks for this.. I know that the site is VERY graphic intensive, but the thing is.. its a photography website, and although at a lower resolution, these pictures look great, we found out that people were using their browsers to zoom and look at our pictures.

 

So we will not lower the resolution and size of the pictures in any way, but I will definitely take another look at any header images and non photographic images to see if i can shave some off..

[gaaalmp 1]

An FYI - I had an issue browsing your left menu in ie 8. A lot of people use IE (fortunately or unfortunately) depending on your view... FF works fine.

[lindsayanng 4]

what was the issue exactly??? Telling me there is an issue without describing it does not help too much.> I have checked my website on browser shots and it all seems to display just fine, but it doesnt check functionlality, but i have only MAC at home.. So more details are greatly appreciated

[gaaalmp 1]

sorry my bad... i posted it 1am my time... when you hover over the left column for example business and industry a fly out menu appears to the right - for example corporate headshots -> potter ***etc

you can't actually browse over the fly out menu corporate headshots -> potter. It disppears before you can get to it... tried ie6 and same thing it disappears too quickly before you can get to it. I tried google crome, opera, safari and FF and they all worked. It's just IE .

 

Rgds

George