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Website critique (non-sign biz)

Grafix USA

Grafix USA

New Member
My other life is that of a photographer. I wanted some additional input from non-photographers on my photography web site.

www.DavidBailey.com

The biggest conflict I am having is whether the music should stay or go. I generally don't like music on a site, but this beat matches the content. (And, yes I have licensed the music.)

The only gallery I have active right now is "Publications", the rest are blank for now.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks!

David
 
S

scarface

Guest
On the music, i would take it off and have it to where the viewer can choose to have it or not. Then have it fade in nicely.

I found when i went to it, i jumped a little because my volume was up loud and this could be a turn off for others
 
Dan Antonelli

Dan Antonelli

New Member
I assume SEO isn't important for you? I would think that it should be - but since site is in flash - I'm thinking perhaps it wasn't -

At first, I didnt see any navigation because I was viewing it on my laptop and didnt have the window opened all the way down---

Very nice photography...

I thought the bouncing in and out of different sites (blog, other site) to be a little awkward-- but not sure how else you'd accomplish that anyway--
 
The Vector Doctor

The Vector Doctor

Chief Bezier Manipulator
No music. Often people are already listening to music on their machine.

As Dan mentioned, relocate the nav bar. Not everyone has their web browser full screen so you may miss it since the entire page is covered by the photo. I also noticed a box with text that briefly shows itself (drops down) on each photo but it is so fast I cannot read them. I also saw a bad image (motorcycle) with weird pixels running down the middle
 
Joe Diaz

Joe Diaz

New Member
omgsideburns said:
looks nice, kill the music.. you can keep it on there but don't auto start it..
Click to expand...

That is actually not a bad Idea. If you need music to complete the feel and experience you are trying to give the viewers, at least give them the option to turn it on if they want to.

Also there are screen resize scripts and methods that you can use in flash that will make sure the site looks good no matter what size the user's browser window is. It will make sure the navigation is always visible and located at the bottom of the screen with no distortion.
 
5

54warrior

New Member
Its very appealing to my eyes, however the initial load time was very long-even on super fast connection here at work. Once in the site, it looked good, however it was all still kinda slow moving between images in the gallery.

I like it overall, but not the slowness.
 
N2Harpz

N2Harpz

New Member
Basically I am in agreement with everyone else. The music fits nice, but I always click it off on web sites the first chance I get. It came in a little large on my screen. Making it hard to navigate.
The links on the David Bailey page were hard to read because they were blue against black.
I think you have a great start.

PS ... I tried to get that same domain a few years back. You beat me to it .... Good Job... LOL
 
Grafix USA

Grafix USA

New Member
Thanks everyone! I have removed the music as this tends to be the majority opinion here as well as what others have said. Its all about the visitor, not what I like.

As far as SEO every page has SEO elements as well as there is a mirrored html site with all the SEO elements and I have a lot of pages linking to my sight. But you are right, most of the people that visit my site are visiting it directly to see my work, not finding me in a search engine.

I have tested the nav bar in all size screens and I get it to scale just fine no matte the screen size. What browser are you having an issue with it scaling?

Thanks again for the comments and feedback. I do appreciate everyone's input!
 
HotWraps

HotWraps

New Member
The full screen photos and how they scaled when I resized my browser was impressive. Looked good.

I see your meta tags and keywords in the body:

meta content="David Bailey. International award winning freelance contract photographer. Motorsports, sports, event, photojournalism, editorial and commercial photography. Dallas, Texas. San Francisco, California." name="description"/
meta content="david bailey, photographer, photography, dallas, fort worth, san francisco, sports, motorsports, event, commercial, photojournalism, editorial, freelance, contract, racing, mx, motocross" name="keywords"/

Those will help, but I must echo Dan's comments above, this site won't place well in search engines without more body text that google can crawl through.

However, if that is not the main intent, the site looks good. I just wish all the content was contained on this site without going to different sites.

Also, add a title tag to name the site.
 
Last edited:
Grafix USA

Grafix USA

New Member
Thanks again everyone. I have nixed the music and added a splash page (that has taken it to #1 on Google) before it goes to the flash pages. I'm still fine tuning some elements but all in all it has the final look and feel.

Thanks!

Merry Christmas to all!
 
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