Constructive Criticism

<p>Hello, I just finished building my wife's website. She is a what I consider a professional photographer. I am looking for constructive criticism on the design of the site, and any ways of making it better.<br>

<a href="http://www.joyludwigphotography.com">http://www.joyludwigphotography.com</a><br>

Matthew</p>

<p>I like the layout of the "Books." However, the pages took a while to load for me, and I usually don't have that problem. Also, the front page seems like it could use something more; there was a lot a empty space, with nothing on the right side of the page. You may want to consider placing a photo on the "About" and "Booking" pages; they seemed a little blank also. I did like the photography. JR</p>

<p>I like the "front page" (but I lean more towards the minimalist end of the aesthetic spectrum). Most importantly to me, it loads instantly. The "Books" are nice, but the Flash viewer loads a bit slowly (maybe 5 seconds for the "medium" resolution). That's a bit long, but not horrible. The photos are nice.</p>

<p>One minor point, I couldn't find a way to get back to the home-page from the books or other sub-pages. It doesn't look like it's critical to navigation, but it is a bit confusing.</p>

<p>One quick question: why is the text in English? I would have thought your clients would all be native German speakers (or is there some fancy auto-select based on IP address?).</p>

<p>I like the minimalist appearance of the site and would also suggest there be navigation back to the Home page. I chose high resolution to view the photos which took 20 seconds to open a Book with my DSL connection. Flash doesn't seem to be adding anything to the site that I'm aware of, and is not search-engine friendly. There is a faster way to present the photos, even using a commercial Flash slideshow program that would begin showing individual images before they are all downloaded, as opposed to waiting for what is now one very large image in each Book. And you could then likely eliminate the resolution choices.</p>

<p>Overall a nice clean site with very nice photography.</p>

<p>I like the look of the site and the 'book' thing with the pictures arranged horizontally is quite unique. I like it. I also like the images, which helps ;-)</p>

<p>When I first visited the front page I thought you had the images arranged by resolution - one area with high res images, one with medium res images, and one where you forgot what resolution they are, but different images in all three areas. I didn't like that at all, and I still don't like that the site confused me in that way. The more I think about it, I don't really like the whole choice of resolution business - it's too technical.</p>

<p>I honestly found the "resolution" selection (high / medium / unsure) on the front page to be unnecessary. If you have an automatic detection system and optimized sites set up, just go with that. The site should be as easy as possible for anyone to use. Photography was good.</p>

<p>Thank you all very much for your feedback! You have helped me to make the site better and I value every comment!</p>

<p>The resolution appears to be the same on Medium and High anyway, it's not clear what that's about.</p>

<p>It is clean, it is a bit slower to load than some sites but not painfully slow.</p>