New Wedding Photography Website Critique Please

<p>We are upgrading our website and have settled on a new design. Please review and make any suggestions for improvement. All comments and suggestions will be appreciated.</p>

<p><a href="http://neace11625.c3.cmdwebsites.com/">http://neace11625.c3.cmdwebsites.com/</a><br /><br /></p>

<p>Your pictures seem to have a lot of facial details as in sharpness. I personally feel that the fourth picture, the black and white with the bride by the window should be the very first image. Try to makes the faces softer and use more images of 'better looking' couples. Of course your client base is likely to include as many good-looking as not so good-looking couples, but when presenting a website, pretty faces are winners for me!</p>

<p>This may just be a personal thing but get rid of the music!! It stresses me out early in the morning :) I actually booked a couple recently that was so excited because my website was the first one they had been too that didn't blast music in their ears. Plus songs like that are copyrighted and one shouldn't use them anyway!</p>

<p>A # 1 first thing you MUST DO is get rid of that music. <br /> The galleries come up kinda slow for me and I have a fast connection, and I don't find the interface very intuitive. That would bother me as a potential client. Your images are great though. Kudos on that.</p>

<p>You don't seem to indicate anywhere as to where you are located, and the areas you cover. That should be in there somewhere, and make it fairly obvious.</p>

 

<p>Since you asked, here are my recommendations. I apologize in advance as I tend provide very direct responses when asked for site feedback. I hope this does not offend you:<br /> - Use a URL that is easy to remember and makes sense. Not sure if the URL you provided was only for reviewing the site, or if this is the actual URL<br /> - Kill the music. It is just an unnecessary distraction<br /> - Speed up the site. It is taking way too long to open a page and you are going to lose potential customers who will not have the patience. It should not take 5 seconds for the contact page to fully display (it should occur instantly). It is also very painful reviewing your gallery because of the slowness<br /> - Change the menu item from "Contact page" to "Contact us". Include on the contact screen your location so people know that you are a real company, and not just someone working out of their garage (at least include the city and state)<br /> - Since this site is done entirely in flash, you have no SEO keywords. This is very bad as it makes it impossible for you to show up in any search results. I recommend making this a priority - don't undervalue it!<br /> - On the testimonial page, it needs to be redesigned as it is impossible to tell one testimonial from another. At a minimum, put a horizontal rule between testimonials<br /> - Have the logo link to your home page<br /> - What is with the weird copyright notice. First, this is just an unnecessary distraction. Second, I don't believe that requiring the user to click on a copyright icon is going to protect you if you are ever pressed. Kill it and instead put a standard copyright notice in the footer<br /> - I clicked on Proofing but nothing happens - what is supposed to be here?</p>

<p>Wish you the best.</p>

<p>EDIT 11:53am - fixed typo<br /><br /></p>

<p>Thanks for the responses so far they have been very helpful and I've actually already made a few changes as a result of your feedback.</p>

<p>The URL is just a test site and not the actual URL. I will contact the hosting company and find out why this is taking so long to upload. I'm hoping it is because it's a test site.</p>

<p>As to the SEO, there will be a splash page with the option of going HTML vs the Flash site. Will that help?</p>

<p>Normally splash pages do not make for a good user experience. Every study has proven this. You will get a lot of drop-offs at the splash page. Since since the site is built in Flash (bad choice), not sure how much choice you have right now. Flash is good, as long as it sits within a HTML page, so that you can have the proper tags. </p>

<p>The "about us" has no information about you........... and the studio is named after Inna. I also really dislike the music, it's very ethnic and unless you're trying to appeal specifically to that ethnic crowd, I would suggest changing it or dropping it altogether. The photography appears pretty OK but the B&W conversions need some work/improvement.</p>

<p>Yep, kill the music I missed the first x images on the home page looking for the button to turn it off</p>

<p>I found the flash to be very slow to load. Not sure if it was my machine but think at that speed I'd just give up after waiting for first two or three images.<br>

Over all I think it looks well though.<br>

Good luck,<br>

Dee</p>