# Website feedback?



## jowensphoto

Is there a forum on here for that? I thought there was, but I can't seem to find what I thought was there...lol

If not, maybe I'll get some response here. Ch,ch, check it out - Jess Owens Photography


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## ShooterJ

Yep! In the Marketplace section of the forum, there's a "Personal & Professional Photography Websites" area.

I did take a look though. Like your site!


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## jwbryson1

Spell check is your friend:  "consistency" not "consistancy."


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## amolitor

Font on the Information Page I find to be maybe a bit much. It's very very very curly! It's pretty good for headings, but if there was a simpler but stylistically similar font for the actual information content, I think that might be a nicer choice. On my browsers, the off-white rectangle the text sits on should be larger. The right hand side text creeps very slightly off the edge, and I think you want a nice generous margin around the text anyways.

Reconsider the smilies on the About Jess page. I think they're a little.. something. Not bad, necessarily. There's a certain breeziness and youth implied, maybe? Regardless, they say something about you and you should consider if that's what you want to say. Also the "xo!" signoff has some of the same flavor.

The Home, Gallery, Information, and About Jess pages are all perfectly nice designs, but they're not as stylistically connected as they could be, I think. Your logo moves around and changes size as I click from page to page. I don't know how important that is, really, but getting them to look more similar to one another would, I feel, create a more polished look to the whole thing.

Adding a blog is always risky, since you gotta update the damn thing! Yours is no exception, the most recent post is Dec 2012, and contains a commitment to blog more  Also, the blog is disconnected from the web site, all the links on it go to someplace else, including to a quite different About Jess page. Also, everyone knows bloggers are dumb and mean.


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## amolitor

Some mod will probably move it to the right place.

That's what we pay them for, isn't it?


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## jowensphoto

amolitor said:


> Font on the Information Page I find to be maybe a bit much. It's very very very curly! It's pretty good for headings, but if there was a simpler but stylistically similar font for the actual information content, I think that might be a nicer choice. On my browsers, the off-white rectangle the text sits on should be larger. The right hand side text creeps very slightly off the edge, and I think you want a nice generous margin around the text anyways.
> 
> Reconsider the smilies on the About Jess page. I think they're a little.. something. Not bad, necessarily. There's a certain breeziness and youth implied, maybe? Regardless, they say something about you and you should consider if that's what you want to say. Also the "xo!" signoff has some of the same flavor.
> 
> The Home, Gallery, Information, and About Jess pages are all perfectly nice designs, but they're not as stylistically connected as they could be, I think. Your logo moves around and changes size as I click from page to page. I don't know how important that is, really, but getting them to look more similar to one another would, I feel, create a more polished look to the whole thing.
> 
> Adding a blog is always risky, since you gotta update the damn thing! Yours is no exception, the most recent post is Dec 2012, and contains a commitment to blog more * Also, the blog is disconnected from the web site, all the links on it go to someplace else, including to a quite different About Jess page*. Also, everyone knows bloggers are dumb and mean.




Thanks you, that's a lot to think about!

I like the "about" type sections. I agree that I could use a bit more refinement - I'm probably (ok, definitely) not aiming at the right market, especially with this section. Any suggestions on rewording, as to hit a "classier" and more mature audience?

The logo doesn't bother me, but the bolded part of your quote... do you mean a completely different page? Like the link is incorrect? Or different as in doesn't mesh?

I'm working on the blog issue at the moment


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## jowensphoto

jwbryson1 said:


> Spell check is your friend:  "consistency" not "consistancy."



Duh!! It did the red line but then it went away for some reason. I'll fix it


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## ronlane

Jess, on the Information page, on my screen the Portraits information goes off the background color, not sure if that was intended or does not do that on other peoples screen.


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## jowensphoto

Amolitor- never mind, I see what you're saying. A different "about" page on the blog. I got rid of it.

Ron- Good to know. I'm still figuring that part out. I'm on a 24" at work, so that could be why it's too wide.


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## jowensphoto

Also, Ron - it's inconvenient and I'd like to fix it so it isn't, but anytime you have that problem on a site try doing ctrl and - at the same time.


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## ronlane

zoom in and out, got ya. I have a zoom slider on my ergo keyboard here, but that shortcut is good to know.

At some of the zoom out ranges, it was all inside the color.


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## CherylL

On the Contact page the header About Jess & Contact overlap.  I would put periods in the phone number.  Maybe add a Contact link in the page headers?  Very nice site and not too busy.  Easy to navigate too.


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## jowensphoto

CherylL said:


> On the Contact page the header About Jess & Contact overlap.  I would put periods in the phone number.  Maybe add a Contact link in the page headers?  Very nice site and not too busy.  Easy to navigate too.



OMG! Not only that, but the contact link doesn't exist anywhere else except the info page!!!


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## jowensphoto

I played with the homepage - how about that heading on every page?


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## jowensphoto

So I just updated the whole site. More CONSISTENCY!


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## amolitor

Gotta run fetch my kid, but it looks really nice, to these eyes.

Information header isn't a link at all any more, though?

Love the postcard look to the contact page!


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## jowensphoto

gosh darn it.

i'll fix that.


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## Big Mike

I don't know if it's just me...but it's loading very slowly.  The header shows up...and then it waits or partially loads the rest of the page.  I'll check again later.


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## OLaA

I think the font used in the navigation menu could be changed to something more simple.  The cursive is a nice touch but using it more sparingly I think would go further.  Plus simple text for navigation just makes sense.  You normally want to use design fonts for well.. the design portion of the site.  Also noticed that on your emblem/crest on the home page the "jo" looks like "ja".  Not sure if this matters to you or not.  These are just small things, and as a whole I really dig your site.  Nice job.


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## jowensphoto

Big Mike said:


> I don't know if it's just me...but it's loading very slowly.  The header shows up...and then it waits or partially loads the rest of the page.  I'll check again later.



Thanks for moving this  It may not be - I need to transfer to another host. GoDaddy is notoriously slow.


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## jowensphoto

amolitor said:


> Gotta run fetch my kid, but it looks really nice, to these eyes.
> 
> Information header isn't a link at all any more, though?
> 
> Love the postcard look to the contact page!




Funny, I didn't notice the postcard look... but got the same response from someone else!


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## Big Mike

jowensphoto said:


> Big Mike said:
> 
> 
> 
> I don't know if it's just me...but it's loading very slowly.  The header shows up...and then it waits or partially loads the rest of the page.  I'll check again later.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for moving this  It may not be - I need to transfer to another host. GoDaddy is notoriously slow.
Click to expand...

Check out Hostgator.com


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## runnah

Image compression is your friend! Do you have photoshop? Make sure to use the "Save for web" utility.


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## Derrel

On the play-through on your main page, the fifth slide in the slideshow has the lace silhouette photo and a hat + pregnant belly photo, paired. I think the hat photo needs to be moved to the left, since the image is "pointing" to the right, and the lace silhouette photo points left. Positioned as they are it looks, well, wrong, as both images point off the page and away from one another. Swapping positions on those will tie those two together harmoniously.


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## runnah

This image for example is 1,381 kb, which is huge for a website. You should be able to get this down much smaller at least 200-300kb. 



This image is 298kb and its hard to tell the difference.


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## sm4him

I'll let the others speak to the design elements.

I've only looked at the "About Jess" section so far, other than the Home page (which, like Big Mike, I had trouble ever getting all the photos to load).  Here are some of the typo/grammar errors I found. I hope they don't sound like nitpicking; it's just what I do for a living, and I believe correct grammar helps lend an air of professionalism to a website.

Under the "Two Important Elements" section, in the section about Love:
What are dough eyes??? I don't mean to sound facetious here, I'm truly not sure I know what you have in mind. I *think* you may mean "doe eyes," that look that a female deer may give its mate, batting its lashes like it's in LOVE.  "Dough" is what you make bread with. 

Also in that section, where you say "even a first time mother embracing her baby-bump...": "first-time" should be hyphenated, baby bump should not. Best rule of thumb is to hyphenate those situations when they are used as an adjective, but not when used as a noun. That's not hard and fast, but it's often true.

In the Nostalgia section, second sentence: You say, "The photos To acheive this, I use a lot..." It looks like you probably just rewrote that and accidentally left "The photos" in.

Last sentence in the 3rd paragraph ends in mid-thought, "to hang on your wall or"...

In the last paragraph, second sentence, you have "I wouldn't be able to do continue doing what I love..."  Again, it looks like you just rewrote that and left the word "do" in there accidentally.
Finally, in the very last sentence, at least on my monitor, it looks like "Check out my                            page" with a huge gap between words. Then I notice some little scribble of something between the last two lines of text, which is the "Contact" link that you mean to have show up in that huge space between words. it may match up well on your monitor, but it's not working well at all on mine.

Again, don't take the nitpicks the wrong way--editing is just what I do, and if I can help out, I will! 

EDIT: Having looked at some more of it, one other thing that really strikes me is I don't see anywhere that says WHERE you are.  That would seem especially important on the Information page and the Contact page--if I'm looking at your Information page and thinking I might hire you for my portraits, it would help to know whether you're remotely close to my area or not.
Also, that little poster image on the Information page, with the black silhouette image that says "The Little Black Book Collection?" These old eyes can't read ANY of that *except* the heading. I can tell there is a lot more text on it, but I have NO idea what it says.


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## runnah

Fun tool...very useful.

Website speed test


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## kathyt

jwbryson1 said:


> Spell check is your friend:  "consistency" not "consistancy."


Remember a long time ago whenn you told me I couldn't spel? I am stil mad about that.


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## Designer

Please take my comments as coming from an old fart.

Personally, I am not a fan of slide-show first pages.  It moves kinda on the slow side if you know what I mean.  Then there are about half a dozen maternity shots, which frankly are boring to me.  So if you're going to do a slide show, make it more eclectic and random in content.  Your style seems to show through, which is probably o.k., but when I go to your gallery, there are precious few new subjects to peruse. 

The lower-case "o" looks like an "a".  I think the best improvement will be to get more subjects up there, and perhaps venture out more in style.  While you may wish to focus primarily on pregnant women and babies, you should get more and varied portraits up.  

I think having a "fine print" line is cute, but change the font color to give more contrast against the background.  

Try for more consistency in font types, as in the "contact" page has a very hard NYTimes font for the boxes, while everything else is script.  I like the script, but your phone number should be written out with the dashes between sets, as are most phone numbers.

I know it's fixable, but for me to change the window size to get the whole page in is a minor hassle that I would rather not have to do.  Any other website automatically fits my window.  

Congratulations on the new website!


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## jowensphoto

Thank you all! I am getting ready to head out so I can't respond to each comment, but I'll be taking everything into account!

Doe eyes... lmao. I'm such a dork.


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## Designer

jowensphoto said:


> I'm such a dork.



No, you're not, you're sweet, and we've offered our comments in the spirit of wanting to help, so I hope you haven't taken anything too hard.


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## jowensphoto

LOL no! I appreciate everything. I'm a picture maker, not a website builder/copy editor/graphic design extraordinaire. I need, and value, all the help I can get.


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## jowensphoto

Aaaaand I've already changed most of what was suggested.

I was trying to look at it from my (gen 1) iPad last night and it kept crashing. Will compressing/saving for web help with this and load times?


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## runnah

jowensphoto said:


> Aaaaand I've already changed most of what was suggested.
> 
> I was trying to look at it from my (gen 1) iPad last night and it kept crashing. Will compressing/saving for web help with this and load times?



Yes, did you look at the speed test I sent you? You had several images that were over a MB. Ipad and other mobile devices don't have huge caches to store tons of data like PC's do so when you throw a bunch of huge files at it there will be crashes.

Also look into a mobile version of your site for extra client reach.


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## runnah

iPhone 4 Simulator - Test iPhone Websites iPhone Web Apps


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## jowensphoto

Thanks, I just wanted to make sure I was understanding  I'll work on that today.

I do have a mobile version included with my domain - but it sucks and I don't really know if there's a way to change much about it. I'll have to research that.


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## runnah

jowensphoto said:


> Thanks, I just wanted to make sure I was understanding  I'll work on that today.
> 
> I do have a mobile version included with my domain - but it sucks and I don't really know if there's a way to change much about it. I'll have to research that.



Well if you haven questions feel free to bounce them off me.


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## sm4him

jowensphoto said:


> Thank you all! I am getting ready to head out so I can't respond to each comment, but I'll be taking everything into account!
> 
> *Doe eyes... lmao. I'm such a dork*.



Lol, nah, not a dork. And hey, don't feel bad--at least it's not like you're claiming to be a professional editor. I once had a boss, who had a journalism degree AND more editorial experience than I had at the time, who put in a memo that a particular issue was a "mute point" instead of a "moot point." She didn't live that down for a very long time.

I also got a letter from an individual that went to ALL the city and county bigwigs, announcing this new program for ending homelessness. Only instead it called it "Program to End Chronic Homeliness." :lmao:


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## ryanwaff

As mentioned before, I find the font used to be a tad too curly... 

The spacing of your logo between your two heading bars is not dead center. There is more space to the right than the left. Also Speaking about space and positioning, on your "About Jess" page the photo credits are overlapping with the image. 

Then Im not sure if its just me, but I think that your heading bars would look better if they were aligned to the center line of your logo.
Here is a mock up to show what i mean:




I also altered your text. You said you want to appeal to a more "classier" market. To do that, I would lose the smiley faces first off, they simply just dont portray professionalism that your 'classy' market is looking for. I changed it from a first person perspective to a third person. I said that you may want to include a personal note, something along the lines of this: Bottle Bell Photography | About

Also, justifying your text makes for a much cleaner look. (note the type face has changed from what you originally had in the body of text, because I didn't have the fonts that you used)


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## GerryDavid

runnah said:


> jowensphoto said:
> 
> 
> 
> Aaaaand I've already changed most of what was suggested.
> 
> I was trying to look at it from my (gen 1) iPad last night and it kept crashing. Will compressing/saving for web help with this and load times?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, did you look at the speed test I sent you? You had several images that were over a MB. Ipad and other mobile devices don't have huge caches to store tons of data like PC's do so when you throw a bunch of huge files at it there will be crashes.
> 
> Also look into a mobile version of your site for extra client reach.
Click to expand...


How do you do a mobile version?  How does the phone know to load that instead of the regular page?  Is there a standard sub folder to put it into or something?


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## jowensphoto

GerryDavid said:


> runnah said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> jowensphoto said:
> 
> 
> 
> Aaaaand I've already changed most of what was suggested.
> 
> I was trying to look at it from my (gen 1) iPad last night and it kept crashing. Will compressing/saving for web help with this and load times?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, did you look at the speed test I sent you? You had several images that were over a MB. Ipad and other mobile devices don't have huge caches to store tons of data like PC's do so when you throw a bunch of huge files at it there will be crashes.
> 
> Also look into a mobile version of your site for extra client reach.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> How do you do a mobile version?  How does the phone know to load that instead of the regular page?  Is there a standard sub folder to put it into or something?
Click to expand...



Not sure how GoDaddy does it, but there are options on each element (line, button, text, image, etc) that I can check/uncheck to either show or hide the element on the mobile page.


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## The_Traveler

I think the slide show is sort of awkward


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## jowensphoto

The_Traveler said:


> I think the slide show is sort of awkward



Did you just check it out, Lew? I think that was one area I should have stuck to my intuition rather than suggestions. I don't like having the "variety" that it does now.


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## The_Traveler

It varies in style so drastically that it gives a funny impression.
There are a couple of pictures I would certainly remove and a couple I'd upgrade for sure.


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## jowensphoto

The_Traveler said:


> It varies in style so drastically that it gives a funny impression.
> There are a couple of pictures I would certainly remove and a couple I'd upgrade for sure.



Thanks  I changed it back to what I like and what I think represents me best; the photos I want people to see first. I ordered them in a way that makes sense to me - adults/engagements, maternity, babies and kids.

I think I know what you mean by upgrading; I've been working on optimization all day and I think I went a little too far with some of the compressing.


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## ronlane

Jess, I just went and looked at it again and all the tabs work and look great to me. I like the change you made to the Information tab. Nice job.


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## frommrstomommy

what are you using to build this? i like it.

my nitpick.. on the about jess page... under a note from jess.. the line with the link to your contact info.. i guess you used an image of the word contact and it is not properly aligning with the rest of the text. i'd probably just leave the word contact in the same times roman you're using, but make the link purple and underlined so people know to click it instead. the slideshow seemed kinda fast on the front page too.. and it was like a lot of the images were really blurry for me? maybe my connection was taking a poo but not sure.


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## jowensphoto

^noted. I went a little nuts w the compressing. 

Slide show was four seconds, said to be too fast. Now it's at two... Three must be the magic number! 

Im just using the tools on the godaddy site. All the buttons are PS gif files.


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## runnah

jowensphoto said:


> All the buttons are PS gif files.



Any particular reason?


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## WebLuke

Overall I think it's a good website, here's my feedback

I like the navigation is big, prominent, clear

I like the home page slideshow and gallery

I like how all the elements are nice and big. Overall I think it's very easy to use.

One thing I don't like is the font selection. The cursive font for body text isn't as easy to read as a normal font. On the about page where you use the normal font, it is much easier to read. I think a lot of people won't properly read the other pages because it takes more concentration to figure out the words. I think I would recommend to use the cursive font for your headings, and then normal font for text

Other than that, I think it's got a great style and feel about it, so great job


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