New Website Design

[Paul]

Having spent 12 months with Zenfolio, I decided it was time to return to Photium for my website.

I got in touch with Will (their support staff member (along with David)) and informed him I planned to come back.

He gave me a little discount as a returning subscriber. I have to say that the help he gave me in setting up the new site layout was phenomenal, and without him I would have taken ages to complete it.

I am running a new beta style for them - with the main pages full screen on random selections in each of the 5 main galleries, whilst retaining the easy to navigate sales menu pages.

Go have a look, and let me know if it looks good (here or in the guestbook) if you've got time, cos I think they have done a damned good job on their latest design.

LINK HERE


Paul.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Paul

[ChrisLumix]

Unfortunately your link is just plain text Paul - you need to actually add the url !!

[Paul]

Ooops, done Chris. I been editing it all morning and for 5 hours last night!      LOL..

 

Paul.

[Guest]

all I got was

Error 408

Due to a technical issue, this website is temporarily unavailable. The web host's technical team are working on resolving this right now and normal service will be resumed shortly.

We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience this may cause and hope you will return soon.

If you would like to be notified when to return, please email the URL of the website you are trying to view to technical@photium.com.

[Paul]

Aye - they are running an update it seems. Perfect timing, lol...

 

Paul.

[NannyFerret]

I just got on OK. It's brilliant!

[Leon]

cool...

[ChrisLumix]

It's a nice design, but it behaves infuriatingly! First, it takes AGES to load (probably the weight of images?), then - it goes through a slideshow of some gorgeous looking images but often it switches to the next slide when the current picture is only about 1/4 loaded so you never see the whole picture. 

 

My broadband is 6 Mb, so about average - neither particularly fast nor slow.

 

(I've just gone back to the site while composing this, and the pictures have all loaded now, so the slideshow is working fine. So ... you might want to do something about the initial loading of images? E.g., hold on the first image until they have all loaded; or have low-rezz versions that load first so the first run through works ok, but you don't see the full quality until the second run through. Just thoughts.)

[Paul]

Thanks Chris.

 

I'm just optimizing the image sizes now, so in an hour or so, I think things should speed up considerably once I have added the optimized files.

 

Thanks for the feedback again for now 

 

Paul.

[Joe]

Hi Paul,

Website design looks very good to me and (again for me) it loads quickly and efficiently.

I've recently been working on a new school website - and the layout and functionality is very reminiscent of the Adobe Muse software that I have been using. Is that your main software by any chance?

If so - I would be delighted since you have managed to show it to excellent effect.

The photos are crisp and display very well indeed.

Cheers

Joe

[Paul]

Thank you Joe.

 

The site is all done by Photium, and whether it is built around Adobe's Muse, I couldn't say, but if you contacted the support team at at Photium I'm sure they's tell you if you asked.

 

Glad you find it pleasant to look at.

 

Paul.

[Guest]

Paul your site looks great, I too am with Photium and will be asking Will about this style in about 10 seconds.

[Paul]

Thanks Bill. It is a beta so not sure of its general availability.

Paul.

[FUJI]

Hi, Paul,

Your new site is working beautifully on my iPad, it looks fantastic, it should work very well for you.

FUJI

[Guest]

Thanks Bill. It is a beta so not sure of its general availability.

Paul.

I have checked with Will and I can use at (as soon as I have time to do the necessary edits).

I have used Photium for many years and am one of their featured customers.

[colinb]

coming from a different angle at work today I ran a programme I use to see how your web site looks and if I may offer a few suggestions, mainly to attract the web crawlers from Google etc.

 

A) meta description is a little long at 210 words and you should try to reduce it to between 70 - 160

 

B) meta Keywords - not so important these days as Google may ignore them but there are far too many.

 

C) no H1 H2 H3 headings ( understandable with this being a photography web page)

 

D) Images do not have any alt attributes

 

E) text/html ratio is very low at 11.4% I would suggest you try to add a little text and bump it up to 15%

 

I also noticed there is no Feed - not really important unless you are using as a blog?

 

regarding adding text, and I understand why, but viewers can be put off by not being able to see 'how much' before clicking / putting items in the 'cart' - I think we all like to know how much before we get to the check-out   

Not easy with photographs as size type etc means pricing will vary but I would add a little text just to reassure members of the public?

 

and finally ... looks good to me but I'm not sure if there are too many images on the slider and if it would be better to get people into the web site rather than watching the images scroll past?

Edited March 7, 2014 by colinb

[Paul]

I don't really know how to adapt the suggestions - I just got my template and added stuff... 

 

 

In a way, i am not really expecting any sales, but the option is there if someone wants to buy. Anything I can suss out, I will look into.

 

Cheers Colin.

 

Paul.