Photography Site Critique Please

Hi all,

Can you please take a look at a site i have designed for my dad's business
and give any suggested improvements, what you like and don't like about it
and how i may improve its search engine ranking for searches such as
"photographer in hartlepool" and "wedding photography" etc etc.

www.the-picture-gallery.co.uk

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Jamie

Jamie Allison wrote:

Can you please take a look at a site i have designed for my dad's
business and give any suggested improvements, what you like and don't
like about it and how i may improve its search engine ranking for
searches such as "photographer in hartlepool" and "wedding
photography" etc etc.

www.the-picture-gallery.co.uk

1. Malformed code. All the pages I looked at have two body sections,
some have multiple head sections.
2. Red on black is very hard to read, even if the text size is large.
3. Text can't be resized in Internet Explorer.
4. All images seem to be missing, or the path to them is wrong.
5. No alt attributes for any images.

<http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//www.the-picture-gallery.co.uk/>

Even if all the technical details were fixed, it still won't do justice
for a photographer.

--
-bts
-When motorcycling, never follow a pig truck

Jamie Allison wrote:

Hi all,

Can you please take a look at a site i have designed for my dad's business
and give any suggested improvements, what you like and don't like about it
and how i may improve its search engine ranking for searches such as
"photographer in hartlepool" and "wedding photography" etc etc.

www.the-picture-gallery.co.uk

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Jamie


You don't want to confuse your visitors with text like

"DACF0001" -- the number your camera gave the image is of no interest
to the visitor. If you're using it as an order number, at least make
that clear, and don't make the "DACF0001" text so large.

The copyright notices on the images are _huge_ -- out of all needed
proportions.

How many times an image has been viewed is of no interest to your
visitors, and is a distraction.

The date the image was made is of no interest to this visitor, and that
probably goes for most others.

The dead black background is a little severe. You might try grey or white.

The images aren't pre-sized with width and height, so the page has to
continually redraw itself while it loads. This page may help:
http://www.mbstevens.com/howtothumb/

The double borders on the tables are distracting. I think no borders
are need here at all, or at most a single pixel border.

The paragraphs beginning "The Picture Gallery is a Professional....."
is way too thin for the type size. Don't set type sizes unless there is
a compelling need to do so.

I'll bet you could optimize that 53K image of the gallery down to about
25K by saving the file at lower quality. On the net the change would
hardly be visible to humans. Why don't you just put it above or below
the explanatory paragraph? It's not pre-sized either, so the opening
page jumps about when loading.
--
mbstevens
http://www.mbstevens.com/cgi/mkatt.p...ique_Generator

Thanks for your help.

1. I had made a mistake in the SHTML and had included a full HTML document
rather than a one just witht he links on for the links part which is why all
pages had two body TAG's etc. This is now fixed.

2. The colour is what my Dad requested but i will try and have a play around
with that and see if he likes it any better.

3. I had made a mistake in my style sheet and put the font sizes as
absolute. This is now changed and seems to work for me.

4. Not sure what the problem is with the images. It works for me in
netscape and IE on three different computers.

5. Will put the ALT's in place.

I'll take a look at the W3C validator thanks

"Beauregard T. Shagnasty" <a.nony.mous (AT) example (DOT) invalid> wrote

Jamie Allison wrote:

Can you please take a look at a site i have designed for my dad's
business and give any suggested improvements, what you like and don't
like about it and how i may improve its search engine ranking for
searches such as "photographer in hartlepool" and "wedding
photography" etc etc.

www.the-picture-gallery.co.uk

1. Malformed code. All the pages I looked at have two body sections,
some have multiple head sections.
2. Red on black is very hard to read, even if the text size is large.
3. Text can't be resized in Internet Explorer.
4. All images seem to be missing, or the path to them is wrong.
5. No alt attributes for any images.

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbos...gallery.co.uk/

Even if all the technical details were fixed, it still won't do justice
for a photographer.

--
-bts
-When motorcycling, never follow a pig truck

Thanks for your reply.

The "DACF0001" for the images was a mistake again. I have used a CGI script
to allow the photographer to upload images to the gallary with no
programming knowledge needed but i had told him to name the pictures as he
would like them to be displayed on the site but he forgot to with them ones.
They are going to ba taken off before the site goes live anyway and replaced
with more up to date ones. Thanks for your comment on it.

I am not sure what to do about the copyright notice, i ahve been talking to
the photographer about them and maybe taking them off and him putting his
own on prior to uploading as the script puts the copyright notice on at the
moment but doesn't do a very good job of it.

The extra image information will probably be taken off but i am waiting for
the photographer ot decide again. I will probably take it off and see if he
asks for it back.

I will take the borders off the gallery pages and see what it looks like.

I will also take a look at all images and pre size them etc.

Changed grey to see what it looks like and i will need to change the font
colours as they don't show up too well on gray. Any advice for colour of
text/links/background would be appreciated.

Thanks for advice

Regards


"mbstevens" <NOXwebmasterx (AT) xmbstevensx (DOT) com> wrote

Jamie Allison wrote:
Hi all,

Can you please take a look at a site i have designed for my dad's
business and give any suggested improvements, what you like and don't
like about it and how i may improve its search engine ranking for
searches such as "photographer in hartlepool" and "wedding photography"
etc etc.

www.the-picture-gallery.co.uk

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Jamie
You don't want to confuse your visitors with text like
"DACF0001" -- the number your camera gave the image is of no interest
to the visitor. If you're using it as an order number, at least make that
clear, and don't make the "DACF0001" text so large.

The copyright notices on the images are _huge_ -- out of all needed
proportions.

How many times an image has been viewed is of no interest to your
visitors, and is a distraction.

The date the image was made is of no interest to this visitor, and that
probably goes for most others.

The dead black background is a little severe. You might try grey or
white.

The images aren't pre-sized with width and height, so the page has to
continually redraw itself while it loads. This page may help:
http://www.mbstevens.com/howtothumb/

The double borders on the tables are distracting. I think no borders are
need here at all, or at most a single pixel border.

The paragraphs beginning "The Picture Gallery is a Professional....."
is way too thin for the type size. Don't set type sizes unless there is a
compelling need to do so.

I'll bet you could optimize that 53K image of the gallery down to about
25K by saving the file at lower quality. On the net the change would
hardly be visible to humans. Why don't you just put it above or below the
explanatory paragraph? It's not pre-sized either, so the opening page
jumps about when loading.
--
mbstevens
http://www.mbstevens.com/cgi/mkatt.p...ique_Generator

"Jamie Allison" wrote:

Hi all,

Can you please take a look at a site i have designed for my dad's business
and give any suggested improvements, what you like and don't like about it
and how i may improve its search engine ranking for searches such as
"photographer in hartlepool" and "wedding photography" etc etc.

www.the-picture-gallery.co.uk

The design is a complete shambles, and every page seems to have problems
with punctuation and grammar, not to mention dozens of HTML validation
errors.

Many of the photos look quite mundane too, although that might be partly due
to the ugliness of the web design. I think it would be better to put in just
a few choice examples to illustrate each area (weddings, portraits, etc.).
And get rid of those ugly watermarks.

Your search engine performance certainly won't benefit from having absurdly
complicated URLs like <http://www.the-picture-gallery.co.uk/cgi-bin/photo/i
ndex.cgi?mode=view&album=/Weddings>, so I suggest you stop using the photo
gallery script. It doesn't seem to be at all suitable for a website of this
type anyway. CSS can help make your pages leaner and more friendly to search
engines.

Back to square 1, really.

Here are some links you might find useful:
<http://validator.w3.org/>
<http://webpagesthatsuck.com/>
<http://www.csszengarden.com/>

--
phil [dot] ronan @ virgin [dot] net
http://vzone.virgin.net/phil.ronan/

Jamie Allison wrote:

Changed grey to see what it looks like and i will need to change the font
colours as they don't show up too well on gray.
Try darker grey, CSS "#444;" might be a good start. It might allow

you not to have to change the other colors. But if you had all the
colors in a seperate CSS file, adjusting all together would not be a
problem.

Any advice for colour of

text/links/background would be appreciated.

On a lighter grey or white background, you can't go wrong with dark blue

links, black text.

Jamie Allison wrote:

Can you please take a look at a site i have designed for my dad's business
and give any suggested improvements, what you like and don't like about it
and how i may improve its search engine ranking for searches such as
"photographer in hartlepool" and "wedding photography" etc etc.

Why are you using HTML 4.01 Transitional? That is for legacy pages that

are too much trouble to fix. Use HTML 4.01 Strict.
A number of unescaped "&"s. Should be &amp;.
Almost no use of <Hx> elements although there are levels of headings in
the content. <h2> is used for styling rather than markup.
Tables used for layout. Quite unnecessary for such a simple site.
"Tag soup" method of styling. That is why CSS exists.

What is an "LMPA"?
The red-on-black for small text is difficult to read. Choose a red that
is brighter, almost pink, and bold it. Light-on-dark is harder to read in
general because of the bleed-through problems common with CRTs; the
background bleeds into the text reducing the contrast.
Does Mr Allison have business stationery? That would a starting point
for the website's color scheme.
The address and phone number in the page header are redundant (and
unnecessary!) since there is a Contact link.
Perhaps use the upper portion of the storefront as a banner, the "The
Picture Gallery ... Master Photographer" part.
The two phone numbers have different formats.
The "W3C" graphic is meaningless to customers. Remove it.
The nav menu on the left is singularly uninteresting. Visit
<http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/> for some ideas.

The text content is poorly written: long, rambling sentences that
present multiple unrelated concepts; random punctuation; random
capitalization; misspelled words.

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

Hi Jamie,
Hmm, where do I start.

The layout is fine with the menus on the left and the colour scheme is
fine.

For this type of business I expected to see more photos with a little
text. So when I saw a large block of text and the photos off screen
further down, it didn't look quite right. Try a frame and put text next
to a column of photos so the sample images (which is what customer
really wants to see) are there.

When I looked at one set of portraits in detail, the large logo spoilt
the shot. How about using an embossed logo so that the photo cannot be
stolen but the full image can be seen. Or choose a logo colour that
comlements the image.

When clicking on the 'next' button the position of the button changed.
I found it a bit annoying to have to move my mouse for each click. The
last thing you want is to annoy your customers. So put the navigation
button in a table to fix the position. How about a slide show on the
detail pages instead of click for next? With the option to start/stop
and go back/forward one.

On the weddings page, the thumbnails are fine but when selecting a
wedding to view. The individual photos need to be just that, individual
not three or four enprints stuck on a page (that I saw it, sorry).
Again, the large logo, not nice, too intrusive.

For a example of 'pictures first' look at your digital retouching page
and then the portraits page. Which has more impact?

When your father displays phots in his shop, are they framed or
borderless. They are framed aren't they. So, put each photo in a one
cell table with a border of say 3 pixels. See the difference.

I could go on more but I think I've said enough for the moment.

This type of site cries out for a scripted asp driven page for the
albums. The single page could detect folders of images and a standard
text file for a description of the album. Then to add a new album, just
upload a folder with a text file and the page will automatically detect
it. No html pages to build.

One last comment, please don't take offence at these comments. You have
a good idea and with a few minor changes, it would be a great site.

les_taylor (AT) btinternet (DOT) com wrote:

So, put each photo in a one cell table with a border of say 3 pixels.
See the difference.

No, don't do that. Use CSS instead.

img {
border-top: 4px outset #d0d0d0;
border-left: 4px outset #d0d0d0;
border-right: 4px outset #a9a9a9;
border-bottom: 4px outset #a9a9a9;
}

Choose outset or inset, and colors that go with your design.

--
-bts
-When motorcycling, never follow a pig truck