Tell me whatcha think (website critique)

i love it! i like how the whole thing is set up, great pictures too

Ditch wix, It is a terrible interface and there are so many better options out there that let you use your own domain for nothing. I'll do a real critique later when I'm on my computer.

It was kinda of weird to navigate, almost seemed like too much was going on, ya know? Also, a lot of your buttons that are long bars are only clickable on the very far left side, need to change that somehow.

i liked it. and, i though it was pretty easy to navigate, i figured it out quickly. nice work!


and huskies are the best

I didn't look through everything, but upon first glance heres some issues I see.

-Like Heath said, buttons are super touchy and have a very small clickable region

-Site is overall looking a little too busy, the colors are fine, but cut out some of the lines/cartoon name/boxes

-I read your "Bio" page, and please don't take this the wrong way, but it was bad. Way too much writing, fonts were difficult to read and ugly, and the writing was definitely not on par with what you'd expect out of the "pro" sector. Because you're trying to come across as a professional who's going to be serious about his work, that's the point of this website. I would say cut out the backstory, (Which TBH seems a bit of a lie because I remember when you first came on here you didn't even know how to work your camera) and cut out your gear listing, it makes you seem flashy and a little big headed. If clients are looking into you, they expect you have the necessary gear, and they're getting charged for renting fees if you don't.

Like I said, that's all meant to be constructive and I know you for being quite tough skinned so I hope it helped! Good luck and great job so far, you've come a long way.

Thank you! this helps a lot and i definitely didn't take it the wrong way!!

You said be brutal so I'm going to be....

Well your site is BRUTALLY slow, please for the love of god don't use wix. WIX's interface is brutal. Max 5mpg file size? WFT?

Here's a bunch of other sites you should check out that are all 500000000x times better.

http://500px.com/ (What I use, link in sig, $50 a year but you don't get much customization)
http://22slides.com/
http://wordpress.com/
http://www.smugmug.com/
http://www.dripbook.com/
http://www.BananAlbum.net/

Heck, even Tumblr is better than WIX and you can use your own domain for free.

I don't love your gallery layout, I think that as a client seeing all those images is a bit overwhelming, I really prefer a single image slideshow. I think your layout is very very very very very very very very very busy, keep it clean and simple, some of the best photographers lose out on clients because they have a poor website, go look at any sucesful photographer's site and 95% of the time it will be white/black/one-colour, and super simple and easy to navigate.

Only pick your best photos, if a image is just there for filler or to bulk up your site it shouldn't be there. If you don't have enough work to fill a category well, hold off till you do. EG, your entire snow category, why there are photos of a dog and go-pro screen shots is beyond me... Your entire lifestyle category is random snapshots, photos of money, springs, etc are not that exciting. Get rid of the equipment section, it doesn't matter what gear you have, what matters to the client is that you know how to use it and can use it well. Get rid of the links to your facebook, vimeo, etc. You don't want the client to see your sub par work, just your best stuff on your site. You can run a blog to update more frequently, but make sure the photos are still up to par. Also, there is a snowboard photo in the rock climbing section, might want to fix that.

I can't figure out what type of clients your trying to get? Getting hired as an action sports photographer is VERY hard and most of the time if you do it won't be for pay or you'll get a free t-shirt or other free merch.

Overall I'd say a good 75% of those photos aren't spectacular and don't really have a place other than filler. Maybe hold off on the website till you have a solid body of work.... Back last spring, I tried to build a site on WIX a while ago, and Michelle convinced me to wait till I had better images, really glad I did because now people know me for my current work, and not for my old, sub-par work.

Hope all that helps, as always feel free to PM me if you have any other questions,
Zack.

Thanks! this helps! I have had a lot of problems with wix it just doesn't seem to be fast and I don't understand why the templates are html5 when you can't even adjust the html code.... but besides that it is ok for being free and i haven't lost too much with it. I plan on writing my own website with dreamweaver when i am able to build my portfolio better. and for my galleries I am still working on building good collections Your right some of it is just filler and i know I need to change that by going out and shooting more. For clients I want to advertise myself To regular people who want graduation photos and event coverage and stuff like that I just have not gotten enough photos of that kind of stuff to even start a section yet... But I think that my work will prove that i am capable of taking pictures of anything Thats why i have sort of a miscellaneous category...