feedback appreciated

[mikeA]

Hello all,

I have just finished developing a site, and I would appreciate any comments on it. I did as much testing on it as possible. The site was targeting users on PCs with broadband connections, so I have not thoroughly tested it on Macs or using dial-up connections. And any other problems that I missed would be most helpful to me too, such as, does it load fast enough, is the site easy to navigate, does the Flash detection work correctly?, etc.
I did not do the design, but if you have comments on that I would like to hear them too.

http://www.sallyreps.com

Thanks for your time.
mikeA

[vosgien]

Hi mikeA,
I'm on dail up PC, site loaded fairly slowly, but I would expect and anticipate this for a photography site so it doesn't present me with any probs. Also flash detect worked ok. Nav was easy to follow and once a section was loaded it all worked pretty fast.
One thing I couldn't work out was when I selected an artist the movie loaded in, then when I clicked portfolio a second movie loaded in. Why is the artists page as big ( or as heavy ) as that artists portfolio ?
Design : liked it very much, cool colours, really nice images and some ( don't have time to look at all of them) of the artists work is pretty cool.
Hope that helps

Vosgien

[snapple]

mikeA,

I liked the site a lot, it was very quick to load. I liked the design, i was slightly concerned that i would get too deep into the site, and not easily be able to acess other portfolios, but the way the work collapsed to make way for the other pics was nice. So there was no need for me worrying after all:)

I was not too keen on the idea of having to click for no real reason to view the work, the site would be faster and more easy to use and less complicated (not that it is hard to use now), if, when the user clicked, it just took them straight to the work ? - i think that was what vosgien was refering to.

But overall, i really liked the site, so smooth and calming, just a personal thing, but i think the site would look better if the mouseover's and buttons for the pics were not as transparent as they are, just looked odd having it so hard to see, when the rest of the site is striking and bold - the nice design has an immeadiate impact.

Really loved the site, i shall be playing with it for a while. Its just so nice to look at and use. Loved the pre-loaders too. Really did it for me !!!!!

Hope this was of some help.

Snapple :)

[Abelius]

Just for the sake of it, and while you are playing at your PC, mikeA, could you see how your pages would look if the background color of the Flash movie (and the HTML movie that contains it) would be black?

Yours is mostly a graphics site, with little text to be read. Graphics are enhanced by black, not by white... :)

By the way, it loaded on my computer in less that a second. DSL here...

[LilleMartin]

Nice site.
Quick loading (broadband).
Design compliments the photos without stealing the attention.

Thumbs up. :)
-M

[mikeA]

Hello All,

Thank you all for taking the time to look at the site and taking the time post a reply.
I really appreciate the comments and suggestions.

the reason for the main artist page was heavey is because we wanted to showcase a specific photo and we didn't want to force the user to download the entire portfolio if they decided to move on to another artist.
The black background does make the photos stand out more - I'll suggest that to the designer.

the preview thumbs might need to be reworked a bit - our feeling was that they were too distracting at full opacity.

thanks again.
MikeA

[red penguin]

Yeah..I liked it too. But I agree with that "extra click" in there. You are asked to select artist...then select corresponding portfolio. Why not just stream it in behind? The initial pic there is nice...gives you the chance to say, "eh, yes/no"...and move on. Keep the "view portfolio" button, but allth ewhile, it's streaming as I'm making my decision. 9 times out of 10, it'll be loaded in 'before' I have made my decision.

Make sense? I also think a black BG would enhance the effect.

[momentus]

I agree that the portfolios should load while user decides.

Very nice site. I like it a lot. I was wondering about the faded thumbnails and can understand that they may be too distracting at full alpha, but I don't think that fading them out is the best solution. I wish I had a better one but cannot think of one at the moment. I'll have to think about that. The cropping is nice on the thumbs though: well done.

Is there a reason why some pictures are centered and others aren't? It seems the pics are sort of arbitrarily placed at times: some up in the top left corner, others centered, some a third up top...

Looks really really good. Good work mikeA.

momentus

[pinkaboo]

I really liked this site, it's very smooth. Loaded perfectly.

Totally agree with the comments about the double click. The showcased photo works really well, and I don't see why you can't begin to stream the portfolio in the background then too like Pengie said. That would just finish it off nicely.

Not convinced by the suggestion regarding a black bg though, I think some of the images would be overpowered and it's a nice fresh site as it is.

One thing that I did think of is that I couldn't find anywhere on the site that gave away anything about Sallyreps. I mean even a location would be good.

I clicked "contact" expecting to be able to see where Sallyreps is based, but I was just given a phone number and email. That tends to bug me, I think why would someone fill in a form with required elements such as name and address when the recepient can't even reveal theirs. One of the great things about the web is that it is global, but I think there are times when a locality in which to base a site is necessary.

Also the black text on the dark bg for the contact form was a little hard to distinguish.

pinK

[vosgien]

You know MikeA, I browse these boards quite a bit, and this is the most positive & the most postively consistant response I have seen for a site, even the advice you have been given about the double - click thingy is consistant.

You should be feeling dead chuffed with yourself.
Well done !

Vosgien

[mikeA]

Thank you all so much for your very helpful suggestions.

It seems that will have to stream in the portfolio movie in the background once the user has selected an artist - that is a fabulous idea - wished I had thought of that. Means that I have to rework some of the code, but that idea is worth it.

As for why the images aren't all in the same place... that was left up to the designer - I am guessing it had to do with different size images and/or design reason. But I will make a note of that too.

And the contact info was what the client wanted, but I will mention that too.

vosgien - I am not too hip on European lingo - "You should be feeling dead chuffed with yourself" - but I did a search on the word and found out the meaning.
'chuffed' - proud, satisfied.
Thanks for the comment - now I can go use 'chuffed' with my friends and impress them with a new word, or just confuse them.

You sure can pick up a lot of info here on these boards.

This has been extremely helpful to me and I just want to thank everyone again for all the constructive criticisms and comments, it always helps having a fresh pair of eyes look at your work and suggest new ways of doing things and improvements.

MikeA

[ciccia]

hi
I think the use of simple shapes in the intro is very cool
and all your site is "chic" with them and with good photos
bye!