My First Website

[mikaelsnavy]

Hi, I built a website for a friend and I was wondering if someone could give me some pointers since it's my first real website. The URL is www.julierumreich.com . Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Note: The checkout doesn't work, I'm still working on it. Thanks,
Mikael

[seanmiller]

Not a bad start at all...

One gripe that I often have with websites is that they lose focus of what their real role is meant to be (ie. to impart information) and get all hung up on graphics and what they perceive to be useful plug-in gizmos (which actually achieve very little).

I can browse your site quite happily, I can discover what the lady has to offer and I can find out where she's exhibiting. So that is great! That is the most important thing, imho.

Design-wise there are things that could be improved, which is no surprise as you admit it is your first site. My main comment would be structure. One thing that gives a site its identity is structure - the recognisable header at the top of each page, a recognisable base to the page and a consistent use of fonts and style. You have the menu at the bottom, which I like, but nothing consistent at the top. That would really help.

Art is also about creative use of colours, textures and imagery. I find the black and white rather depressing. I think when it comes to the pages which are galleries to set them on something like black will work because you don't want folks to be distracted from the pictures. But when you have pages of text (as you do in some places) I think it would be good to brighten the page up in some way. Perhaps the aforementioned header would be a place to do it?

On to rendering problems, and there are surprisingly few... "About Prints" has an issue with its bottom menu which in Firefox appears about 66% down the page overlapping the content text and so does "Order Info". Also, the links are "coming" not "comming"...

Finally, the front page which is the one that will ultimately sell the site. Three things jump out at me...
1) The "view" of the site that you get when you first arrive is very important. I'm on 1024x768 and I see "Julie's Creations", I see a menu and I see some big dolphins - and that is basically it. All your intro text (the "welcome to my site...") requires me to scroll down. I think this is a mistake. The welcome needs to be there immediately. This is the friendly aspect of the page, the one that warms the heart.
2) The Contact info is extremely important too, but where have you put it? Sandwiched between two pictures halfway down the page. I would make that much more obvious.
3) Do you need the menu top left? It is taking up a lot of space (I would imagine on 640x480 or 800x600 resolutions it must be huge). I would either make it smaller and somehow try to give it "its own space", perhaps switch it to be horizontal like the one at the bottom or lose it altogether. Without seeing how your design progresses it's difficult to really make any firm suggestions.

Hope these are helpful. You asked for comments so I've given them, but remember what I said at the start. You've avoided falling into the trap of "design mania" and have concentrated on putting the information up there... so you're winning :-)

Sean

[mikaelsnavy]

Thanks a lot for the suggestions, I'll get right on it.
Mikael