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Websites Art gallery -- Your suggestions WILL be used

Discussion in 'Reviews' started by skib, Nov 21, 2009.

  1. skib

    skib New Member

  2. skib

    skib New Member

    Anything, from anyone? I just installed lightbox for the picture galleries.
     
  3. ishkey

    ishkey Moderator, Logos, Sports Crests Staff Member Verified Member

    Just been looking around the site.
    Very nice clean layout.
    I would like to see your pictures open up twice the size they are now. It feels like I go from a thumbnail to a small picture. The thumbnails look squashed. You have plenty of room on the page to resize the originals down to be in proportion. It's a mind - eye thing, like watching a flower open. I know lightbox will let you. I'm working on a photo website and I used slimbox2.js with jquery.min.js You can look to see what I mean PhotoLine: Photography by Your Name it's far from complete and I haven't asked CoverPea if I can use some of her Football Art Work as part of the demo. (hey CP is it ok, your pics fit in what I wanted to display?)

    Another thing I noticed is that your art cost $30.00 which is a really good price considering there is noway to really buy it or even contact you.
    I guess you are still working on it.

    You might try a shade of gray for the <h2> headers just like your logo.

    I am sure you know of all the different ways to setup a store.
    On my sites I use a javascript program and let Google handle the transactions and shoulder the liability of charge cards. I find the have the lowest cost. I use nopERcart
    which comes from NOP Design Free Shopping Cart. Both work extremely well, simple and easily configured anyway you want.

    After reading the About Me I understand the swirling art now - it's just like Washington runs. :D

    Overall it's clean, catches one's eye and invites you to click on.
    Hope this helps.
     
  4. skib

    skib New Member

    Yeah it helps. It's not actually my art, but a relatives. He wants to do all transactions locally, so an e-mail address will suffice I suppose.

    Thanks for the tips. I think I'm going to put curved borders on the site. After that I'll scrap the thing and start from the basic template using your suggestions and what I've learned.


    I really, really need to get a background that says "funky art" but doesn't look too unprofessional, or too over produced. I think some of the appeal is seeing that a normal guy is making the stuff. Maybe a real drawing designed for the website and scanned. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

    I also want to change the color scheme. Any idea? Bright colors?


    I was thinking about going to just three tabs "Art - About me - Buy" to really simplify it. You helped me with my first incarnation (thanks again!).


    Hmm. Good point. I'll fix that soon. Something I struggled with was getting the grey background to extend all the way to the bottom of the page. Eventually I needed to put text below the pictures, which pulled the background down somehow. I don't know if in CSS the background is set to go just behind text or what.

    There is a way to contact.

    That's just a guess at the price. I'm trying to get a firm number out of the guy, but it's hard. The canvas art is easy to price. I was told that if I sold any of the art I could keep a portion of the profit as pay. Basically the goal is to make back the cost of time/material. Anything more then that is awesome.


    The logo matches the background, if I used that color text you wouldn't be able to read it. That's excellent advice, to keep the colors coordinated, but I need to choose a different color scheme. I don't like the one I have now anyway.

    Store selling templates? What type of store? I'd like to see it! And no, I have no idea about the ways to set up a store beyond ?paypal?

    Thank you. I'm comfortable with critisism though, so you say whatever you want.

    Did you look at the coding? Or did anyone? If someone looks at the code and has a general solution to make it better, do tell. I'm not looking for someone to rewrite it though.

    Anyone else have any ideas? Thanks ahead of time.

    (I'll look at more of other's sites in a few)
     
  5. navyfalcon

    navyfalcon Well-Known Member Verified Member

    The title is the most important tag - Google displays 66 characters (including spaces) use your most important keywords here (keywords are the words visitors use to locate your site). Nobody searches for welcome (abstract art and digital art are your main keywords). Next you need a description. Google displays 150 characters (including spaces) people look at the name and description to decide if they want to visit the site after using keywords to find the site. These are the best chances to attract visitors, then content, design and navigation are used to reduce bounce rate (people leaving right away). Below are examples of other similar sites. Welcome to Gidgeworld.com - Abstract art and digital art by Ken Gidge. Repository of Abstract Art, Modern Paintings, and Sculpture. Art Gallery - oil paintings of abstract art, landscape art, more. Abstract art online gallery, original abstract art paintings and modern art by Osnat Tzadok - Toronto, Canada. - hope this helps. falcon
     
  6. matthew123

    matthew123 New Member

    Thanks.

    Thank you. the post is really helpful.
    I posted a link for whoever interested:
     
  7. clowie

    clowie New Member

    What i like most of all is your friend's artworks

    Your design is also nice and the only thing I would change is the color in the top. I mean the color of the website's name.

    Now the website's name can be hardly read as it's almost the same color with the big image in the left
     
  8. Moutios

    Moutios New Member

    What can I add? A very nice work here, maybe a change of fonts could "boost" it a little while. Also, the background behind the pictures is very dark in my opinion, maybe a nice picture with light colours could make a good comparison with the darker background behind.

    Good luck with your work, nice pictures, downloaded already some of them!
     
  9. hilljroberts

    hilljroberts New Member

    Great clean design for a website.... A couple of recommendations if you're getting into photoshop and web development.... Unless you have a need for a retro look or really prefer it, tabs and buttons are moving to more rounded edges. So your tabs and buttons at the top will definitely have a more finished if you build some buttons in photoshop (I assume they're HTML tabs without looking at your source, I may be wrong).

    I like the engine you're using for the photos.... the splash photo when each is selected gives a very professional look for the site.

    I second the use of NOP Design Free Shopping Cart. It's easy to get off the ground and will allow on-line purchases versus email contact.... Think of it this way, if you're willing to ship. You now have customers all over the country (if not the world), as opposed to the New England region.

    Great site overall! I can't find a lot to critique here....
     
  10. soymoses

    soymoses New Member

    Hello Gidge,

    I like the Art on here. Very nice. I have surfed around on the web. I think it flows pretty nice. I like the thumbs popping up into the middle.

    The first thing that I notice that I did not like was the link to click here if you want to be contacted. It immediately took me to the outlook set up function. I have seen this before on other websites. I think that I would want to be brought right to an information page that has your contact information and email address. We can start a new email if we want to get in touch with you. I hope I did that right and am not off target with the outlook deal. I think that if someone wants to buy something and they click to contact and that comes up, they may be shuffled off because they dont want to set up something on outlook. I think the only other place I have seen this is on Craigs list. People can be funny and if they are immediately uncomfortable with "signing up" then you may lose some easy business. You want it to be as easy to buy as possible as it is hard to get people to our sites in the first place. Just a suggestion here.

    The only other thing that comes to mind is the home page. Your are an artist and the first page is kinda boring to look at. White on gray and just monologue. Be a little artsy and creative here to the point that we just cant wait to get to the next page.

    I do like the layout as a whole. It is crazy easy to navigate and I think that is key in keeping people in your site once they are there. I will continue to check back to see it when it is finished. Have a great day.

    Soymoses
     
  11. Hotspace

    Hotspace New Member

    Hi. Very nice and clean. However I always like it when I search digital work or images etc that it shows some of the art on the first page. To see if I want to stay on that site or keep googling something else. I think it's great explaining everything. But maybe have part that and. A link read more. And the rest of the page. Clicks to art work images etc. So it's more direct for the customer
     
  12. Beatrice

    Beatrice New Member

    I totally agree with the previous post, it's a great website and great art but it would be even better if something from your art would be visible somewhere on the fist page so it's obvious straight away what the site is about and so it catches attention.

    Also, agree on the 'Contact us' link, the outlook thing is not very comfortable to use. I suggest you add another tab to the end of the main navigation with the full contact details, phone number, myspace, facebook twitter addresses and everything else where you are displayed:)

    Also, just a suggestion - would be good to have some information on where/how your artwork is currently being used, maybe some testimonials or whether you exhibited somewhere, or published anywhere, post the links, etc... just to add a bit more about you/your artwork and more reasons why purchasing your art should be a must:)

    All the best
    Beatrice
     
  13. PhotoXe

    PhotoXe New Member

    Instead of Outlook there is the option of an ASP and PHP Contact Form.
     
  14. Paint.The.Sky.

    Paint.The.Sky. New Member

    Hmmm, I like the background of the website, like how the corner of it slowly "vanishes" to blend in with the black.

    I think it looks fine for now but it can look better. For instance, the contact options. Sure, you offer links to the email and such but when it comes to an Art Gallery, don't you think that it should have its own menu for people to be able to find all the ways they can contact him?

    You should also look into the prices since you aren't sure and being flaky with money is not exactly going to reel in customers.

    Overall, it's good but keep working on it:)
     
  15. credphoto

    credphoto New Member

    I like the art.
    Everything seems to flow a bit too much left to right for me. Was it your intention to make it look hard edged in the text to offset the style of your painting/digital art?

    It is very easy to navigate to the tabs. I like that there are not 5,000 choices of buttons for movement around the site.

    I agree with the last post. The first page, could you perhaps expand that picture of your art to the entire background? Just a thought. I think it would be neat to see that as the background and then realize that the picture is the same (um, if it is?). :)
     
  16. raidersnetau

    raidersnetau New Member

    Its a nice simple layout which I think is good. An idea that I had straight away is for the thumbnails of the artwork to auto expand to a bigger size when you mouse over them. See this page as a good example of what I mean - Stu Nicholls | CSSplay | Magnify image
     
  17. thefurnituretaxi

    thefurnituretaxi New Member

    Your artwork is solid. You have an excellent talent that deserves to be shared. I think that since you have an art galllery your website should be heavyily visual and highly artistic and modern. I think you have accomplished that however when I click a link i think the pictures should blow up to take up much of the screen as this site needs to be extremely creative since your art is what you are trying to express and share.
     
  18. SC2010

    SC2010 New Member

    I really like this site you have created! Its simple, yet has that edge, i like slideshow on the front page, its straight and to the point. Nice work!