PLEASE rate my first website I have made?

Question

http://www.illustratedimagery.com/testsite/index.htm
It is my first ACTUAL website
please rate 1-10 and tell me what I need to change and improve
I am making it for my uncle
im 15 yrs old
dont be afraid to tell me if something looks bad

Answer 1

This might seem to be harsh, so let me start by saying that I am a professional. (To establish some credibility, I've done sites for BMW, Michelin, Wachovia, ESPN...) I have been doing web sites since you were four years old. You've definitely learned the basics, and you have the potential to go further. But the first step in improving yourself is acknowledging to yourself just how far you have to go.

1. Intro animations are about 8 years out of date. Instead, you should build the animation into the home page, that way people can semi-watch it while they check out what your site has to offer and decide whether they want to browser further into the site immediately.

2. Your loader style is totally inappropriate for the site. It looks like you are shooting for an upscale design, but you are telling the user percentages and frames in a very technical-style way. The blue and green also don't fit. Change those colors.

3. You need a button to disable the music. It's a nice ambiance but I am trying to listen to some music on my headphones already and it's annoying as hell for that to play on top.

4. The width of the main content pane is fluid. This is bad for people who have large monitors because each line of text is way too long to read. You should limit the column of text to a manageable size. Same principle used by newspapers when they limit the width of their columns.

5. A black background says "I'm not legitimate". You have to work twice as hard in the rest of the design to counteract that. Great designs can still have black backgrounds, but when you're still learning, it's better to take advantage of free legitimacy by changing the background color.

6. Way too much text and not enough pictures. If the point of the site is to sell photography, not text, then why is text the bulk of your site? The first principle of writing great web copy is take whatever you wrote and cut it in half, then cut it in half again. That will ensure you strip out all of the unnecessary fluff and cut straight to what your users want - real information. This is most true on the home page.

If you have any other questions, feel free to msg me over Answers and I'll get you my real e-mail address.

Answer 2

I am very impressed with the site (if you are indeed 15 years old :-)

And, listen to Rex M, his advice seems really sound. I too found the music extremely annoying.

I would also add, since this is a business web site you want it to be picked up by search engines. Search engines focus on the first page, so by using an introduction you are hurting your rankings in yahoo and google. The first page should contain at least a title that makes clear what you do, perhaps some meta tags helping the search engines (advice on those varies), and some text that you want to emphasis. There is a tool to help you do this, at adwords.google.com. I know this because there was an article about it in the last few days, at http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/howtogetgoogletonoticeyou .

The animation is quality looking, and the whole site looks good, but my impression was that it was kind of blocky. I think the black rectangles with white borders gives that feeling. Normally I wouldn't care, but for a business that does artistic work the standards are higher.

Answer 3

pretty good. but you might wanna change the look of the links on the left side of the website. Rate 9/10.

Answer 4

Looks professional
Like the intro screen
Don't like the black - too stark
Too many words on first screen (not intro)
Nice menu down left with sub-menus showing

Altogether - a great first effort. 7.5/10

Answer 5

WOW for a 15 year old to do that it is amazing, i could be learing computers for the rest of my life and never come close to that !!!! your uncle better be paying you alot of money for that lol........10/10!!!!!!

Answer 6

its definatly a 10 because of the way everything goes together...i would suggest something brighter for the background though so it brightens it a little

Answer 7

wow. my website doe'nt look near that good . you did a great job. 10

Answer 8

ITS COOL!! Good job!!! E-MAIL ME!! [e-mail]

Answer 9

shure i will in like 2 min :)

Answer 10

9 it was really cool.