my new website

[windyowl]

Hi all,

I launched a new website. It is not completely done, I still need to add my artist statement and more pics of WIPs and a self portrait picture.

But, would love feedback for those of you who have the time to check it out. You can find it at:

http://www.michelleturbide.com

Thanks!

[NataliaM]

Michelle, congratulation on your new website (was there an old one?). Have you designed it yourself or had it done?

One thing I noticed right away (besides of you lovely works) was the inconsistency in menu location - some pages have it on the left and some in the upper right corner. Not that it's too difficult to spot the menu, but having the menu stationary makes the overall design look neater and more convenient to navigate. The size of the menu font also jumps from small (on home-page) to medium (Process page) to large (Linoleum Cut Print page). These are small things and easy to fix.

[Eraethil]

Hi Michelle,

I'm using a current Mozilla Firefox as my browser.

First impression on the home page is excellent! I particularly like the neutral colours you've chosen for the background, text, and separators. The art is immediately centre stage. The navigation choices on the home page are intuitive as well.

There are a couple of very minor suggestions I'd make, regarding home page composition:
- your name begins very close to the left side of the window, and seems to be begging for some more white space to its left.
- it would be nice if the artworks were larger, as long as the load time isn't hampered and they still fit in a standard browser window.

If I'm being picky, once I moved away from the home page, I noticed a few things that made the site more difficult to navigate. Like Natalia, I'd suggest keeping the menu consistent and in the same real estate on other pages as it is in on the home page.

More troublesome, and harder to fix, I can't view the line of thumbnails, the chosen piece, and the title at the same time. Here is what I see when I first navigate to the monotypes page:

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/24-Feb-2008/104815-webpage.jpg

Perhaps smaller thumbnails? Perhaps the title could be on the left or right of the piece? Even a smaller displayed artwork? You never know. . . just repositioning the menu may be enough.

Not sure what the best solution is, but having to scroll the page both left and right and up and down will turn off some viewers. Using the scroll button on my mouse to scroll the thumbnails, and almost always being able to see the full artwork I've selected, would be ideal for me. But ideal sometimes takes a lot of time . . . :wink2:

Great website overall. It really shows off your artwork. Congratulations!

[dandan]

did you get free hosting? who hosts it? any details of that sort?

[Diane Cutter]

You've gotten some good advice, Michelle... Once you tweak it you might want to post over in the Internet Sales Strategies forum as there are lots of members there with a good eye for effective website designs. That forum is not just sales but has lots of info on just about everything on online presence for an artist.

Diane

[NataliaM]

One more thing to keep in mind: check how your website look on different browsers (IE, Mozilla, Netscape) and operating systems (Windows, Mac). They display web content somewhat differently and sometimes pages that look OK in IE appear distorted in Netscape as this browser is less forgiving to lost html tags. I worked as a graphic/web designer for a few years and remember well how pages full of text and images, in Netscape appeared blank with nothing but the background because of a single missing tag.

[windyowl]

Hi all, thanks for the excellent feedback. I am new at websites and at the same time learning frontpage to create them. dan, I am using 1and1 which has a very reasonable monthly rate.

I had put the menus in differnt places on the pages with galleries becasue I used the frontpage template to display the pics. I am sure there is a way to custom make a gallery, but don't know how to do that yet. so i can't move the wording on the bottom and thought the menus looked better on the top right. I could change the other pages to match that, or do you think it is too distracting if i have the home page one way and make all the others uniform?


Rick, thanks for the feedback on the picture size. I can make the thumbnails smaller and try to squeeze more into the main browser size. it's hard to get the wording in though without making the larger pic smaller, which then hampers the view of the work. but it does make sense to try to get it all in one frame.

these are great suggestions guys. I have had others look at it, but none with the artist views. much appreciation.

Michelle

[ploverwing]

I agree with the comments so far, and I really want to second (or third!) the comment about the neutral background colour; very nice choice. Definitely need to get your name more obvious. I would also suggest that you change the page description on your first page from "New Page 1" to your name and what you do (e.g. Michelle Turbide - Printmaker, or something like that). Ditto for the other pages (e.g. your "Statement" page description is "New Page 0" - if you use Firefox, and open it in a separate tab, you'll see what I mean on the tab heading).

For people who are thinking about starting their own website, I recommend considering services with templates. I use www.artsites.ca (http://www.artsites.ca) as my page design/layout/hosting service (while they're located here in BC, they've got American clients as well). I did the build my own page and keep it updated for a while, but it got cumbersome, and it's really nice to have some templates to choose from. I'm not advocating that my site is the end all and be all (not by any stretch of the imagination), but it's certainly worth considering using this kind of a service (there are others out there), if you want simple, easy to update sites.

Good luck with it- I think it's a great start. And the Internet Sales strategies section in WC is full of great suggestions for improving traffic to your site, etc.

[Printmakerguy]

Nice start! I am certainly not a Pro at website design (One peek at mine makes that painfully obvious!)- and you have been given great advice here...


I think that establishing a web presence is CRITICAL these days- It is almost expected, And can be some really cheap marketing! Selling one work can pay web expenses for the year often!

-Andrew

[windyowl]

thanks for all the input! I have made some changes but am still tweaking things. I found a typo tonight. I think it is a neverending battle to keep things updated and looking fresh. I also started a blog.

I appreciate all the artist eye feedback.

thanks!