just launched my new site

[VT Mike]

www.ponteography.com
I'd love to hearsome feedback.

Mike

[mjm]

nice snowboarding photos.

[Sebastian]

I question the use of the icons for description, info and prints. You waste a whole page describing what they mean, when you could just have the info in plain text or links, no need for icons or a explanation page. It is just another unnecessary step people need to wade through to get to what should be in plain sight.

[Asylum Steve]

First of all, Mike, that shot on your splash page is killer...

I agree with Seb. Use of icons aside, after the opening shot, the viewer has to hunt for more pictures. Your home page has no photos, and each of the gallery sections has a huge blank space until you select a thumbnail to enlarge.

I think you could make much better use of your page space. If you were to make only two changes, I would have an image on the home page, and make the first thumbnail on each gallery page already enlarged in the main frame.

Nice work...

I question the use of the icons for description, info and prints. You waste a whole page describing what they mean, when you could just have the info in plain text or links, no need for icons or a explanation page. It is just another unnecessary step people need to wade through to get to what should be in plain sight.

[Peter_AUS]

Mike I think you have made a start on your site, but can't, like others, understand the logic of the buttons. There is enough space on the webpage to include the information about each shot and that should show up with the image, not have users have to select a button to find out more.

I too like Steve, think you should include an image as an opener on each of the web categories pages and opening windows again and again to me is a little overboard. I try and keep the interest on just he one page, changing the main frame each time there is a change, in your case where the image initially is displayed.

Get rid of the explaination page, change it to a page with an image from each of your galleries and then when they select one of those images take them to that gallery page and I think put more images up first as a selection instead of the long list of images. I looked at the snowboarding ones and think they could be shown better on your website.

The other thing I just noticed after posting and having a further look at your website was not to take people out of your website, have the shopping cart either show up in the main window on the right or open up a new browser window leaving access to your website still. Generally if people are taken away from a website they often leave all together as they see something else that may interest them and forget why they were looking at the other site in the first place. This is not my reasoning, just some good advice I received a long time ago from web developers.

Just some thoughts similar to the other posters for you to consider.

[VT Mike]

Hi Guys

thanks for taking the time to look through my site and provide feedback, I really appreciate it. Sebastian, my goal in using the icons was to minimize the visual clutter that people see when viewing the images. But you are right, I am making people do too much to get to the images. Steve, you've made a great point about the lack of images seen before someone clicks on a thumbnail. I've already made the change that you suggested of having the first thumbnail of each gallery appear in the main window from the start (that change was very easy to make). I will likely have images on the main page soon that link to each of the galleries. Thanks for your compliment on my splash page image - it was published in Snowboarder magazine a few years ago, but they unfortunately ran it about the size of a postage stamp. It's nice to finally have the image seen in a reasonable size. Peter, as I said above I went with the icons to minimize clutter, and my assumption was that most people would not be interested in the information about the images, and for the few that were it was just a click away. But, I do think you are all correct, I'm making people do too much work to see what should be right there. I have also already made the change you suggested about the shopping cart button opening a new window. I'm doing all of my web work myself, so further changes will come as time allows. Again, thank you all for your help.

Mike

[Peter_AUS]

No problem Mike everyone is glad to help where they can, we all work things ourselves some haveing more expertise than others. I think it is a great way to share things and help others to develop their talents as well. I wish I knew more about web design myself and every day is a challenge in one way or the other.