orias

Thank you, yeh work has started to come in quite regularly now but I've also had the misfortune of client abandoning projects mid way or taking forever to come up with the copy for their site. As a result my portfolio isn't as strong as I'd like it to be. I may end up adding some of the work from the abandoned projects in the future. Thanks OwenONeill, (any relation to neil0wen?) I would be flattered if you were to "steal" some of my ideas, so long as you don't directly copy the code or images. I'd be interested to see how you implement them so let me know if you do.

Oh yeh I forgot about the DMR site. Yes I need to take that of off the pixelgiant portfolio. It used to look like THIS and then they decided to go with someone cheaper to make some changes. The icproperty site is almost complete. There are a few things that need to be added and I'm currently waiting for copy before I finish it off. Also, I think you're looking at the wrong site. I'm, very pleased with the pixelgiant site, I wanted feed back on this one which is my personal portfolio. Again, I'm not sure you're looking at the correct website. If you're referring to the pixelgiant site (blue, black and white) then I agree with your point that I should add prices and packages. If you're talking about the black and yellow site then I'd have to disagree. I would rather negotiate how much I'd like to be paid for my time as each site has different requirements and I maybe better at some of those than others.

Yeh I agree, I've been meaning to update that contact form since the original design 2 years ago. It's pretty basic at the moment so I'll be adding some validation and some sort of confirmation upon successful completion.

Thanks guys. How was the load time by the way? I'm a bit concerned that the site takes a bit too long. It currently stands at 3.3 mb, which is a bit too much for my liking. Does any one have any tips on reducing the page speed?

That's a fair point about the "FREE quote". I'd never thought about it before but now that you've mention it's begining to bug me as well. I've edited the original post to include a link.

Hey guys I would love some feedback on my redesigned portfolio. I figured I'd jazz it up with some jquery and remove some of the older site examples. Also if you could let be know if you spot anything that either doesn't work or doesn't look right it would be appreciated. Thanks Edit: Oops forgot to add a link lol http://pbienek.co.uk/

I know it's a long shot and would not be at all surprised if facebook didn't allow this but i was wondering if it was possible and if so how? Basically I would want a page on a website that would allow you to send invites to friends on your facebook account. Like how you can invite friends to join a game or app on the site, I would like to do that from an external source. Does any one have ideas? thanks in advance.

I like it, it's nice and clean. I would rename your "free quote" page to "contact" and have a separate form for free quotes. That way you'll be able to gather more relevant information from a potential client and be able to guide them to give you a better idea of what they would like. If You were to do that I would then put a link on the homepage that linked to your new free quote form. Also on your contact page it would be a good idea to add contact numbers and email addresses.

I think it looks good, there are only a couple of things I would change. I would align the site logo to the left of the page rather than have it centred. Also I think the navbar needs some work. The gradient causing the curved effect doesn't really fit the rest of the site. Either try and use a subtler gradient or have the navigation bar the same flat colour as the footer. Speaking of which, you can fill the footer with contact info, site map links, copyright info and validation links.

I've also got an account with that site. I haven't tried hiring anyone on there but I have bid for many projects. The problem is that there is always someone on there that will do the work for a lot cheaper than you're willing to. I've seen people agreeing to build websites on there for less than $100. This is due to the fact there are companies in Asia that are what I can only describe as coding sweatshops. They're hard to compete with on price but the quality is usually fairly poor. I would only use their services for functions and SEO (building back links etc)

Yeh I think I'll play around with that later when I get to coding it and see how it looks. Appreciate the feedback. I understand what you're saying microBlonk and I will play around with some ideas I have floating around regarding the header. I think if I were to just straiten it, the site would lose what little character it has.

I've been toying with the idea of hiring someone to sell my web services and pay them on commission. Has anyone else here done this? If so, do you have any advice?

Thanks for the feedback guys. I've made some minor changes based on what you've said. Here's the latest revision I personally prefer the new site design I just need to decide whether it's worth my time to go ahead and make the change.

Yeh ouch. It's pretty awful to be honest. You've gone for a futuristic look but instead it looks like a site from the 90s.

I think from a usability and SEO point of view it would be best to have just the one site. Usability wise it will be easier for customers to find and compare the products to one another. If I went to one site and the one product on offer wasn't what I was looking for I would look somewhere else. There's no grantee that the next site I go to will belong to the same company. So you could in fact end up losing sales. As for SEO, the more content you have on a site the better. If all these products are similar (and I'm guessing by SAS you mean Security Alarm Systems) then you can have the same keywords appear more often. Try and find out what terms potential customers may be searching and try and fit those keywords into your site as many times as possible.

I think it looks pretty good so far. I'd make the navigation buttons a little smaller though. Also I would change the font in the call back form to arial to match the rest of the site. Does your client want to display the properties they're selling/letting on the site? If so I would suggest having a few properties on the front page.

So just as I am nearing the end of developing a site for a new company I'm starting and I've begun to wonder whether the design is actually any good. Here's the current site. So this evening I worked on a new design concept, which you can find here and would appreciate your opinions on which you thought was better. I only had time tonight to complete the homepage and I'll try and get more done shortly. Constructive criticism is very welcome.