sarah3585

Larger images of the product you are selling. Lining up with the text like @@Fuzzy Logic mentions

Thanks for all the comments guys, and apologises for not dropping back into this post for a while. I've kept the Start a Project button for now, I'm still keen to see if Hire Me will be anymore effective. I do think Start a Project is more clear for the type of work I'm looking for, clients rather than agencies / recruiters and full web projects rather than the 'can you add a page to my Wordpress site?' type of enquiry. I'm still looking at ways to improve the site so I can get more of the quality enquires, and less unsuitable ones. I do spend a lot of my time emailing prospective clients to then learn they either don't have the budget, or it's just not the right type of project.

£180 is insanely cheap. That wouldn't even buy a day of my time. The time for general admin alone is worth more than that. It doesn't matter that it's just a 5 page site, there's a process for every web design and build, no matter what the size you have to follow and that takes time. I personally wouldn't go near a project that's less than £1,500. The type of clients who thinks it should cost a few hundred pounds are most likely the ones that will expect everything for very little, and give you a lot of pain. Take a look at this post by Sarah Parmenter - Why I can't build a website for £500 http://www.sazzy.co.uk/2009/04/why-i-cant-build-a-website-for-500/

Hi guys, I'm trying to think of small changes i could make to the site to get more enquiries. I get a good amount of traffic, but not enough quality enquiries. I was considering changing the 'Start a Project' button to Hire me instead. What do you think? Open to other suggestions! Thanks

Sorry it's taken me a while to reply to everyones feedback! @ luizarios I completely get your point, looking back at my original design I did have 'View my Full Portfolio' as the button text. The work that's there is just the featured/best bits, I want the button to make it clear that there is more to see, I have now modified it thanks to your feedback! @mantis Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that. I'll give it some thought and decide if I should reword that, thanks. @danieljoseph I see your point about the footer content not matching up with the content above, as that content is centred with not much text, and the footer is left aligned I don't think that will ever match up perfectly, so I'm happy to leave that as is for now. Thanks for the comment regarding my content, I was actually dreading that part as writing isn't one of my strong points (hence preferring to play with pictures!) I'm hoping to redo the hero image of the test at somepoint. It was done the day before I pushed the site live, so I feel it was a little rushed. I am happy with how it looks for now. Thanks for everyones comments!!

Hi, I put my site live a couple of weeks ago. I want to keep adding content to the blog over the upcoming weeks. It's responsive and built with Perch. My main focus of the site is for people to see my work, understand what I do, and ultimately contact me. http://www.sarahevansdesign.co.uk/

I recently used Perch for my new portfolio site. What I like about it is it puts your markup first, then the CMS plugs into the areas where you need it. It allowed me to create a site where I can keep the markup lean, resulting in speed improvement I wouldn’t have seen with other CMS options. I've used both Wordpress and Concrete5 before while these are great if you need to allow your clients complete control, I find the can be bloated as a consequence. I'd love to discuss Perch more with anyone else who uses it here. http://grabaperch.com/

Second one. It's more fitting with the second section of the content, and generally more of a cake feel to it. Ok now I want cake...

I like it. If you add anymore copy I'd consider changing the font, it's not the easiest to read. With the amount of copy you have I think it's fine, but it could end up being a bit straining if you add anymore. I agree with other comments, the capital H looks like two I's (FF Mac)

I too have gone back and fourth trying to decide between the two. I've been using Foundation and have been pretty happy with it. Bootstraps UI elements do look nicer but I would be restyling these anyway. I tend to mostly just use the grid stuff, which I think Foundation has the edge on. One thing I did notice today in Bootstraps favour was it was much easier to implement their Nav bar, Foundation required two more js files for it, I'm not really sure why? Another consideration would be if you use LESS (used by Bootstrap) or SASS (Foundation). I don't use either yet, but I plan to play with both and see what I take to - which I expect will have a baring on my framework choice. Of course Bootstrap 3 is on the way, matching Foundation 4 mobile first approach. IE8 and Foundation 4 - Take a look at this https://gist.github.com/zurbchris/5068210 I've just added it to a new site and seems to work just fine.

I think a WYSIWYG can be of use when starting out with any code. As long as you are seeing what's going on behind the scenes and using it to compliment your learning.

How does Bunker compare to Pancake?

Pancake looks pretty nice, espically the one off payment and client area. Does it do anything for working out the tax you owe? I guess it's American so no?

Hello, I'm interested to know how people work with building sites before going to the final live server. I've been using MAMP on the Mac for the initial build then moving it onto a subdomain of my own domain for approval before deploying onto the final web space. I'm keen to find out other ways of how people work, as it's an area I don't know much about. I do have a Synology NAS Diskstation which works as a web server but it's painfully slow.

It looks very dated. The blue outerglow on the nav is quite over the top and the 'SiteInfo' text by the logo looks like it's flouting and doesn't sit well with the logo. On a positive note the layout isn't over cluttered, and it's quite clean looking. But it does look like it's been designed by a developer rather than a designer.

Nice and clean design but it's too text heavy (SEO reasons?). The top text should sit under the banner image and more needs to be made of the product imagery, and their price points.

My site hass been nominated at CSS Design Awards. If you guys like it can you please vote for it here?CSS Design Awards Thanks guys! And thanks again for everyones feedback on the site.

The colours are a bit dull, have a look on kuler for some nice colours that will work together then spend sometime experimenting.

You're right (+1 for the keen eye!) I've updated that now. Thanks for spotting. @Zed The menu won't stick on ipad, this is international as iOS Safari didn't support position:fixed until iOS 5 and would get stuck in random places on the screen. I've added a Scroll To Top button now to make it easier to navigate. Although it still needs to use position:fixed, it not going to be as obvious as the menu would be, and hopefully most people have updated their software now. @annemarie Thank you for bringing this to my attention, it seems to pull in the right media query styles (same ones as an iPad portrait) but it seems to be displaying everything zoomed x2. I've searched for the issue but there seems to be no other comments from people having the same issue. At the moment I'm stumped on that one. Maybe something to do with it's retina display. Thank you everyone for your comments.

Thank you for the comments Gibson. After the feedback here I think I will look to implement a 'Back to top button'. Yes the left nav is suppose to shift slightly. It lets you scroll (slightly) until you hit the first divide line, the start of the nav, then 'sticks' there. I thought that was a nice little feature that draws your attention to the nav being in a unusal place, but if you're asking if that's intentional then maybe that's something I should reconsider.

The menu won't move for devices as it was very buggy. Should stick the the left hand side in any browser though.

The menu should come down with you as it's fixed, can I ask what browser you are using?

Hello, I put my redesign of my digital design portfolio live a few days ago and would really love some feedback. I'd been working on the site on and off for quite a long time and I'm sure you all know when you're been looking at a project for a long time it can be hard to have a subjective opinion on it. It's reponsive so check it out on a tablet and smartphone, I've not been able to test it on an android device so let me know if you spot anything odd. www.sarahevansdesigns.co.uk Thanks!

I'm going to answer this based on my experience... I did a 3 year course in Multimedia design, which was a little webdesign but at that time involved a lot of flash and I remember maybe one 3 hour lesson where we looked at html, that's it! When I left and started looking for a job I found there were no webdesign jobs that was just design, they all wanted html and css knowledge (tutors always said that was a 'different job') so I got my head down and for 3 months learnt how to code. The trouble with degrees in this field is that the industry moves so fast, the tutors have to keep up and a lot of them don't. You'll end up learning old techniques that they know well, but aren't really relevant for when you graduate and start looking for work. So going back to the question, 'Is a design degree necessary?' my response is no, but you have to be really dedicated to the field to learn in your own time. I've worked with both web designs/developers that have degrees and some that don't, the dedicated ones are just as good as those who went to uni for 3-4 years. I did however find my degree went a long way to get me my first job, since then I don't think my last two employers have even asked about it, my portfolio has got me where I am. If you don't go to uni I recommend learning from tutorials or doing some online video courses from lynda.com. I learnt more skills from that way than I did at uni. I really do feel uni was mostly only good for getting the bit of paper at the end. Make sure you learn about graphic design as well as designing for the web. One way I can tell if a designer has had a design education is what they do with the typography, just the simple things like line-height and kerning are really important. Best of luck.

Image mapping is a bit old school now, you are better off slicing the image up then each logo can have it's own Alt text, keeping google happy. You will also have a few small images rather than one big one.