Hi everyone. I comment a lot on different people's designs on this site (sometimes I'm probably a bit blunt, but there you go) and now the time has come where I'd like to ask for advice and critique on my service-selling portfolio website, www.williamsgraphics.co.uk.

 

As with most people who run website design and development businesses, I'm always tweaking my site trying to refine its message and appearance. Just recently I made some changes and I'd just like some general feedback (hold no punches) on the design and function of the site.

 

I am running some A/B testing on it, so 50% of you may see some stars, and 50% of you wont, statistically speaking.

 

So please, http://www.williamsgraphics.co.uk take a look.

 

 

Edit: also, strangely enough, going from that link above seems to remove some icons in my design (possibly because of a redirect url or something) but going directly doesn't. If you're seeing blank boxes where you suspect an image should be, it's because of how you went there.

Edited August 8, 201412 yr by WilliamsGraphics

I am on my ipad but here are a few things I noticed

 

Your animation on the homepage is too slow, I scrolled down seeing text, huge blank area, text etc

"The process" section (text) is screwed up on ipad

You need to move your phone number to a more prominent place

-Laura garwood business card image missing

Not over keen on your blog archive layout

 

Other than those points, I think it's a very nice site... Good work

Not bad at all.... I like how when you browse down items/images appear. Has for the problem Fuzzy Logic had your site might not be compatible with Smartphones or tablets. Might want to look into that. Page Load time seems to be ok. I know maybe you are going for the clean homepage look at the top of the page. Maybe instead of having you contact info at the bottom you might include it at the top. Might attract more clients that way. Great Job though!

Thanks for the feedback guys. The mobile fade-in issue is something I'm aware of (though I fixed it after FuzzyLogic menioned it). It's not just the content fade in, my understanding of it is that on mobile devices, java dosen't compute on every 'tick' as it were. On desktop browsers, java can be called at each interval and it appears instant. On mobiles, there is a delay because each tick is a little slower (presumably to stop crashing or malware or something) so it appears to delay and then call in the function where it can.

 

This is also why parallax scrolling (with stellar.js at least) looks terrible on mobile, simply because its not computing properly.

 

I'm looking into redesigning both the blog and portfolio screen system, as well as rewriting the "about" section. And if you think it may help, I'll run some tests on putting my contact info at the top in clear view and seeing what happens. Once I've implemented it, I'll run A/B tests on it and come back to the forums with the results.

 

If anyone else would like to take a look at my site and let me know if you find anything wrong with it, or what you think would improve it, i'd like to read what you have to say.

Hi;

I love the logo though Im not sure the 'style' of the rest of the website goes with it; maybe it requires a little more white space and more use of the typeface you used on your logo - maybe in the menu...

Ah, one more thing - I think the enlarge on hover effect on the portfolio makes your work seem like lower quality work as the images resolution get worse, maybe load larger images and resize them to be smaller or load larger images and reveal more on hover.

@unbottled - I'm inclined to agree with you. The way in which the site has been built has meant that some of the original code that I wrote 5 years ago or so still functions in places as it slowly gets replaced. The blog and portfolio sections are the next to be revamped for a more modern look in keeping with my evolving style.

 

What I've learned from these brief pieces of feedback from everyone is slowly being put into place. Next up will be the change I make to my phonenumber putting it at the top. Possibly a widening of the navigation bar to give it more room.

 

I would like to ask if anyone else is still up for giving my site a little review, what do you think of the opening headline? I hate using marketing words that are beyond saturated like "quality" and "affordable" but I fear I may have become victim to those words...

Nice. It's a classy and contemporary website. A couple of observations. I don't think the crown logo says anything, to me it looks out of place with your brand.

 

Also, the opening headline sets a price expectation that you have to overcome. You can talk about value without setting a starting point that potential customers will have in their minds when they open a conversation with you.

 

I would change the statement "Make extra salary for your business ...". Salary is wages, not income. It should say revenue, income or profit (or anything else that refers to turnover). "essential marketing tool" should be "essential marketing tools". There are quite a few other sections of copy that would benefit from the polish of a pro copywriter.

Hi Nick,

 

Regarding the price in the opening headline, I felt exactly the same about it as you until I ran some A/B testing on that aspect. One version of the site had no price, and the other had that starting price listed. The bounce-rate was cut almost in half when the price was shown vs no price. Ultimately it led to more interaction with the site and more calls on my end. To get around the mental barrier of price when starting a conversation, I included a price guide on the website services page, but I fear it may not be getting seen as much as I'd like. Pricing is a delicate issue anyway, I feel like I may be under charging for the quality of product that I'm supplying vs my competitors in the area who all want to compete on price.

 

I like your point about salary, it's something I'd completely overlooked (and one of the main reasons I'm asking for feedback from unbiased people). I'm going to change that today and hopefully give the site another comb-over some time soon to fix anything else like that. Thanks.

I'm putting the price on my website right now!

Haha, I encourage you to conduct your own research first using analytics or something similar, but regarding "price tagline" vs "just tagline" my analytics let me know the following:

Probability of Outperforming Original: 98.2%