[TheForge] Mike Wolfe web site

[Catherine Jo Morgan]

First thing that loaded was the title (good) and I love the font. It
looks exactly right for your work.
 
First page loads slowly for a first page. Aim at 10 seconds or less.
This took quite a bit longer.
 
Really, only the title needs to be in the special font. IMO, Arial or
any non-serif text would work fine for the other text on the page. You
can use CSS to do this for the whole site at once. This will enable you
to make changes quickly. For example, if all the contact info is in one
footer that is included with every page, you can change your phone
number quickly. If you have to make new images, then switch them on
every page....you get the idea.
 
I'm not sure why pictures that small are so many kb. Have you tried a
lower quality compression? All you really want is to give people the
idea of your work. They can see maximum quality large photos once you've
caught their attention. But if the page loads slowly, you may never get
that far.
 
Seems as if the whole first page is really images, since your text is a
special font. This makes it slow. Also, if a viewer has their browser
set to not show images (to speed it up) - you're up the creek. At least
use alt.text for each image. Otherwise, search engine robots will only
see the image file names. That's just not enough to get you good page
rankings. And in some browsers, the alt text will show up when the
viewer hovers the mouse over the image, so they can see the work's title
and whatever else you say there - dimensions, date, material, location,
whatever.
 
Now, to be picky, one picture is slightly different in height, so it
looks odd. And by using text in images, some text looks crowded. Again,
I think you'd be better off using regular text. It will be more readable
too. By the time you get to the contact info, the address and phone are
pretty hard to read. Don't put obstacles in the way of your potential
clients.
 
When I clicked on Interior - even slower to load. I'd advise thumbnails.
Let people click on them to get big pictures. They can also read more
description with the big pictures. I'd aim at 20 seconds download time
for these inside thumbnail pages. (I'm talking about 20 seconds at
28kb/download.) If you do your thumbnails 
 
Didn't check how well your site reads at different resolutions or in
different browsers. You can check at anybrowser.com, for example.
 
Well, that's enough for now. Your work deserves a superb site, and your
photos look good. Just add some good text that search engines can find.
Include a page about yourself, your experience, approach, etc.
 
I'm working on my own site so you'll have a chance to critique mine
soon.
 
Catherine Jo Morgan
Morgan Sculpture
Iron and mixed media vessels
cjmorgan@hemc.net
706-754-3812
 
online artist journal: http://radio.weblogs.com/0120691/
 


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