ZoomConcept Reviews
Minor Problem on http://www.bflow.in 1 shall we reduce the size of this part a bit and move it to the right hand side of the screen Minor Problem on http://www.bflow.in/travel/ 1 you dont nedd these here also as you have them on top ;) Minor Problem on http://www.bflow.in/about/ 1 align issue .... move these to left as you have the copy aligned to left. or center align the copy. i think that would be much better as you have everything center aligned on other pages too Serious Problem on http://www.bflow.in/travel/ 1 this looks very odd. have them like on the 3rd image Positive Feature on http://www.bflow.in 1 Nice logo you have there! like it Positive Feature on http://www.bflow.in/travel/westernus2008.php 1 no comments! looks neat :) New Idea on http://www.bflow.in 1 I would suggest you to have the image without the white space around it. and what about having the image fullscreen? you can have the logo and the navigation on top of the image as it is :) that would be good since you need to focus more on the images Summary:
Hi there, you have a good clean design there! like it. pls find my comments on the other side.
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Minor Problem on http://www.bflow.in 1 Some hover effects on the navigation would be nice. Either the tab color or the text color. -
Florian Brunner commented:you're right about that - gonna do something about it!
Minor Problem on http://www.bflow.in/about/ 1 These look like links. Not sure why you have the emphasis on them. -
Florian Brunner commented:
the idea behind it was to see on the first sight what that paragraph is about. but my about-page simply isn't even close to being finished... i'm just too lazy for that :/
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Patrick Niebrzydowski commented:I'd suggest using headers if that is your intentions.
2 This is goofy. I would suggest putting it all on one line 3 This bothers me for some reason. The "correct" spelling is "E-mail". Not sure if that differs depending on culture and/or different standards though. Either way, I don't think it really matters how you spell it since people know what it is, it just looks funny to me to see it that way. Serious Problem on http://www.bflow.in/travel/ 1 This is probably my biggest beef with the site. The subnavigation here is pretty awkward. The links move around on the page. I see what you're doing with sort of "previous" and "next" type navigation, it just comes off odd to me because of the way the photos themselves are laid out. Also have to think about what will happen when you travel to more than 5-6 places and you run out of horizontal space. Might not be an issue, but just something to think about for the future. -
Florian Brunner commented:
true! i did this subnavigation in the thinking of "better something than nothing"... the problem is that i can't think about a good way to integrate a subnavigation into the current design. that's my problem with it!
Positive Feature on http://www.bflow.in/travel/ 1 I just love this photo. You should put it first! -
Florian Brunner commented:
thanks :)
Other on http://www.bflow.in 1 It's probably not a "problem" so much, but I don't really like the use of the word other. It doesn't really have much meaning. Unfortunately I don't have another suggestion, it just kind of says "couldn't think of another section" or something to me. -
Florian Brunner commented:
yeah i know. i also dont like it. but i need a category for the stuff that i'm not photographing regularily... miscellaneous would maybe be better? so if i make it "misc" ? i don't know.
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Patrick Niebrzydowski commented:
Yeah I thought of Miscellaneous, but it's a bit long and awkward sounding, and I'm not sure abbreviating is the best either. How about something like "Assorted" or "Various." Not sure those are much different than "Other" though. Trying to come up with something more active sounding but failing.
Summary:
First of all, you have some pretty neat pictures. Nice job. Is the lightning pic from Dominican Republic natural light? That's a great shot.
I think the site does exactly what you want it to. It focuses on the pictures, it's pretty easy to navigate and has a good minimalistic design.
I'm surprised to be saying this, but I think you actually could cycle the pics on the home page a bit faster. There's nothing to read, and they're meant more for teasing than for display. They seem to be about 3 seconds? I think you could go for 2 and be okay. Would allow you to show more off without really losing anything.
The weakest part of the site is definitely the About section. I think it's a bit funny that you are a photographer and have no photos on the page. Work on that one quite a bit. I think it might be too wide for a one-column layout. Try putting the info about you (the first paragraph) in a sidebar to the right and keep the main content area about your work/passion. And then add a bit of imagery somewhere on the page, even just a picture of you for example.
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Florian Brunner commented:
Thanks alot for your feedback!
Yeah the lightning was real. I put my camera on a tripod and let it fire every 5 seconds for maybe half an hour. luckily i got this great shot :)
Ok I'm going to try this with an intervall of 2 seconds. I kept it that slow to not give the visitor an somehow hectic impression or feeling.
You are absolutely right about my About section! Honestly I hate it ^^ on my last website the About section was "under construction" for the whole time my website was online -.- But I really have to put some effort into this part of the site because it's one of the most viewed... thanks for remembering me of that!
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Positive Feature Pics would be the USP's
I feel Pics would be the USP of your site. It will be the main thing one would like to see.New Idea Make it a travel blog kind of thing
Please put some interesting Travel Blog kind of content which will make this site more attractive as well as it will pull more visitors. Amazing pics with real life Travel experience will make it a good blend.-
Florian Brunner commented:
yeah good idea! was already thinking about that some times...
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Minor Problem on http://www.bflow.in/travel/westernus2008.php 1 I understand why these move along, but I don't like it. I don't want to be chasing the navigation around the page. Serious Problem on http://www.bflow.in/travel/ 1 These aren't obvious links to other galleries, it took me a while to figure out I could click on them Positive Feature on http://www.bflow.in 1 Simple and not distracting, whilst still being obvious 2 good use of hover tab navigation New Idea on http://www.bflow.in 1 Scrolls too fast, and I'd prefer some user navigation. I'd also like a link to the gallery the image is in, so when I click on an image I like I get taken to more of them. Summary:
Overall I like the look and feel of the site, it's well designed and the focus is clearly on the photographs.
In contrast to one of the other reviewers, I feel that the slideshow on the home page is too fast. I've only just started studying a photograph when it's moved onto the next, and there's no user controls for me to go back. It puts me off looking further at the site.
What happens to the gallery pages if there are more photographs? Does the page get longer or is it paginated? My preference would be for pagination, users generally don't want to scroll down through lots of thumbnails.
My main criticisms are in the notes, but overall I like the look and feel of the site, and think it achieves it's objectives well. The site stands out from other photography portfolios and draws attention to the photographs.
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Florian Brunner commented:
Thank you very much for the really helpful review!
I think you are right about the slideshow. I changed it 2 weeks ago after the last review and wanted to test it this way. But it's a bit hectic I think. I'm going to change that again and the idea with the link to the gallery the photo comes from is also great!
Right now the page simply gets longer, the more pictures it contains. I think 4 rows of pictures (so 12 single pictures) are still easy to overview and my aim is not to showcase more than those 12 pictures in every category. In my opinion it's better to showcase only a few but really good pictures than overwhelming the visitor with hundreds of OKish pictures. Long story short: I won't need a pagination ^^
And the navigation really seems to be a big problem. I also don't really like it the way it is right now. Honestly, I simply didn't have an idea how to make better and well integrated into the design. Do you have an idea?
Thanks again for your great review!!!
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Neil Wilson commented:My thoughts about the nav would be to centralise them all, and put them inside a tab like container which pops up when selected or active.
That way it's obvious they're links and it stays consistent with your main navigation.
I would also consider using jquery to reload just the images on the page when a new gallery is selected.
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Minor Problem Logo size and spacing
logo seems to be too large - make it smaller and take care about top and bottom margins!Summary:
Clean and simple but the logo seems to be kinda huge. On a side note, making main navig font 2px smaller wouldn't harm readability but make it look even more elegant.
Positive Feature This is a great layout
Hi Flo, I love this layout and I think it would translate very well into many languages (should people use their browser to translate). I like the colour scheme and simplicity of the logos used. Good job! Sarah D
Thanks alot for your review :)
just need to say something to your comments: i will definately try positioning the social bar on the right... never did it so far.
the "share" icons on the bottom are needed because they are for like, retweet and +1 this site. the social bar on the left is just for contacting me... so you can email me and find me on facebook, twitter and flickr - but this shows a problem: its obviously not intuitve what this social bar is for. need to solve that problem somehow. thanks for showing :)
yeah gonna rethink the design of the submenu! but just couldn't think of a good way that could be integrated in the existing design...
thanks alot :)