4 Reviews2 Votes0 Favorites449 Views
Concept Reviews
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Well, I must say, its a very clean looking design. I like it.
Here are a few suggestions:
Home Page
1) Make a current class. (I think adding a dark grey (footer color) background to the current link and making the font color either pinkish or white.
2) You are missing content! I am sure you have heard the phrase "content is king", your missing your content.
Think about answering these questions:
A) What kind of web and graphic services does this guy offer?
B} Who is Matthew Ruddy and why should I trust him with my website?
C) These are nice websites, but how do I know that the customer was satisfied with Matthew's work?
Here are my suggested solutions:
A) Add a services page along with a small section on the home page that lists your services. Of course, go into some depth on your services page.
B) About me page! Also, include a short introduction on the home page.
C) Client testimonials before the contact section or on the about page.
3) Call to action (CTA), you need a CTA above the fold of the website. Entise your viewers and encourage them to take the next step. (Get a free quote!, Learn how I can help your business!, Need a website?, I'm Available for Work!)
Gallery Page
1) Your gallery page looks a little boring. It just doesn't look exciting. Maybe try something like this: http://nickvanbeers.deviantart.com/art/Portfolio-Nick-van-Beers-155053421
Project Page
1) I cant read the text too well on the project page. Also, no one really wants to read a block of text. Usually people offer what they did and a testimonial from the client.
2) I would try to make the links to the other projects more obvious. At first, not only was it hard to read, but I had no idea why those links were there and what they were for.
That's it for now, good luck. ;)
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Justin Edelson commented:Age is nothing.
I got my first web design client when I was 15. Whether your buying a beer or looking for the clients, the trick is confidence.
If you are confident, you have a nice portfolio, and you have GOOD content, people will hire you. Keep in mind, don't always depend on your website for work, web design is a very competitive field and your website isnt going to get too many hits from search engines.
My main source of business is word-of-mouth. At first I built my grandparents a website, they liked my work and refereed me to their friends. They also liked my work and referred me to their friends.
Now, two years later, when I need some extra cash, I tell my past clients that I am looking for work and they were refer me.
Project Page
Check this out, this is obviously very rough, but it's what I had in mind.
http://justinledelson.com/public/projects.png
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Luke Marohn commented:Wicked Review Justin +1 and @matthew, even though age is nothing, It is still something people will judge you on. Dont flaunt That your 16, unless the client mentions it. People often think experience comes with age, however with you and me (14 and 16) Surely thats not the case :)
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Justin Edelson commented:
Thanks Luke.
@Luke and @Matthew, if there is one thing that I have learned from freelancing as a teenager, its that all it takes is confidence and a good vocabulary.
Before sending emails, make sure you reread it and check for errors. When talking on the phone, write everything down (things for mac) and think before you respond.
The reason an adult will most likely go with you is probably going to be because of your price. Lets face it, are you going to have the guts to charge someone a few grand for a website? Why not settle for less, after all, your living at your parent's house and you don't have any bills.
Just keep in mind, don't ruin the industry with your low price tags. Educate your clients and explain to them WHY your price is cheaper than most adult freelancers. Once they understand, not only will your client be inclined to choose you, but your fellow colleagues will appreciate the fact that you aren't running the web industry into the mud.
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Overall this is a nice clean design. You are heading in the right direction.
- I would not ever use "Coming Soon" on a website. (I understand that this is a work in progress and it may be there as a place holder only.) This can give the impression you do not complete your tasks.
- On one of your examples in your gallery I noticed "No Preview Available", I would remove this statement. Sometimes if they don't know an option is not available they won't think twice about. But with that statement you have brought attention to something that really doesn't need attention.
- As far as the age goes - Your about page can be about your skills and what you bring to the table. There is no reason to mention your age. Older designers don't mention their ages. Again don't bring attention to something that doesn't need the attention. Your skills are what needs the attention.
- It has clean and professional look, but it lacks pizzaz.
- If you lack the skills to write "Great Content", find someone that does have that skill. If you have a hard time selling yourself find someone that believes in you to help you.
You have great potential, keep up the work and don't let anyone bring you down because of your age.
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Matthew Ruddy commented:
Thanks for your review. Agree with that you have said. However, how do you think I could add pizzaz to it?
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Syneace Beard commented:I know it needs something, but I also do not want to suggest something that takes away from the rest of the design. The one thing I would work with is more color. You have the bits of red in your name and a few other places. Maybe take that color to your background and mix the gray with the red as a gradient. Keeping the pattern you already have.
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Hey Matthew nice design you have here my friend.
Some suggestions i have to make:
The background image looks weird for me, maybe you should try to reduce its opacity or change its color to a light grey. (it looks blue for me)
In my opinion you could reduce the rotative banner shadow too, so users will be more focused on its content.
The small work boxes border isn`t matching the rest of the layout.
The "Click me for a free quote" text is almost invisible and in a different size from the rest of the text.
I don`t really like the giant contact form, the textfields are so big, and people will never use all that space, maybe you could use this space for other puporse.
Instead of using a background color for the rotative banner why don`t you make the designs fill all the width?
I really like your logo, hope it helps :P
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Matthew Ruddy commented:
Thanks for your review, really appreciate everything you've said and I agree with a lot of it.
I can assure you the background is only greys. Done photoshop testing and none of the colours have any shades of blue. Maybe you need to adjust your screen? It could be possibly however that it may look slighly blue to some but I guess I cannot control that :S
The rotator shadow; note taken. Will adjust that a slight bit, it's something I sortof noticed myself before hand but did nothing about.
Small boxes, I'll change their border to the same colour as the slider's border. Thanks.
The click for a free quote text is deliberatly smaller. Just thought it sorta spiced things up typography wise. The colour I will change, but not the size of the text. Personally I like it :)
Contact form I do agree with, however the contact forms uses cforms which is quite difficult to modify. If the text boxes are not full width, the label doesn't appear on top of them (instead it appears to the left of the text box slighty off centred which looks rather ugly). I have scanned the PHP's files many times and just cannot seem to find a way to get the labels to appear above the texts boxes without them being full width; my PHP knowledge isn't that advanced I guess.
I've tried making the designs full with on the slider before and it just didn't seem to look nice. Aislingweirphotography.com's website has a large slider on it's frontpage also, so when used full width all I could fit in was the top third of the page; I couldn't even fit the whole slider into the image. For pages such as this, using a background image on the image alllows me to make the screenshot of the site smaller and therefore show more of it giving a better picture to the viewer. I'll experiment with it although :)
Thanks a million again for your review. Appreciate it. :D
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Matthew Ruddy commented:
Just letting you know, having checked the 'recent posts' border colour, it is the same as the border colour of the slider (#ccc). What do you mean by not matching the rest of the layout? Do you think it doesn't look correct?
Thanks again, Matthew.
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I've got to agree with everyone else so far: this is a really clean and confident design.
I particularly like the image slider. Most sliders tend to look pretty similar and although this one is very simple the curved shadow makes it look quite distinctive.
Yes, it's lacking some search engine friendly content, but it shouldn't take much to sort that out.
In my opinion the one weakness is the logo.
The rest of the elements on the page are strong and visually dominant and the logo gets a bit lost. I'm not sure what to suggest, but something bold and distinctive with a little more personality would help.
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Matthew Ruddy commented:
Hi. I agree with most of what your saying and your review is greatly appreciated :) There's not much I can do about the logo; I just got my business cards the other day which contain the same logo so the two sort of match so I don't think I'll change it until I've run out of cards :)
As for search engine friendly content what exactly do you mean? Anything you have in mind?
Thanks again! Matthew.
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David Hier commented:In which case, you might want to make the logo a bit larger so that it doesn't get lost on the page.
As far as content is concerned, you really need some copy explaining the kind of work you do (developer, designer etc.). SEs need to see content/text relevant to the kind of services you are offering and will rank your site accordingly. If there is little information about web design SEs will be assumed that your site has little to offer people searching for information on web design.
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Thanks, really appreciate your review!
I must say to be honest I agree with everything you say and will do a lot of what you've said. In terms of the content, it's next on my list and something I will do. I've always been a bit afraid to do an 'about me' page; I'm only 16 years old and I'm worried my age by itself will scare people away (not sure if this is daft or not).
As for the projects page, how do you think I could implement the links to other projects better?