• Gender: Male
  • From: Brighton, UK
  • Registered: 2009-05-21
  • Posts: 12

Topic: What do you think of my online portfolio?

http://www.halfdouble.com

Fire away.

Just note that I am firstly a designer and then a coder. I would like to correct any coding errors if any so I'm hoping for your constructive criticism.

Last edited by halfdouble (2009-06-04 07:50:17)

2 Reply by lm

  • lm
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  • Gender: Female
  • From: The Netherlands
  • Registered: 2008-12-20
  • Posts: 2,770

Re: What do you think of my online portfolio?

A few things:
A lot is going on in the layout - it looks good,  but I'm missing big headings to separate content more clearly - at least on home page ( you have them on a left but may be highlight them in color or make them bigger?. Also could be good to add some extra styling to the text elements, especially on other pages.

  • Gender: Male
  • From: Brighton, UK
  • Registered: 2009-05-21
  • Posts: 12

Re: What do you think of my online portfolio?

Yeah I was thinking about the text too, especially the top heading on pretty much all the pages. About the home page though, what part of the text are you talking about exactly?

4 Reply by lm

  • lm
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  • Gender: Female
  • From: The Netherlands
  • Registered: 2008-12-20
  • Posts: 2,770

Re: What do you think of my online portfolio?

I thought the content on home page would have more structure if you highlight "Latest work" and "Featured work".
There is no that much of a text on Home page but in a spaces between the images it still could have some aligning or some styling to it.
At the b0ttom of Home page there are couple of sentenses of About info - they seems left uncared.
But in general again, all looks ok.

  • Registered: 2009-06-02
  • Posts: 25

Re: What do you think of my online portfolio?

You've shown some great design technique on the HOME page. It's beautiful work. But it's not communicating what the viewer should do next. I'm overwhelmed (over-communication creates confusion.) This is a matter of emphasis. "If you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing." I don't have a fast solution on that.

When a site has a "search field" in the top right corner (the right place), it's a subliminal indicator the site is "bloated." Doesn't matter if it is or not, it's like a sign saying, "There's just too much stuff here. You're going to need help finding anything." Is this feature really necessary for your portfolio website? Frequently, we think it adds credibility but in reality it can put people off "scent." I'll look a little deeper beyond the HOME page in a moment.

More comments coming.

  • Registered: 2009-06-02
  • Posts: 25

Re: What do you think of my online portfolio?

Your image work is rich and has lots of texture. But on the invisible side, the images are slowing down the load time. Investigate optimization alternatives like different image formats without compromising your art. Designers tend to think viewers care about image quality. It's actually down the list somewhere after speed, usability, navigation, and content. Yes. Even on portfolio sites. Viewers expect a little longer load time on portfolio sites but not as long as your HOME page is presently. The HOME page is NOT your portfolio. It's the pages that come after that. So viewers still have high expectations on that first page for load time.

It's taking 15 to 30 seconds to load the HOME page. You're target should be 7 seconds on highspeed or less. At 30 seconds, usability testing has shown, you've lost half your visitors already. Bail out. Speed is a transparent credibility feature. Viewers only notice slow sites not fast ones.

You're code looks beautiful. I'm jealous.

The page tile says design portfolio but it doesn't appear on the page. I'm a designer and on the HOME page I can't tell what it is you are "selling." After that on linked pages, it's obvious. The HOME page should tell me what you do, who you are, and why I should care. Just the title isn't sufficient. It's good for the search engines but not enough for a viewer. Make me want to explorer and discover.

If you want design work, consider a "Hire Me" link and page. This has been shown to improve portfolio websites response. Assuming you want work, of course.

Here's and example of how to optimize some images on the HOME page. The HOME page is the most critical. The background image is about 90K PNG. I switched it to a low color depth in GIF to half the file size, for me the effect is the same with much faster loading. You might also be creative with a smaller tiling effect that gives similar "theme" results.

The full-width banner images could be reduced to 30% of original weight by converting to high quality JPEGs. Small images like "think_sm-resizecrop-214-117.png" could be reduced 10 fold by using GIFs.

Those are just some examples.

Also, another way to speed up your pages is using GZIP-PHP to compress the code on-the-fly. Do you have PHP functions on your server / host? If so, I can tell you how to do this.

My challenge to you is finding out how fast you can make this site really load. Visitors will love you for it.