New website - traffic wanted.....

[Sportera]

I enjoyed your website, you have some very good work. About the squares, I agree it would be better if I didn't have to mouse over it to see whats there. A monor detail IMO. The site is clean and classy, just as it should be to show your art.
Well done.

[Stephanie Brim]

I would definitely go with a simpler text menu than the boxes. I do love the layout, though, and your work is very good.

[catem]

I echo the positive comments above, I found the site easy to navigate and good to look at.

On thing I wondered is if it might be a good idea to have some of the thumbnails as crops of the full photos, the detail in some of them gets very teeny, could make them more eye-catching...

I think your 'Moments in Time' gallery is outstanding

Cate

[Steve Smith]

I agree with the others. Nice fast website, good images, just don't like the grey boxes.

I see that you are pre-loading the images to get the speed up. A good idea which is not that common (at least, not amongst home created websites). I should try to add pre-load to my site.


Steve.

[RebeccaSC]

Can I say a very big thank you to all of you that have taken the time to check out the site and feedback to me. I will take all the comments on board and have a think about taking the advice to make the site more friendly.

The comments regarding my work are so encouraging I can't tell you. I'm self taught and you don't know if you're doing the right thing or if you're any good when you look at everyone elses work sometimes you think "nerve of me"!!

I will also have some fun using the search engines.

Many many thanks

Rebecca x

[colrehogan]

I looked at your site at home and at work. The site is relatively quick to load on dialup. You might want to consider using a larger text font. My eyes aren't bad, but that font is pretty small on my monitors.

[thefizz]

Looks good to me Rebecca, very easy to navigate but I also don't like the grey boxes.

"where film and chemicals rule and digital/photoshop are just dirty words." You gotta just love that line.

Well done,
Peter

[crispinuk]

Hello, I'm a bit late to the party but I thought I'd add my thoughts in case they're of any use.
Google has indexed every page in your website, which is good, but I think there are a few things that you could do to increase the likelihood of your site appearing in the first few pages of anyone's search results.
You've added 'keyword' tags and included misspellings of your name, so you're ahead of the game there, however you've used the same keywords on every page. I would suggest using the existing keywords on the 'intro' page but putting different keywords on every other page, that relate to the content of that particular page (maybe including your name as well, but only correctly spelt). It is considered advantageous for the keywords to be relevant to any text in the page as well.
Similarly, make the 'title' tag relevant to each page, e.g.
"The photography of Rebecca Sichel Coates" for the intro
"The photography of Rebecca Sichel Coates Landscapes" for the landscapes thumbnail page, etc

On the actual main image pages you do not appear to have used the 'alt' and 'title' tags for the image. A friend of mine has a photography website and the majority of search engine referrals come from Google Images searches. Using the alt and title tags for the main image will help you appear nearer the top of the pile, if at all.

And finally, if someone gets referred to one of your main image pages from a search engine it is difficult to get to the rest of the site. The 'back' navigation link invokes the browsers 'previous page' function, which just takes you back to the search engine results, and it took me a couple of tries before I accidently found the 'roll-over rectangles'. I would make the 'back' text link directly to the thumbnail page and either put a visible 'home' link, or perhaps make the 'The photography of Rebecca Sichel Coates' banner at the top a hyper-link to the home page (incidently as this is a graphic you should also fill in the 'alt' and 'title' tags).

Other than that I think it's a fantastic web site. Personally I like the roll over images on the intro page, they some how increase my curiosity, but the navigation bar on the subsequent pages should be more 'obvious'.

[Stoo Batchelor]

Hello, I'm a bit late to the party

Maybe a little bit late but very informative none the less. Very helpfull.

Thanks for posting

Stoo

[RebeccaSC]

Better late than never. Your comments are great and I'm copying & pasting after this to send them to my webmaking man so he can impliment the suggestions asap.

thanks for that I appreciate it very much

Rebecca

http://www.rebecca-sichelcoates.com