My Website

S

shiftaltz

New Member
Hi everyone,

I have only just recently completed my website however at the time of making it, I did not know how CSS. Now I am getting to grips with it (slowly) I am wanting to recreate the website so it work better, but before I started I just wanted to know your opinions.

I am still at college and will hopefully be going to University this year as well as applying for work placements etc, so the website is mainly a portfolio site, however I do the odd bit of freelance and would like to use the site to promote myself as well.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts

Adam Deakin | Graphic Design
 
I won't say much about your design, which looks fine to my non-expert eyes. Your copy is a bit weak, though - it's very sparse in places, it has style flaws, from the technical point of view it has no well defined 'call to action,' and so on. Copywriting is a skill just like graphic design, part talent, part craftsmanship, and if it isn't one of your strong points you might want to think about getting specialist help - there is probably someone at your college studying English or marketing or something who would be able and willing to lend a hand.
 
Agreed in so much as I think the site's design and layout is fine and it looks nice enough and so on, the one thing for me is that the main text looks out of place and I don't think its appearance really fits in at all.

Aside from that though then it's a good start and I'd keep it when you're restarting with css.
 
One thing I'd say is that I'm getting sideways scroll at 1280 x 800, so no doubt your average user at 1024x768 has more sideways scroll to deal with. Get rid of your horizontal scrollbar if you don't want to annoy your viewers.
 
Hi

The one thing I would say is, however attractive you make your site, don't expect to get many enquiries from it for some time. Once you have finished making changes by adopting at least some of the advice from this forum and you are satisfied with it, the hardest part is the SEO.This will take an inordinate amount of time and can cost a great deal of money.

I suggest your best opportunity to acquire projects is by the direct approach in the first instance. Once you have carried out a number of jobs these can fe added to your site with any new designs you come up with. All the time further populating your site and submitting your website to Directories and so on, participate in forums and blogs ensuring the information you write about is valid and of interest and of course make sure you have linked back to your pages.
Similarly there are a huge amount of sites where you can post articles and press releases FOC which will give you further link backs which is the gold dust in SEO.

Make your family your driving force to spur you on when having to do things like cold calling which you may find difficult. It was my motivator when I started out.

Good luck.

Dischromatics Graphic Design,
Direct Mail Marketing
CD, DVD & Blu-ray
 
I would definitely remake it using CSS when you're comfortable using it, mainly because it makes adding new pages much quicker and easier, and also results in a much faster load time. I'm guessing this version was exported from Photoshop as it uses tables and a lot of images (which can affect your SEO).

It's well worth having a clean-looking portfolio before you apply to university. I think having a site online, with my own domain name and a few examples of work, definitely helped me get my place on my course. It isn't so much the content or the quality of the design that matters, but the fact that you've shown you're dedicated and are willing to invest time and money.
 
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