Opinion's on homepage design

[garyjohnson]

Hello I have made a website for a cake making business and its my first website I am making for a customer and would like some input from some outsiders. I have only made the home page because I am not sure about my layout and if it looks good. Please comment any changes I could do to make the web page better looking or tell me if you think its suitable for a cake making website. I can handle criticism so don't be afraid to hurt my feelings lol. Here is a picture of the home page. The images are slide shows and change pictures every 5 seconds.

[<M/>]

The site is pretty well layed out and congrats on creating your first website. Do you have a working link of the site? Also, what i recommend you do is start "modernizing" the design adding more functions to the site.

[garyjohnson]

Thanks for the input! And its only on my local sever right now so there is no link. But what functions could I add?

[LastMitch]

Hello I have made a website for a cake making business and its my first website I am making for a customer and would like some input from some outsiders.

Does this run on a platform or it's just an regular website? It looks very nice!

[garyjohnson]

@LastMitch Thanks! and its just a regular site, to be honest I don't know what you mean by a platform lol.

[LastMitch]

I don't know what you mean by a platform lol.

Platforms are CMS like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla.

I assume you are using some sort of jQuery gallery code with your website.

[<M/>]

Thanks for the input! And its only on my local sever right now so there is no link. But what functions could I add?

Well, when i say function, i really mean something that is quite dynamic and keeps the site fresh and alive compared to static, plain old html pages. (i don't use a very good definition of function, but just imagine i just said, "more dynamic").

So you can turn this into a blog, add some forms, etc. There is countless things you can do. the more you challenge yourself, the greater you will become and you never know where you may end up...

[Assembly Guy]

Looks nice, but there's not enough contrast between the main page title and the background. Maybe pick the shadow colour up a tiny bit or something? I'm no professional designer, just a gut feeling.

Or perhaps change the title colour to the same pink that you're using for borders elsewhere on the page.

Or maybe add a partially opaque div (maybe 30%-50%) behind all of the page content which stretches the same width as the content, and 100% of the window height.

[BMXDad]

Couple things I see ...

• More contrast between background colors and foreground (text) colors.
• You might consider using a frame work ... my suggestion is the Twitter booststrap one:
  http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/index.html
• Make sure you optimize your pictures ... be sure to re-scale them to the size your using. No need to have a 3000px X 1500px image to be shown in a 300px X 150px size. Use png for big stuff.
• Check/Verify all your links and mailto's. There are some bad mailto's on this site, which I assume is yours ... ie: [e-mail]? It shows as [e-mail] though.
  http://cakesbystewart.net/

PM me if you need any help ... I do free stuff for small business' :-)

[TonyG_cyprus]

@gary, your site, as far as we can tell is 1,000,000 percent better than the 'build your own' 'no knowledge required, but we will add-in 500 times more code than is needed' site that @ggamble refers to!
Personally, I use a free server (byethost my fave) to preview 'live' sites, seems to give a better feel than a dev server, and you can pass on a link.

[EvolutionFallen]

I agree as far as contrast -- The images at the top blend too much with the background, as well as the footer text.
Consider adding navigation to the footer as well. A sitemap link here would be a good idea too, as well as social media links if your client has FB/Twitter pages.

PS - It's spelled "Gallery" ;-)

[josverhoeff]

If you make the background lighter, maybe cream colored, the contrast will be better and your site will look "happier"

[BMXDad]

@TonyG_cyprus ... Just a little FYI ... Bootstrap is a framework to build on, you still need knowledge of Typography, Color usgae, Usability and Accessability to make a good site that anyone can use, and as for the '500 times more code than is needed' ... thats why you take only what you need, which tells me you have no clue on what it is. Why reinvent the wheel each time you make a car?

@garyjohnson ... Bootstrap and others like it help, both professional and hobbist alike. The people who create and maintain it are drivers in what you see today. Why waste that talent? Check it out yourself and get some ideas on how they are doing things. Good luck with the site ...

[garyjohnson]

Thanks for all the adive I greatly appreciate it!

@ggamble The post you said about the website cakesbystewart.net is not my site. The owner of that site asked me to redesign it, because as you can tell it has many problems.

[Lincoln65]

Congratulation. Well this is a nice work man. I suggest you (if you want), create a back ground picture behind heading and make more buttons like recipes or some other, do more bright heading for attraction. Overall a very good work.