New portfolio website critique needed

Hi,

I have just taken the leap to go freelancing full time after squeezing it into my spare time for too long.

I've finally got my website up and running and would love to get some of your professional opinions on it: Orange Grove Designs - Web Design Services

Thanks

 

Very well done. Great use of colour and I like the "orange grove" on the right side. I wonder if you could've gotten the hover effect on the menu without using images to get better optimisation. Love the design though.

 

I like the orange tree...I think it is fresh but a little too busy for a portfolio site. Keep the graphics to a minimum. I guess portfolio sites should also be like gallery walls...or models for that matter bland or plain so that they don’t distract from the works on display.

I love the design of the March motor home site. I love the different tones of the green. This graphic style could work well on your portfolio site. Your orange grove logo could look a lot less busy if it were single colour of more abstract rather than a direct representation of orange leaves.

Hope it helps
DG

 

I like the design, very clean and professional.

I would agree with the above comment though, I think the primary navigation could look cleaner.

You might also want to look at the spacing between certain elements (it feels a little bunched up) - esp. the orange headings and copy below each.

Hope this helps - keep up the good work!

 

Hi,
I really like its design and its pretty catchy,nice and clean.Good to know that you are providing search engine optimization as well.
thanks!

 

I like it a lot I would add stuff like animated banner to make it catch the visitor's eye.

Check out this one I used it a lot in projects - Nivo Slider - The Most Awesome jQuery Image Slider

 

You could try here Website SEO Tool | Website Grader for some objective fault finding. I like the look of the site but as you are probably aware the performance is important. The site scores 49/100 and there are some really simple things that could be rectified for example no ALT text on four of the images. I am impressed with th 87 inbound links and your website has an Alexa rank of 17,995,989 which is in the top 57.867 % of all websites which is good for a new website. Well done.
Alan

 

Thanks for all your responses. And particular thanks to Alan for all those stats. I will definitely be looking at the site to help some more with my SEO efforts.

Thanks!

 

It's got quite a "game forum" feel to it.

Also i think the large background image is a little bit odd and unrelated.

Smaller details - I don't get the Star-o-meter. I don't see how clicking stars is related to a theme change. Have numbers or something: Theme 1 Theme 2 Theme 3. That little box should stay open all the time too I think.

 

I like it, the user interface is pretty straight forward and easy to navigate.