Web Analysis 3

After creating my personal portfolio website, I had two professionals in the field review it. The first is Dan Griffin, a website and app developer. The second is Ryan Heldenbrand, the web content developer at Mosaic.

Dan’s feedback including both things he loved about my website as well as some things I could change to make it better. For navigation and content flow, he said he loved that my voice can be heard in my content. Critiques for these aspects including being wary of putting my cellphone number online, as bots could pick it up. Instead, he suggested funneling people through my contact form on my site.

Dan also told me to explore adding some more iconography to help break up text and offer visual clues as to what blocks of information are about. He recommended I use the site flaticon.com to find many different styles of icons, most of which are free. He also said I could use these to match the colors I used for each of my pages (bio, resume and work), which I think is a great idea.

For stylings, Dan said that my color choices were great. He really liked my use of bold colors, as it draws the eye to them. He also liked how I paired my content with certain colors and pointed out that this created a consistent experience, especially since there’s a lot of content. I will definitely continue to use color and content pairing in the future.

One thing I could improve on with colors according to Dan is color contrast. He does like my non-white background, but since I used gray text it lowers the contrast ratio. Also, the yellow-green I used for my work buttons and page has a lower contract than the rest of the text and colors on the site, which makes it harder to read or see for those who are color blind or hard of sight. I plan on changing this color to one with a higher contrast to improve accessibility.

For some final comments, Dan said he would like to see some case examples of my work and ethic together. He said I had a nice set of examples of work but that I could highlight some of my favorites. I am working on adding more content now and might add a spot on my homepage to feature some of my best or favorite work.

As for Ryan Heldenbrand, he gave me some more general guidelines and tips that he’s found many people often struggle with. For his general feedback, he suggested adding some specific testimonials from past clients. I think I could maybe add something from the site my group created for Gina’s Cafe.

Both Ryan and Dan also brought up checking the mobile version of the site. Though I briefly looked at it, I did not thoroughly examine my mobile version or edit it. They both mentioned how many people are moving to using mobile devices to view websites, so it is important to make sure both the desktop and mobile versions are easy to navigate and look great.

For my site specifically, Ryan said that it looks really nice and clean and was easy to navigate. I plan on using his general tips on mobile sites the most.

I think making these few edits to my site will help with the aesthetic aspect and usability in terms of color contrast and readability. The main thing I need to do to prepare myself for my professional career is adding content. I was lacking examples of my work before this semester but now I have more examples of writing in addition to videos and publication design elements that I did not have before.