Hi all—My website is relatively clean and simple but I would still be very interested to know how I might make it better. Any feedback or thoughts would be appreciated! 
Thank you!
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Hey Anthony,
Excellent: Clear, efficient, showcases all of your activities very well, and leaves no doubt what you’re all about. Exactly what I’d expect.
A few nitpicks:
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The copyright notification in the footer is 2 years out of date.
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When I clicked on a thumb in the paintings gallery, the image that showed up in the lightbox for many of them wasn’t significantly bigger than the thumbnail, and I wanted to see bigger images. Seemed like this was the case for many of the older images.
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I wanted to icons in the services and fun facts sections of the about page to link to link to more info - for instance, what kind of consulting do you do?
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I felt like the articles and resources menu items could be merged into one entity - I wasn’t entirely sure why they needed to be separate buckets.
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IF your goal is to drive traffic to your site and keep it there for a while (and it may well not be), you might want to consider moving the social media buttons from the upper right menu down to the footer. As it is, they’re providing viewers with a very easy path out of your website, and once they get into FaceBookLand they’re unlikely to return. That all depends on your objectives for the site.
I wish more artists had such a clean and crisp site.
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Jeff----thank you x100000 for such a thoughtful and comprehensive analysis. I will begin implementing these changes this coming week.
Very generous use of your time and expertise,
Thank you again my friend,
Anthony
PS–I will forward your feedback to Victoria as well. She will be thrilled.
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Think of it as a very modest repayment for the time and generosity you’ve extended to all of us 
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I like it. It’s clean and functional and easy to navigate, and the gallery does a good job showcasing the work. Like Jeffrey, I think it would be great to see larger images in the gallery, or possibly a few enlarged crops of details for each painting. Your rendering is so fine and detailed, I find that I always want to get a closer look.
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Thank you so much Benjamin! I’ll be adding larger images this week and implementing more of Jeff’s recommendations in the following. You guys are the best~
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Great website!
A nitpick:
The chapter “About me” starts in first person (about me, I am…), but the body of the text is third person, then ends in first person (view my resume), this is a bit inconsequent.
Personally, I don’t favour third person approaches on these kinds of personal pages, unless they are quotes (you could very easily make this a quote and sacrifice a bit of the personal feel to it, however).
As I said; nitpicking!
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I appreciate the nitpicking Bert! I know that it will result in a better product overall. Thank you~~~
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Hey Jeff and all----working on all of the suggestions this week. The copyright date was easy and now I am working through all of the images from the oldest to the newest, normalizing size and quality. I’m about 30 images or so in and it already looks a million times better. There are quite a few to go but I’m enjoying revisiting the works.
I also noticed that my CV is out of date so I will be updating that as well.
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Hey Anthony - just had a quick look around - that’s a much better experience to be able to see the larger images. One further thought for an upcoming version: The work merits such close examination that it might be nice to see detailed shots from at least a few paintings. Could enhance the “WOW” factor even more.
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Awesome. I’m about halfway with the updated images and will look into a way to offer detail shots as well. Appreciate all the advice and feedback Jeffrey!
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Hi Anthony!
My day job is making websites easier to use. I’d love to give you feedback, but first I’d ask you a couple questions:
- What are the different types of people who use your website? For example, collectors, students, etc.
- What are each of their goals on the site?
- What are your goals for each of different people?
- Of all the different goals for the different people, which is most important?
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Hi Tim!!! Thank you so much for taking the time to offer your feedback. It means a great deal to me. I am currently normalizing the images on my site from the feedback thus far and will then follow up with the rest.
As to the questions: What are the different types of people who use your website? For example, collectors, students, etc.
I would say collectors, students, and colleagues. I receive messages and comments through the website from all three groups.
What are each of their goals on the site?
Based on feedback—collectors review the site often to browse, see what’s available, get ideas for commission work, and to learn more about my visual vocabulary (to more effectively investigate the work(s) they may own.) Colleagues and art lovers browse for a fairly wide variety of reasons. Students usually browse initially and then follow through to the store to peruse our educational resources
What are your goals for each of different people?
Broadly speaking, just to make my efforts and resources as easy to access as possible.
Of all the different goals for the different people, which is most important?
I would think an even weight falls on image quality and ease of use (i.e., navigation.)
I look forward to reading your thoughts on the site.
Thank you Tim!
Anthony
Hi Anthony,
just wanted to add my 2 cents as someone who has been to your sites since about the turn of the millenium 
First of all- everything looks very professional and slick and the navigation is very intuitive. The white background is very modern and less heavy than the black one.
Before Facebook the website was the only place where one could see new works from an artist, I had a list of artists I followed that I would go on their site every month.
Facebook made keeping up to date with the new artwork so much easier, so I stopped going on artists websites over time, and now when I look for art Facebook and Instagram is where I go.
So a site has to have something I can’t find on Facebook in order for me to google it.
I come to your site quite often actually to read (again and again) the primer on composition and to the K-12 program.
In terms of art work- I remember roughly when you posted every work on Facebook so if I want to see or show someone- I scroll through your album rather then going to the site, so adding delicious close-ups and in progress shots of your work would be a great way to lure people in.
Same with resources- I know where to find the k-12 program, but on Facebook and smartermarx there are great short informative posts that you could post in the article section. (for example, you have a very informative conversation on Facebook about oiling out- you could copy your words to your site so that you don’t have to repeat yourself when someone here asks you the same question).
Same about the store, I wish I could participate in some of the workshops about biology and the way we perceive visual stimuli but for now I can’t due to distance - if I could download a video recording I would pay for a seat at the table, I’m sure many people around the world would.
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Hi Anthony
I did a quick audit of the site based on your goals, and general usability. Here’s what I found after an hour or so of investigation. Some of it’s bigger and smaller, and some might be very easy to fix and some might be harder. Either way, I hope it’s helpful.
Home page
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I’d add something to your homepage that identifies you as an artist. I happen to know the train on the homepage was painted by you, but it just reads as a photo. Someone else might think you sell toys, or are a writer of some sort. This doesn’t mean you have to literally say the word “artist”. In fact, a work-in-progress shot with a brush touching a painting would tell the story more quickly than any text. A good goal for the first screen of the homepage is for it to work like a billboard. Someone should be able to understand what you do and what the site is about if they were driving past in a car and saw it for a split second.
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Clicking on the “The Storyteller” link on the homepage brings you to the Paintings page, but there’s no way to identify which painting is “The Storyteller” without clicking them all open. I would also assume that the first piece is “The Storyteller”, but it’s the second piece.
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The opening line on the homepage says 'Please see my newest work,”The Storyteller“, in the gallery section!", but there’s no gallery section. The navigation says “Paintings”.
Navigation
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A lot of research shows that the “hamburger menu” (the menu icon with three lines on mobile) hurts the usability of a site. This isn’t hard and fast for every site, but there are some good arguments for exposing some of the navigation, or supplementing the hamburger menu. There are a lot of different strategies for this. This article (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/support-mobile-navigation/) lists several. You’re already doing some of these, but it’s a good read as to why. Another pattern I’m seeing more of on mobile is the swipeable navigation (check out espn.com on a phone), or navigation that shows as many items as it can given the horizontal space and putting the rest under a “more” drop down (check out espn.com on a computer, but with a narrow window).
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I’d add a stronger indicator of which page you’re on in the nav. There’s an underline, but it’s missable. Ideally you want to be able to tell in your peripheral vision which item is currently selected in the nav.
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On my laptop, the navigation has so many items that “share” links are pushed down below the navigation bar. This seems to be a side effect of the number of items in the nav. If I delete an item from the nav, the share links pop back up into the nav. This isn’t so bad in and of itself—except that the share links don’t have a background. This causes problems when it overlaps other content. Scroll down a bit on the gallery page to see what I mean.
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There are a lot of items in the navigation. It might be better to have fewer and/or shorter items. If you had more specific goals for your site I’d feel more strongly about this.
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+1 for Jeff’s suggestion of merging Resources and Articles.
Viewing images
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I agree with others about being able to really zoom in on the images, or even a portion of an image. People who aren’t familiar with your work may assume they’re photos of collages. It’s true that if you click into an image it says “Oil” in the description, but the first thing to know about people on the web is that they don’t read. Someone could easily come to your site and leave thinking you aren’t a painter. Also, as a fellow painter I’ll echo what others said—I really want to get up in there!
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Many people will click the back button to get out of lightboxes. The lightbox on your site doesn’t support this, so clicking back will go to the previous page in the browser. This can be frustrating since they’ll have to re-navigate back the Paintings page, and potentially re-find their place on the page.
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I’d expect to be able to click to the next image in the lightbox without having to close it. It’s a lot extra work to close each image, locate/scroll to the next image, and click again. You could add arrows within the lightbox, ideally which stay in the same place for each image, so you can just keep your pointer in the same place and click repeatedly to go through the gallery. Also make the arrow keys switch between images, and make it so you can swipe between photos on touch devices. It’ll be a little tricky to implement next/previous with the filters at the top of the page, but it’s doable.
Miscellaneous
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Consider adding a “back to top” link on longer pages on mobile. Since the nav is at the top, people may have to swipe up repeatedly to get back to the nav to go to a different page. Since some pages like the gallery are extremely long on mobile, you might want to consider a small link or icon that’s fixed to the bottom of the screen as they scroll down. You can make this appear after the user has scrolled down a bit.
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The “Name” field is weirdly indented on the Contact page on my laptop.
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Weird that there’s a testimonial from yourself on the resume page.
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Wow Tim! I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to share your expertise here. I sincerely appreciate it!!! With hindsight, many of the issues you bring up are quite glaring. I will be sure to attack each one in the coming weeks (starting with a more appropriately descriptive home page image).
Again, a huge thank you my friend!!!
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I started by changing the cover image from the train (which I agree could be interpreted as a sign of a toy-shop website-LOL!). I went with a clean image of paint and brushes. I also removed the “featured exhibition” text and replaced it with “Anthony J. Waichulis - Fine Artist - Instructor”. Hopefully that makes everything clearer from the get-go.
Still so much more to do—but I know these changes are moves in the right direction. Thanks again Tim!
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Hi Anthony!
I’m glad you found my feedback helpful. As Jeff said, you’ve given so much—it’s nice to be able to give back.
The homepage is much better. I particularly like the new headline “Anthony J. Waichulis - Fine artist - Instructor”. Straight and to the point. A famous book on website usability is called “Don’t Make Me Think”. I’d say that qualifies 
Looking forward to seeing more!
Tim
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What a brilliant constructive critique
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Hey Anthony - that is a clearer image on the home page for communicating what you do, though for the future versions I would still consider using images of your own work. Maybe even an image of you working, or at least a close-up of a painting in progress with your hand holding a brush - something that clearly relates how extraordinary your trompe-l’œil technique is, and that confirms that these are in fact paintings and not digital montages.
Don’t shy away from the WOW factor here - if you got it, flaunt it
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