As I tried to explain, I'm not arguing that all sites should look a certain way
... you're just giving him advice that would make his site look like every other site following the conventional wisdom. I agree his site needs work, but it would be more constructive to identify something unique and salvageable about his site instead of saying he needs to completely remove his design skills (or lack thereof) from the equation. It feels a bit negative and mercenary for a site that he's put a lot of personal work into and doesn't seem interested in monetizing.
Personally, I think the way he's done the text on the photos feels original in this context. A professional analyzing the structure of the page might find a cliche, but that doesn't mean much if the users don't see it. Otherwise everything would feel cliche all the time. The solid background behind the text isn't original (A Softer World uses it, and it might feel stale in a magazine advertisement) but it puts you off the "product page" scent.
Obviously there's not much use in keeping this going, but I want to be even clearer: the problem isn't whether or not what he's doing is cliche, the problem is that it looks amateurish, distracting and unpleasant (sorry to be harsh, just trying to be clear). It looks wrong, not just outside of my expectations.
I originally gave him a big list of concrete ideas of how to improve, it's not like I just said "boy this looks crappy" and told him to rip off existing sites. My broader point is that questions of originality and uniqueness are moot when you haven't crossed the threshold of basic quality, so it's counterproductive to worry about them.
I can definitely appreciate your suggestion that I coat criticism with more than just the "constructive" preface, and I could have offered that I think it's a cool idea and that it looks like he's put in a lot of hard work. I'll do that next time.
... you're just giving him advice that would make his site look like every other site following the conventional wisdom. I agree his site needs work, but it would be more constructive to identify something unique and salvageable about his site instead of saying he needs to completely remove his design skills (or lack thereof) from the equation. It feels a bit negative and mercenary for a site that he's put a lot of personal work into and doesn't seem interested in monetizing.
Personally, I think the way he's done the text on the photos feels original in this context. A professional analyzing the structure of the page might find a cliche, but that doesn't mean much if the users don't see it. Otherwise everything would feel cliche all the time. The solid background behind the text isn't original (A Softer World uses it, and it might feel stale in a magazine advertisement) but it puts you off the "product page" scent.