Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

My site: www.loradavies.com

I am an equine photographer and this is the 2nd site I`ve done.  I designed it initially thinking I had a great idea for it not to look like a "run-of-the-mill" site, but now I`m wondering if it may look a little too psychadelic.  I usually have a tendency to lean towards earth tone colors and rustic backgrounds, but I tried to break away from my norm and I`m hoping I didn`t go overboard. 

I will be the first to admit there are MANY things I don`t know yet about web design.  In fact, I just learned Adobe GoLive CS2 a couple of weeks ago and this was my first attempt building a site on it.  So this is a major learning experience for me. 

My goal for my business is 1) to always be professional but to always do work that is creative and try to think outside the box, and 2) to get over the "I`m new" hump and keep learning and growing to the point where my site is a regular stop for people I photograph and people recognize my work and eventually seek me out (hey, it will happen one day!)

So far, I have directed all of my customers to my site to order photos from an event. I do this by having business cards and flyers there, and having the announcer annouce where they can go to find their photos.  The bad thing about this is that my name is not easy to spell and remember and I have not submitted it to search engines yet.  So if they try to remember the site address but go home and don`t get the spelling right, they are probably not going to find it. 

The other bad thing about selling online is that if I don`t get a business card or flyer to almost every competitor (and there could be 100) then more than likely they are not going to know where to go online and they will never see those photos.  I have been looking into printing photos onsite, but cannot afford it yet. 

Another factor relating to the site and getting people there is that I am new to this area so no one really knows who I am yet and my name is not recognizable yet or synonymous with photography in this area.

Another goal for my site: I want people to get a good sense of my style and where it comes from, i.e. all of my photography is western equine and I grew up showing and rodeoing. That is why I put in the clip of me barrel racing on my About Me page, because I want competitors to know that I can do a good job shooting an event because I have competed in it and been around it.

I also want people to know that I can do not only event photography, but stallion ads, business cards, print ads, and portraits. I don`t feel like I have done a good job of making that obvious. And I would like a place where people can provide feedback or testimonials of some kind. 

I know my site is still very basic, but everyone has to start somewhere. So fire away! I would love to hear (or will endure if I have to) your comments.

Thanks for your help...

Before I take a look at the site, here`s a thought. If your main problem is people not remembering your name, then why not build a business around a memorable company name? Your primary field is horses, and I`m thinking of the old Mr. Ed. show. You could name your company something like "Horses, Of Course," and that likely would stick in someone`s mind.

Although www.horsesofcourse.com is taken, www.horses-of-course.com is available. I know many people will say that having a hyphen in a URL is a bad decision. I disagree. When people know the URL, they`ll know to put in the dash or hyphen. It does take one or two mis-types but that`s not a bad trade-off for getting a name that`s very close to what you want, when what you want is already taken.

Point being that you can`t force people to remember a difficult spelling. Why try? Why not create a simple spelling and make it your company name?

Okay, looking at the site. :-)
Here`s one thing that pops right out at me. You immediately tell say that if I`m here to view and order, then click the "View & Order" button above. Why not include a redundant link right in the text itself, so I don`t have to look around and find the "above?"

Additionally, I`m not a big fan of black or dark backgrounds. They look terrific, but in the majority of cases, the designer uses a low-contrast font. Your mid-level blue on black isn`t all that easy to read. I don`t want to have to work to read the site, I just want to read it. :-) So how about moving the brightness of the text up to light blue, closer to white?

I don`t think the site is too psychedelic. :-) It looks pretty cool, actually. I don`t know if your intent was to evoke images of a race-track with the curving three lines, but it works that way for me. However (there`s always one of those, right?), what I`d suggest is to bend the lines differently.

As they stand, my eye gets captured by your logo area, then the lines, and pulled up and off the top right of the screen. I have to stop and re-focus, then try to find where I was. At that point, the button-tabs get pretty much lost. And that`s despite their size and brightness! It took me a minute to figure out why I was having a hard time finding the tabs, until I realized the blue "race track" kept pulling my eyes off the top of the monitor.

I`m expecting to click on each of the small photos you have and go some place. For example, when I click on "Color" I`d like to see examples of your color work, and some content explaining what your philosophy of color photography is all about. Something along those lines. Same with the Black & White, then the Sepia images. Why are they there, what will they do for me, and how come they don`t take me some place interesting?

Likewise, scrolling down, I see two small examples of your work. I expect to click them and be taken to a whole new world of examples. :-) Even if you put me on your Gallery page, that`s fine. Or if you give me a full-size version of the collage and the photo-text images. I want to do stuff! Make some "action" features....things to do...places to go...the wind in my....um...well, I don`t have hair.... :-)

I didn`t like clicking the Gallery button, then seeing a bunch of text and links. I realize this is a big problem for photography sites, but it needs to be fixed! When I click on Gallery, I want to see pictures similar to your Portfolio. I don`t want to then click more and more.

For the purpose of examples only, consider the thumbnail galleries on porn sites. The images are large enough to be enticing, and each one offers either a full-size image or a link to a particular person`s "portfolio." Why am I mentioning a porn site? Because sex sells! It`s one of the biggest money-makers in images.

Countless people have tried all kinds of ways to improve their cashflow on porn sites, or to break into a totally saturated market. The people who succeed are the best of the best at marketing. They`ve learned eveything, tried everything, and found what works at the most common level.

Back to the point: When I click on "Gallery" I expect to see a thumbnail gallery, where each set of images is grouped, each group has its link, and I can go to various types of slide shows. You Portfolio slide show could be tied to a proof-sheet of say 5-7 thumbnails on the Gallery page, see?

What`s also weird is that you take me off the new site and put me onto what I think you said was your old site? You`ll eventually want a common "look and feel" across the board. So if you keep the black and green layout, use it on your link pages as well, in my opinion. Otherwise, change the home page back to the earth tones of the other site. They look nice too, although, as you said, a bit typical.

Big problem on the "About Me" page. I`m on FireFox 1.x, and have no intention of downloading yet another plug-in to view whatever it is. So I tried viewing the same page in Explorer (IE 6.x). There, my Spybot popped up and warned me of a change to the Regsitry!

If it weren`t for your being a community member, I would`ve clicked away immediately from the site, and made sure to blacklist it. However, I understand how certain aspects of technology aren`t necessarily under you control.

I`m not sure what the plug-in is supposed to be, but I can`t see it in FireFox, which I use to keep a "clean" system, so never download plug-ins. Nor could I see it in IE because I`m for sure not going to allow a Web site to make a permanent change to the Windows Registry. I`d speak with a professional and find out what`s up with that.

So I scrolled down and took a look at the text. Which makes little sense. :-) You`re saying (essentially), "Here`s something about me, but it was done a long time ago, and probably doesn`t apply all that much. The photographs, which is my line of business, were taken by someone else."

Um....so why am I reading about you in this fashion? LOL!

The "About" page on a site is an opportunity to make up for the anonymity and lack of personal contact e-commerce naturally involves. It should be warm, friendly, personal, and above all, begin to engender an emotional connection of some sort with the viewer. Web sites are mostly text and images, like watching a movie. They need more than that to initiate a willingness to spend money.

Some sites have such a strong retail presence, with a professional look and feel, they don`t need an "About" page. But just as many sites are offering something new, different, or at a radically different market price. Even eBay has the "feedback" system, along with the "About Me" profile. So does SuN.

In other words, an "About" page isn`t really a biography. It`s not quite a résumé either. Instead, it`s a common way to provide some credibility and credentials. I`d much rather read a 1-paragraph statement about your professional background in horses and photography, than scroll through what you have, see?

Like a good résumé cover letter, the "About" page should focus on what you have to offer. What examples can you use of how your photography has brought pleasure to someone, won awards, become reknowned, or otherwise "done something" for the world and customers?

Right now the View & Order page doesn`t make much sense in relation to the Gallery page. I`m not at all sure which one to use to find my event and order personal pictures, versus finding my event in the gallery.

Instead of offering "file name," I`d suggest a dynamic dropdown arrow. Name the event something, and let your attendees know that name at the event. When they get to your site, they drop down the box, scroll to the event name, and that`s that. None of this searching based on wholly mysterious and unexplained criteria.

If you have to keep what you have at the moment, then I`d suggest replacing the picture in the middle of the screen with a VERY easy to read (text on white background) version of the ? Help paragraph you have at the bottom of the page. If I`m looking for my pics from an event, I don`t care to see another horse.

I know you do horses, but I clicked on the View page to find MY pics, right? So how come the explanation of how to find MY pics is almost an invisible afterthough? :-) Make it black type on white, and increase the font size. Put it into numbered instructions, and show me immediately how to find my pics.

All in all, it`s not a bad site. But even during this analysis, I come away realizing I have very little of an impression of your actual photographs! And that`s the whole point of being in business, isn`t it? How come I can`t think of a single image that stands out in my mind right now?

I think it`s because there`s too much Internet and Web technology going on. Think of a museum or art gallery. The "background" is as low-key and unobtrusive as someone possibly can make it. The pictures and are should be the entire focus.

This site lacks focus. On the one hand it`s a photographer, but on the other hand it`s a "buy my pictures of your party" site. Take a step back and consider: "What exactly is it that you want to do with your life?"

Is this site in its present form helping or hindering in that goal?

You definitely went overboard. To be honest, I would not hire you as my photographer if I see this website.

I am not even talking about usability, which Craigs covered a lot. What`s the use of that yellow color over black background? To make it worse, you used random yellow dots. The only thing I can associate that with is "noise". That`s extremely poorly done.

I know you are a photographer, not a web designer. So, hire a designer to do it for you please. You can get pretty good design from designoutpost.com or sitepoint.com (I have done a lot of projects there). Certain business expense should not be nickle-and-dimed, that includes web design, which is often the first impression you leave to your potential customers.

I appreciate your honesty. I felt that my site lacked focus as well and I definetly want to re-think what I`m doing to distract people or confuse them. Thats the last thing I want to do!

Craig, I am going to have to read your post a couple of times to let everything sink in. It sounds like there are multiple things I need to resolve, and your right, the gallery should not be set up that way. The reason that I have text links which take you to other sites is because I don`t know how to create a gallery in MY site that protects my work from being right-clicked and saved, printed out, etc.  My common sense appraoch would tell me to just make a thumbnail gallery as you suggested and then when the image is clicked to show it larger, have a watermark on it.  Is this what you would suggest?

JohnQH, the yellow over the black background I originally thought was interesting and didn`t look at it as noise.  I thought an all black background would be boring. Obviously I was wrong so thank you for bringing that to my attention. 

Oh and the blue "race track" you were referring to, John, in my mind was supposed to represent the three forks that come together here in Three Forks (where I live) to start the MO river. Guess that idea wasn`t so cool either. And I agree the positioning of it seems a little off. I think I should try and minimize it a bit so it doesn`t draw so much focus.

 

Another thing... about the About Me page- I don`t understand what the deal is with that clip.  I have no idea why is says something about changing your registry, etc. I don`t even know what that means, but from the sounds of it, it`s not good. Maybe I should just take it off. The clip is of me barrel racing. I thought this would add credibility in that I`m not just an event photographer, but I know the events because I have competed in some of them or at least been around them.

The animation you referred to underneath that that says the photos weren`t taken by me is a slide show of my wedding photos, all of which are outside and pretty cowboy.  I included these to show people something else about me and my "style".  So that is why they aren`t taken by me, because I am in them and definetly wanted to give credit to the photographer. :)

www.cheryljamesphotography.com

This is the type of gallery set-up I would like to have in my site, and I think she has done a good job designing her site to keep the focus on her work, not the site layout and wild colors like I have done.  I was thinking about "toning down" my site and trying to put in gallery layouts similar to these and eliminate the text links from my GALLERY.  Good idea?

Hi Lora :-)
Here`s an example of the kind of thing I was envisioning as a gallery.

I think that from reading your responses, you might want to consider hiring a designer/developer. The reason being that I`m doing a lot of thinking about photography sites and the business of photography. I see such an astounding amount of brilliant photography these days, that I`m looking at how to compete.

I`ve had a personal interest in photography most of my life, although I didn`t want to pursue it as more than a hobby. So I have an interest in how people like yourself go about establishing themselves. It`s a very hard business, tough to break into, and certainly harder in which to become famous.

The biggest problem is organization. I`ve done a fair amount of database development at a low level, working mostly with information management. Of all the databases, managing images is one of the most difficult (with audio and video being harder). The problem of course is that a computer can`t look at a picture and group it into any kind of set. Nor can it even understand what the picture is showing. Only a human mind can do that.

So the first step is to write very good descriptions of your images, with search engine keywords in mind, as well as human viewers. The next step is to associate those descriptions with the images themselves. Some of it involves the "alt text" tag in HTML, but much more of it involves some kind of online database management. That would mean connecting a database on a local hard drive, with the Web site online. And that`s a technical issue.

Always keep in mind that real, physical gallery you might see walking down the streets of Provincetown or in Greenwich Village. What would attract you---the front window is your home page. What would you like to see when you walk through the door? How should the images be framed, then displayed? Shoudl there be written descriptions, and if so, what would they look like in the real and physical world?

Then try to replicate that as Web pages. It`s hard, requires a lot of technical proficiency, and that likely will take far too much of your efforts away from what you do---photography. :-)

I don`t think theres anything wrong at all with trying something new, as you said you did. But, to me, when I look at the top of your sight, it doesn`t work. It isn`t that the colors or graphics themselves are bad, the bright colors just don`t lend themselves to the theme of your site. Its like seeing Roy Rogers and disco colors trying to work together .... but they really just don`t.

The text on your page just touches on a topic, then jumps to the next without really giving a sense of anything other than a few sample pictures. You need your visitors to spend some time understanding what you do and why its beneficial to them to be there, and what you can do for them. Pictures are fine, but tell us something in the process, and then lead them to other pages in your site for more information. And, if possible, get all of your content into one site to keep them on your site, in the same browser tab/window. Personally, I hate it when I browse a site and suddenly I have a half dozen tabs open. Its much more effective to have a consistent layout and navigation menu on every page and use just one tab/window.

On your contact page, maybe some type of form would be beneficial along with the info you have listed. To me, it helps create a more professional look for a site; the email graphic looks cartoon-ish for your subject.


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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

I think the site needs a little work. The colors are a little rough and might need to be changed. I would suggest earth tones.

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china business card / Wall Street Journal Reader