Site review and gallery options

bike21

Hoping I can get some feedback from ya'll, I'm going through the process of yet another website overhaul. Aside from looking forward to some upcoming enhancements of Smuggy's offerings of galleries and themes I am trying to refocus my efforts on an even cleaner site with less pictures.

So if you wouldn't mind have a look at the site and critique away. I started with a fresh banner image up top slightly off center. I might re-align my menu more to the right as well to give it a different look.

One of the biggest things I am considering doing is really narrowing down my gallery/photo options. For instance making fewer travel galleries such as one with all my best (no more than 20) or split it up into regions instead (still traveling so more being added). I am trying to drive more sales of prints so I have already been deleting things I don't think folks would buy. I realize by offering less, I give fewer options but I would like to focus more on selling my services to clients and a bit of more fine art type things.

Once this is complete I'm going to try one of those handy dandy Facebook campaigns of getting folks to 'Like' my FB page and give away some prints from the refreshed galleries.

http://www.nicklasurephotography.com/

What do you think? :thumb

denisegoldberg

You have a nice clean looking entry page. My one comment on that page - and this applies to the rest of your site as well - is that your slightly off-center banner looks like a mistake. I have no problem with it being off-center, but if you're going to do that, make it look deliberate. On the home page I would line it up with one side of the triple images.

When I clicked the middle image to enter your site I expected to be taken to your galleries page. I really dislike needing to click through two pages to get to the heart of your site - homepage, then slideshow, then another link to get to your galleries. I'd prefer to link directly from the home page to the galleries page.

Your galleries page would benefit from a format change. I'd recommend switching to thumb-over-title on that page. The code to make that switch can be found in the answer to # 10 in the ADVANCED Customization FAQ.

You have many categories with single galleries in them. This increases the click fatigue. To remove the extra click you might want to try # 24 in jfriend's Collection of javascript customizations.

I find jumping from a white background on your site to a dark background on your blog to be rather jarring. And there is no way short of the browser back button to return from your blog to your photography site.

--- Denise

Glort

I'm afraid I think the site is somewhat confusing and is not doing a good job at marketing you as a photographer.

As I saw it......

Went to the site, OK, the guy is a wedding shooter.
He's put some of his other stuff there he likes to shoot. I go to the galleries and theres a whole bunch of stuff with weddings down the page a bit. Wedding stuff is nice, pretty pictures but no other info. hardly going to sell people on hiring you as a wedding shooter.

I look around a bit more and then i'm wondering if I have it wrong and the site is just to show off pretty pics that have been taken.
There is a whole bunch of stuff and then I find services that says you do editorial and weddings and sports and pets and family and first time pilots and..... WTF??
To me having a range of subjects that wide ranging on the same site just completely confuses the prospective client and weakens your credibility as an expert in any of those markets.

As a fellow shooter and looking at the site with a view to it getting you work in the door, I think what is making this guy his bread and butter and why put all this other crap in that is all over the place?

I come back here, read your post a bit more and see mention your trying to drive more print sales. I thought oh, missed that, better go back nad have anotehr look. Still couldn't find anything that gave me a heads up the images were for sale rather than just showing off your pretty pictures.
And they are pretty by the way, Very nice work indeed.

So as i'm writing this, I'm still not at all sure what you are trying to accomplish.
Do you want to pull in wedding work, is that your main bread and butter? Are you trying to flog art prints, is it a showcase gallery just to exhibit your pics or ?????
Now I certainly don't profess to be the sharpest tool in the shed but I do give myself credit for being as bright ( or dim) as most clients and I therefore figure If I don't understand what the purpose of the site is, I'm pretty convinced no paying client is going to either.

My suggestions would be to make the site clearly define it's purpose. If your trying to book weddings, Get rid of all the other subject matter except family portraits and put some information in there that will help the potential client interested enoght to call you because thats all the site has to do.

If you want to sell your prints, again rack off the wedding portrait sports stuff and set the site up as clearly defining itself as a place where people can purchase fine art prints.

For your services for hire, Ie weddings and event coverage etc, I would define the ones that are going to make you money and set them up on a seperate site. Make it clear your a shooter for hire and sell yourself as that rather than an art photographer.

Boulder colorade USA Earth
WTF??? Seriously dude, you think someone is going to make a mistake and confuse you with the guy from boulder colorado on Mars?
I just think that is really cheesy and is a turn away not a selling asset.

Other knife to teh ribs,

" As a freelance photographer with a good amount of time off from my full time job,"

Oh, your just an amateur? Your not a real photographer?
I think that's the impression that particular sentance gives. again, it's an anti sell not something that would impress a client. I think you need to go through your copy and look for stuff like that and make sure there are no other fo pars.

And I think thats the crux of the problems I see with your site, your not looking at it really from a clients POV.
It needs to play to the lowest common denominator and half brain dead like me so when someione opens the site looking for a wedding shooter, they are not confused by all the other crap they see about First time Flights and Mountain biking, they can see that your a wedding shooter and heres a whole bucnh of info about what you do and sthere is the nice pics to show your ( obvious) talent in that field.

I would strongly suggest you look at getting another site so you can seperate out the wider rangeing ends of your work and appear more specialist in what you do. I have 4 sites in total, all hosted on the same account, all with their own individual URL so one is in no way connected to teh other. You want the Glamour shooter, her's the expert, all he does. You want the onsite event guy, here he is, all he does, You want the corporate events and functions guy, right here.....
If I were to put nudie chicks with corporate golf days and kids sports events, I'd alienate each and every market. Seperately, they all work nicely for me. And i do weddings too but my marketing means I haven't had to bother with a site which is great because i'm too lazy to do one.

Same as if someone comes to your site to buy an art print. Yep this is the place, there they are, there's the prices, theres the shopping cart and the delivery info and the matting options ...... Etc.
And if they are looking for a freelance photographer, heres a guy that's available ALL the time because who knows when the guy that does it on the side will be able to get time off his real job to take happy snaps and he can't be any better than me if he only does this part time.

Hope I don't seem too offensive, just trying to call it as i and I think clients would see it.
You site is clean in its layout and presentation and attractive enough HOWEVER, to me it's doing a really bad job in selling you as a shooter or your work.
To put it delicately, I think your a skilled and talented shooter but as a marketing person, you suck.

That's not hard to fix though, think about what I have said and then look up some things on the net about how to make a website sell or on marketing and advertising.
I think that will be a great help to getting what you want out of your site and allowing your considerable skills to net you the return you deserve.

bike21

Uh wow! Fantastic feedback, I only glanced through these two so far as I just got home from work but this seems to be what I was looking for. I'll dig into this more over the weekend.

Thanks for the effort and I'll report back soon!

bike21

Update: still working slowly on getting things done. My spring has been quite busy (a good thing) and this update has taken a back seat. I have taken little bits of info from both of you so far and narrowed my selections in my galleries down as well. This will be an on-going tweaking project but I really appreciate the feedback!