Smugmug...too overwhelming, perhaps, for some first-time visitors?

papajay

Assume, for this fiction, you are modestly competent to use a computer for general web-browsing...perhaps even some Internet shopping. You get an email from an acquaintance with a standard Smugmug subscription inviting you to check out his picture galleries by following the link to the acquaintance's smugmug home page.

You arrive at the homepage and see an attractive looking page with several sections ("home", "featured galleries", "galleries", "friends and family", etc), including a number of thumbnail pictures organized.

Being a bit unsure where to start, and what to look at, you click on the "help" link at the top of the homepage....(you begin to smell TROUBLE now!)...you think you might have accidently stumbled onto a page you were not supposed to see:

• There's a section titled "Your Account" (you're afraid someone is going to insist on you signing up for one just to look at his pictures).
• Another section heading is titled "Adding Photos"....now you KNOW you are on the wrong page!
• There are headings for POWER USERS, and PROFESSIONAL USERS and a lot of other scarey stuff...you just wanted a little advice on how to navigate an unfamiliar website, but got slammed with a lot of technical stuff that's WAY over your head at this point.
• Then you see a section titled VIEWING...aha, that must be it! Hmmm, the page doesn't look anything like the one you first saw when you first arrived at your friend's homepage. Keep looking...
• PHOTOS, that's gotta be where you'll get some pointers on how to navigate this site!.....CROP??? DELETING??? ROTATING????..man!, you're really lost now. Maybe you should just go back to where you started....You Know...the HOME page. There's the link at the top. Click!
• Woah!!!! That's not the home page you started with...it's some completely NEW Home Page about SMUGMUG. Where's your friend's homepage? Going back to the original email might be easier than clicking BACK through all those wrong turns!....
• etc.

Apologies for the epic journey. But where's the QUICK START "1st Time Visitor's (not subscriber's)Tutorial"? It's GOT to be here somewhere, but WHERE? All you really wanted was a little help with a few navigation hints, not the unabridged user's manual.

Maybe you'll just hit the Reply button on the original email and say..."Great Pictures"....that'll buy some time.

Andy

papajay wrote:

Assume, for this fiction, you are modestly competent to use a computer for general web-browsing...perhaps even some Internet shopping. You get an email from an acquaintance with a standard Smugmug subscription inviting you to check out his picture galleries by following the link to the acquaintance's smugmug home page.

You arrive at the homepage and see an attractive looking page with several sections ("home", "featured galleries", "galleries", "friends and family", etc), including a number of thumbnail pictures organized.

Being a bit unsure where to start, and what to look at, you click on the "help" link at the top of the homepage....(you begin to smell TROUBLE now!)...you think you might have accidently stumbled onto a page you were not supposed to see:

• There's a section titled "Your Account" (you're afraid someone is going to insist on you signing up for one just to look at his pictures).
• Another section heading is titled "Adding Photos"....now you KNOW you are on the wrong page!
• There are headings for POWER USERS, and PROFESSIONAL USERS and a lot of other scarey stuff...you just wanted a little advice on how to navigate an unfamiliar website, but got slammed with a lot of technical stuff that's WAY over your head at this point.
• Then you see a section titled VIEWING...aha, that must be it! Hmmm, the page doesn't look anything like the one you first saw when you first arrived at your friend's homepage. Keep looking...
• PHOTOS, that's gotta be where you'll get some pointers on how to navigate this site!.....CROP??? DELETING??? ROTATING????..man!, you're really lost now. Maybe you should just go back to where you started....You Know...the HOME page. There's the link at the top. Click!
• Woah!!!! That's not the home page you started with...it's some completely NEW Home Page about SMUGMUG. Where's your friend's homepage? Going back to the original email might be easier than clicking BACK through all those wrong turns!....
• etc.

Apologies for the epic journey. But where's the QUICK START "1st Time Visitor's (not subscriber's)Tutorial"? It's GOT to be here somewhere, but WHERE? All you really wanted was a little help with a few navigation hints, not the unabridged user's manual.

Maybe you'll just hit the Reply button on the original email and say..."Great Pictures"....that'll buy some time.

Papa, we constantly monitor this with many visitors, in tests etc. Thanks for the great feedback though, we appreciate it, and I'll share this with the team.

papajay

Andy wrote:

Papa, we constantly monitor this with many visitors, in tests etc. Thanks for the great feedback though, we appreciate it, and I'll share this with the team.

Hi Andy...ever get the feeling I'm out to "getchya"??? I'm not, really....Smugmug is such a fabulous product, but try as I might to get all my family and friends to take the plunge (after they say things like "Loved your pictures....wished I could do that!"), I believe they often conclude that Smugmug is beyond their abilities to set up and manage.

That's why I really think Smugmug would be well-served (in terms of enticing more new subscribers) if there was a "Smugmug-Light" Tutorial on the front-end of the site where it's immediately obvious to a newcommer. The tutorial would "ease" them into the experience....a one HTML page tutorial that briefly describes what Smugmug is, how the typical standard homepage is organized, and how one can navigate to and through galleries, etc. And tell them they can explore the other "styles" without doing any "damage" to the subscriber's photos or site. Finally, tell them "there's so much more you can do (but we'll save that for another time), so for now, just dive in and enjoy your visit. ...but come back later to learn more about Smugmug."

jim_h

a great post
Papajay, that's a great post and summarizes my feelings perfectly (as does your following post, where you point out that smugmug is basically a great thing). I want my photos to be accessible to people who can barely use a browser - so I've gone to a lot of trouble to customize my galleries and eliminate virtually everything but the bare essentials. It wasn't easy figuring out how to do that - and I'm a software developer myself, although web sites aren't my specialty. Which leads me to a related point...

SmugMug can be heavily customized but the route to that knowledge leads through various disconnected FAQs and member posts and the necessary knowledge seems to exist in the form of countless "tips and tricks". What I would like to see is a streamlined top-down presentation for the reasonably technical user, telling me WHAT I can change and HOW. Not in minute detail, but in the sense of "to change the appearance of a gallery, you create custom entries to a CSS which apply in addition to, or in place of, the contents of a base CSS which is not modifiable. Here is a list of elements which can be changed, and a short description of each..." and so on. A "white paper" aimed at people who basically understand how a web site works in a technical sense, presenting an outline of a smugmug site in terms of naviagational structure, content, html, css and javascript.

Also, I'm still stymied by the lack of a workable 'template' for new galleries so that when I create a one I don't have to manually tweak a whole page of settings - matching them to the settings of an existing gallery. I've never been able to get 'bulk settings' to work.

In short, this is a great photo site in many (most) ways but when a photographer friend recently asked about using smugmug as a basis for his own customized side I had to say um... well.... yes but... anticipating the difficulties he'd have in figuring out the customization process. And how I've already forgotten a lot of what I figured out while setting up my own gallery.

Believe me, I understand the difficulity and expense of creating this sort of documentation. I also understand all too well how a large complicated site grows as features are added, to the point that it becomes difficult to explain it all to a newcomer. But I think this is what smugmug needs to stay on top and get to the next level.

papajay

And Therein Lies the Challenge

jim_h wrote:

. I want my photos to be accessible to people who can barely use a browser -

PRECISELY!, Jim. You are right-on here!

SmugMug can be heavily customized but the route to that knowledge leads through various disconnected FAQs and member posts and the necessary knowledge seems to exist in the form of countless "tips and tricks".

That is the dilemma a "powerful" (and therefore more complex) site like Smugmug faces....how to keep all that power hidden under the hood so the inexperienced driver can still manage to get from Point A to Point B without crashing into a tree.



. A "white paper" aimed at people who basically understand how a web site works in a technical sense, presenting an outline of a smugmug site in terms of naviagational structure, content, html, css and javascript.

And yes...at the same time, keep all the "goodies" accessible to the guy who wants to drive his street car with a helmet and fire-retardant jump suit.

And how I've already forgotten a lot of what I figured out while setting up my own gallery.

As with my DLSR camera, if Smugmug had a "P" (automatic) position on it's "mode-dial" for newcommers, yet still allowed anyone who is ready to switch to "M" (manual) mode at any time, I think the learning curve for a noobie would not be so intimidating. (I THINK the Standard, Power, and Pro subscriptions are an attempt to do that, but co-mingling them together on help screens etc is VERY intimidating, I'm sure, to someone new....especially if that someone is just there initially as a VISITOR, and not a site subscriber).

But I think this is what smugmug needs to stay on top and get to the next level.

I'm sure they (Andy and the rest) are "listening" and will continue their efforts to do just that!.

ivar

papajay wrote:

I'm sure they (Andy and the rest) are "listening" and will continue their efforts to do just that!.

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=52629

System

Papajay: A+ posting.

Andy: B- answer.

saurora

I hear you Papajay. I think it's practically impossible for some people to navigate through these galleries. And I don't mean just SmugMug...I mean any website galleries. It's easy to "get lost" if you are not internet savy or at least very determined. I usually send a link to the page I want my viewer to check out to save them trying to find their way from my homepage to a specific gallery. I find that those who are "computer friendly" are the ones who visit my site on a regular basis....others, well I never get responses from them. Sometimes my elderly aunt Elsie will respond and sometimes she won't! So I figure sometimes she lucks out and gets there and other times she hits a wrong button. Would be great (and I'm sure I'm fantacizing here) if there was a "guest entry"....sort of a portal into the site, that eliminated all those user function buttons once inside and left the viewer with a "clean" user-friendly site. I usually suggest they view the slide-show so they don't have to turn pages... a direct, e-mailable link to a slideshow (pass the popcorn please!) would be a kick! If I could e-mail that link to dear old Aunt Elsie it would take her right past all the confusing stuff. I'm not sure a tutorial for a visitor would help....you either can navigate websites or you can't. Ok, that's my dreaming for the day!

Andy

saurora wrote:

if there was a "guest entry"....sort of a portal into the site, that eliminated all those user function buttons once inside and left the viewer with a "clean" user-friendly site.

what buttons should be removed for the visitor?

I usually suggest they view the slide-show so they don't have to turn pages... a direct, e-mailable link to a slideshow (pass the popcorn please!)

Like this from your site?
http://saurora.smugmug.com/photos/sspopup.mg?AlbumID=2270942

saurora

Thanks Andy........I learn something new here everyday, problem is remembering it!!! I've been prowling around looking at websites today as I'm trying to get some ideas for customizing. I did discover (after posting this) that there are ways of "hiding" a lot of what is confusing to visitors. Thanks again!

ivar

saurora wrote:

I've been prowling around looking at websites today as I'm trying to get some ideas for customizing.

I like to look around for ideas, here: http://www.cssremix.com/

A lot of very well done website together.

vidiot

help page for visitors

ivar wrote:

I like to look around for ideas, here: http://www.cssremix.com/

A lot of very well done website together.

After a week, I have a pretty basic site with a simple navbar, etc. I agree, the help instructions for the newbie setting up a new site was very convoluted, but I got through it. Now, somewhere on my searches, I saw somebody's site that had a help button that brought up very detailed instructions on how to order prints, the shipping charges, all the questions that the visitor has.

Is there a Smugmug link I can use in my help button for prints ordering that doesn't take them out of my site? Is it copyrighted? Does anybody know what I mean by this?

Thanks.

www.kevincopus.com

Andy

vidiot wrote:

After a week, I have a pretty basic site with a simple navbar, etc. I agree, the help instructions for the newbie setting up a new site was very convoluted, but I got through it. Now, somewhere on my searches, I saw somebody's site that had a help button that brought up very detailed instructions on how to order prints, the shipping charges, all the questions that the visitor has.

Is there a Smugmug link I can use in my help button for prints ordering that doesn't take them out of my site? Is it copyrighted? Does anybody know what I mean by this?

Thanks.

www.kevincopus.com

Many pros have done just this. Standby I'm making an example one on your site right now

Andy

vidiot wrote:

After a week, I have a pretty basic site with a simple navbar, etc. I agree, the help instructions for the newbie setting up a new site was very convoluted, but I got through it.

And we're working constantly on improving this. Give us your feedback!

Now, somewhere on my searches, I saw somebody's site that had a help button that brought up very detailed instructions on how to order prints, the shipping charges, all the questions that the visitor has.

Is there a Smugmug link I can use in my help button for prints ordering that doesn't take them out of my site? Is it copyrighted? Does anybody know what I mean by this?

Thanks.

www.kevincopus.com

Like this?

http://kevincopus.smugmug.com/gallery/2404712



It's really simple. Follow the FAQ instructions for creating an HTML Only Gallery , #40, then Copy the HTML from the help page you want (you find it by viewing source with your browser)... and then pasting it in the gallery description in between <html> and </html> tags.

vidiot

Wow! Andy magic again.
Thank you so much.

kevincopus

Andy

vidiot wrote:

Wow! Andy magic again.
Thank you so much.

kevincopus

glad you like it. If you need any help with more, just holler, you know where to find us!