Website comments?

evil eggplant · March 9, 2006

Please take a look at my website, iceninephotography.com if you have a moment

Before putting together my website, I visited other photography websites, trying to figure out what makes them successful. Style, simplicity and ease of navigation were what the experience showed me were important elements of a successful website. I went ahead and created my own website using these guidelines.

I know all about the physician who treats himself...

I knew nothing about html, but learned enough to put something together that doesn't look (hopefully) too amateurish. The site is working, Google and Yahoo already have it indexed. I'm getting hits, and have booked 2 weddings, an executive portrait session(which I'm shooting in an hour), and a commercial job since the site has been up, for about a month. So I suppose I'm satisfied so far.

My big question is about including a rates page. Some photographers use one, others do not.

My feeling is that a potential (non commercial) client wants to know what my rates are. My rates are to the low end of middle-of-the-road, so I (think) I want them out there.

Other photographers do not give pricing on their websites. They want the potential client to call them to discuss. I can see the positives to this line of thought.

I suppose it comes down to a photographers desire to service a client who engages in a bit of price shopping. I am willing to work with this type of client. Both of my booked wedding jobs were initiated by brides who were price shopping. First they asked about price, then they wanted references and access to more of my work.

So quality was a big part of how they would choose a photographer, but price may have been as big, or maybe bigger, part of their process. I asked both brides who booked with me how they went about choosing a photographer, they both said price and quality. So I'm left thinking that in addition to lovely samples, they want to see prices, too.

I'm not bargain basement, but I'm not cheap either. $750 gets you 4 hours, an internet gallery, and a DVD ROM of the images. That's my least expensive package.

I would appreciate any comments regarding this pricing thing, or my website in general.

Thanks

wxwax · March 9, 2006

Just quick general comments.

Your title is hard to say if the nine isn't highlighted. iceninephotography is tough on the eyes, hard to remember.

I think there are too many words on your front page - reading is hard.

Your front page emphasizes people photography. But the first image on your Gallery page is a landscape. Does not compute!

The flash looks lovely on my computer. How good is it on slow connections?

The grey background looks very flat and utilitarian on the Services and Contact pages. The layout of the Services page is busy - again, a lot of words. Needs some formatting to look more organized and not as visually daunting.

Your work is about 1000 times better than I could come up with, please take this feedback in the spirit with which it was meant.

ivar · March 9, 2006

evil eggplant wrote:

Please take a look at my website, iceninephotography.com if you have a moment

Before putting together my website, I visited other photography websites, trying to figure out what makes them successful. Style, simplicity and ease of navigation were what the experience showed me were important elements of a successful website. I went ahead and created my own website using these guidelines.

I know all about the physician who treats himself...

I knew nothing about html, but learned enough to put something together that doesn't look (hopefully) too amateurish. The site is working, Google and Yahoo already have it indexed. I'm getting hits, and have booked 2 weddings, an executive portrait session(which I'm shooting in an hour), and a commercial job since the site has been up, for about a month. So I suppose I'm satisfied so far.

My big question is about including a rates page. Some photographers use one, others do not.

My feeling is that a potential (non commercial) client wants to know what my rates are. My rates are to the low end of middle-of-the-road, so I (think) I want them out there.

Other photographers do not give pricing on their websites. They want the potential client to call them to discuss. I can see the positives to this line of thought.

I suppose it comes down to a photographers desire to service a client who engages in a bit of price shopping. I am willing to work with this type of client. Both of my booked wedding jobs were initiated by brides who were price shopping. First they asked about price, then they wanted references and access to more of my work.

So quality was a big part of how they would choose a photographer, but price may have been as big, or maybe bigger, part of their process. I asked both brides who booked with me how they went about choosing a photographer, they both said price and quality. So I'm left thinking that in addition to lovely samples, they want to see prices, too.

I'm not bargain basement, but I'm not cheap either. $750 gets you 4 hours, an internet gallery, and a DVD ROM of the images. That's my least expensive package.

I would appreciate any comments regarding this pricing thing, or my website in general.

Thanks

Allright eggplant, my biggest issue first; What's up with all the font type, size, color, weight and styles? WAY overdone if you ask me. For the whole website, not more than one, maybe two fonts, one size for the stuff you read, one or two different sizes for the headers. Only use italic or bold fonts if you want to show something specifically different from the normal reading text. One color for the reading text, maybe a different one for a header.

Menu; i wouldn't post a menu at the bottom, or make it similar to the one you have above, to prevent possible confusion. Just make sure you have a "home" link in your top menu.

The flash photo thing looks fine. I would maybe have it run with a your header and menu showing above it. Or a separate back button would be nice (you can link actionscript to html-embedded javascript, if you have someone who can program that for you)

All in all, i think it is all there, just needs to be "structured" to look a little less chaotic.

evil eggplant · March 9, 2006

No offense taken
This is exactly what I was hoping for. I have changed the highlighting on iceninephotography, and have changed the "Galleries" image. Those things I can do quickly, as I'm on the road. Changes to the wording will take a bit more thought. I do agree with you about the wording being a bit long-winded. Not sure how to fix it, though.

Thank you so much for taking the time to take a look and comment. I really appreciate it.

Cheers...

wxwax wrote:

Just quick general comments.

Your title is hard to say if the nine isn't highlighted. iceninephotography is tough on the eyes, hard to remember.

I think there are too many words on your front page - reading is hard.

Your front page emphasizes people photography. But the first image on your Gallery page is a landscape. Does not compute!

The flash looks lovely on my computer. How good is it on slow connections?

The grey background looks very flat and utilitarian on the Services and Contact pages. The layout of the Services page is busy - again, a lot of words. Needs some formatting to look more organized and not as visually daunting.

Your work is about 1000 times better than I could come up with, please take this feedback in the spirit with which it was meant.

Shay Stephens · March 9, 2006

I have not looked at the website yet, but I wanted to make a comment about this

evil eggplant wrote:

My big question is about including a rates page. Some photographers use one, others do not.

My feeling is that a potential (non commercial) client wants to know what my rates are. My rates are to the low end of middle-of-the-road, so I (think) I want them out there.

Other photographers do not give pricing on their websites. They want the potential client to call them to discuss. I can see the positives to this line of thought.

I suppose it comes down to a photographers desire to service a client who engages in a bit of price shopping. I am willing to work with this type of client. Both of my booked wedding jobs were initiated by brides who were price shopping. First they asked about price, then they wanted references and access to more of my work.

What it comes down to is, do you want the website to qualify the customers who contact you or do you want any and all customers to contact you.

And that comes down to budget largely. If a photographer is trying to narrow down the kinds of budgets they want to work with then putting up prices will help ensure that the people who contact already know the prices and the photographer doesn't have to waste time talking to people who are not going to hire them anyway.

If you want to try and book anyone who calls regardless of budget, or if you want to go the hard sell route, then not posting prices and having them conact you directly is the best avenue to try.

So it can probaly be boiled down to, do you want the website to filter or snare?

Mike Lane · March 9, 2006

The very first thing that I would do (being the web standards anal personality that I am) is I would get rid of the frames. Gone, see ya, bye bye. You can do everything you want to do faster and easier with xhtml and CSS. You've got no less than 3 frames there. Trust me, you're wasting too much energy on those frames.

After that, I'd take some serious time to learn some standards compliant xhtml for your page structure and CSS for the page design. Why? 1) It's simpler to build. No more font tags, no confusion about what to capitalize, what to quote, how to nest tables, etc etc etc. 2) it's a cinch for the search engine spiders to understand and gobble up standards based xhtml. That translates into better results for you on the search engines. 3) It's easy to completely change your site's design by simply changing your site's CSS. Or you can easily change the site design on a per-page basis. No fussing around with html at all. Find 52 other reasons to switch to all standards based web pages here.

Like I said, I'm a web standards anal personality. It'll take some serious work on your part to learn how to do this. There are real rewards for that work though.

W.W. Webster · March 9, 2006

evil eggplant wrote:

Please take a look at my website, if you have a moment ... I would appreciate any comments regarding ... my website in general. Thanks

I suggest the page should be centred, not left justified, in the user's browser window, so that any margin space exists equally on both sides.

DavidTO · March 9, 2006

I agree with most comments above. I like it left justified, but it needs a strong graphic element to lean up against, IMO. I think centered is overrated.

Agree about the fonts, I especially don't like the huge blue type.

And lastly, Ice Nine scares me. I mean, what if it really existed?

Malaxos1 · March 9, 2006

OK, I like how simple it is and I like flash. I also understand what Mike was saying about the frames, but it looks like it is out of control and that this is something that is part of the simple viewer program. Now here's the big thing, I just down;oaded the software, how about helping me use it?

I guess it doesn't hurt to ask...Dean

Malaxos1 · March 9, 2006

With this can you load a full size image for purchasing? I loaded a full size image and it cropped it, so I am geussing not. Also, can I still use the shopping cart for clients to purchase and can I still put in keywords for galleries and images? Please let me know, I was working with a guy on developing a page like this before I found smugmug. I would still like to be able to use the smugmug lab and have a rollover gallery. Thanks...Dean

Andy · March 9, 2006

Malaxos1 wrote:

With this can you load a full size image for purchasing? I loaded a full size image and it cropped it, so I am geussing not. Also, can I still use the shopping cart for clients to purchase and can I still put in keywords for galleries and images? Please let me know, I was working with a guy on developing a page like this before I found smugmug. I would still like to be able to use the smugmug lab and have a rollover gallery. Thanks...Dean

Dean - there's NO connection between Rich's flash gallery and SmugMug.

Malaxos1 · March 10, 2006

So I couldn't just do the flash and have the abaility to sell photos through smugmug? The program was real easy to use, I actually made two different types of pages...Dean

Andy wrote:

Dean - there's NO connection between Rich's flash gallery and SmugMug.

evil eggplant · March 10, 2006

DavidTO wrote:

And lastly, Ice Nine scares me. I mean, what if it really existed?

Maybe it does?

evil eggplant · March 10, 2006

Thank you all
Very good comments, thank you all for taking the time to help me out with this.

Stormdancing · March 10, 2006

Comments from a non pro - photography, web design or anything really.

Your name
You might consider using IceNinePhotography or Ice Nine Photography. Makes it easier to read and recognize. Keep the capitalization etc consistent thoughout the site. In your text you might shorten some of the Iceninephotography to just Ice Nine or IceNine.

On your contract change INternet Gallery:

Just my observations.

DavidTO · March 10, 2006

Ice-9