Website dos and don'ts

[Ariana Murphy]

Hello, all,
I just read through the whole thread of Website Do's and Don't's which is a bit old, but offered up some excellent tips on website design for photographers. I'm about to redo my site, which is here Home - Ariana's Art. If anybody checks it out, feedback is greatly appreciated, especially before and after. (Be gentle with me, I'm entirely self-taught!)

This thread was dedicated almost exclusively to photographers for weddings, events, etc. I would like to know - what about landscape and nature photographers? There are plenty of us out there, but business-wise, it's much different from the above-mentioned. Can any of you established, successful pros give us newbies some tips for our websites?

Thanks!

[sk66]

My take on the site....
The repeating BG image needs to go....

[BuddhaPi]

don't use flash,,,

[MindyRaeL]

My take on the site....
The repeating BG image needs to go....

+1
Really not feeling that background.

Aside from that, what are you trying to accomplish with your site? Are you just trying to share your photos, or are you trying to sell your work?
I'm not really familiar with nature/landscape sites, so I'm afraid I'm not much help there. But the organization of the site is not really working for me. Having the navigation bar bunched in the left hand corner is a little awkward, as opposed to the standard straight across bar.
Also, have so many pages in the navigation bar is a little overwhelming. If I was just visiting, there is no way I'd click on all those pages. Is there anyway you can condense it down a bit? Perhaps in your navigation bar have a Home, About Me, Portfolio, and Contact page. And then use a drop down menu under your portfolio page so the user can navigate to a specific gallery.

[graciousness]

+1 on what everybody has mentioned so far.

Whilst I did see that you are selling prints of your work (I saw the prices button under your photo), the website is just too cluttered even in it's simple lay out. How much more when you do have more content in it?

Also, yes, don't use flash (not strobe flash but Adobe flash hehe).

You really don't have enough content in there and I don't mean images but words. If you want people to be able to find you in google, you need content as in words. Write somethign about yourself, etc, anything that will increase search functionality with your site.

[IABoomer]

If your heart is set on keeping the repeating background, it could work a little better if the pattern was seamless. I know GIMP has a filter to create a seamless image. I'd guess there are Photoshop tutorials that would do the same thing. Once you build the seamless tiled image, I'd use a little CSS to fix it in place and let the page content scroll over it.

I'd say if you don't have three or more sub-categories, then I wouldn't bother to branch out as you've done in your landscape section.

The flash gallery/lightbox scenario could probably be done using an HTML/CSS/scripting template which would be more cross-platform compatible (nobody with an iPad/iPod/iPhone can use your website now).

[4umfreak]

Unless you've got money to spend on custom development, find a nice Wordpress template and run with that. Don't try to do it yourself unless you're a pro graphics/web designer!

Have a look at some of these templates, and pick one.
35 Best Wordpress Photography Website Templates - tripwire magazine

Install Wordpress and the template and add your content & images. Like others said, limit yourself to 3 or 4 categories and only post your best photos. Potential customers won't look at 300 images.

Make sure your footer is properly placed. Your current footer, Facebook links etc are behind some of your images.

-M

[ChrisAdval]

Unless you've got money to spend on custom development, find a nice Wordpress template and run with that. Don't try to do it yourself unless you're a pro graphics/web designer!

Have a look at some of these templates, and pick one.
35 Best Wordpress Photography Website Templates - tripwire magazine

Install Wordpress and the template and add your content & images. Like others said, limit yourself to 3 or 4 categories and only post your best photos. Potential customers won't look at 300 images.

Make sure your footer is properly placed. Your current footer, Facebook links etc are behind some of your images.

-M

Great link there, and good prices. I just don't like how wordpress charges for certain features vs. google/blogspot doesn't, you think I could get something like these layouts


WordPress - Photorific - Photography WordPress Theme | ThemeForest
WordPress - King Size - fullscreen background WordPress theme | ThemeForest

for blogger?

[BuddhaPi]

Great link there, and good prices. I just don't like how wordpress charges for certain features vs. google/blogspot doesn't, you think I could get something like these layouts


WordPress - Photorific - Photography WordPress Theme | ThemeForest
WordPress - King Size - fullscreen background WordPress theme | ThemeForest

for blogger?

wordpress only charges if you host at wordpress.com, self host it and it's free open source, unless you purchase a theme as mentioned...not to mention you'll get much better search engine results with wordpress than blogspot / blogger.com

[Ariana Murphy]

Wow, this is good information. Thanks for taking the time to post! I will definitely look into Wordpress. Right now I am hosted at websitebuilderpro.com. They are very easy to use, which is important because I'm clueless with this stuff. The Wordpress themes look so awesome, though, I'm considering a change. In the meantime, I'll check over my site and fix those admin items mentioned.

The only thing about the Wordpress themes is that their examples are so awesome, and the photos shown are amazing! I don't think my photography is there yet. I'll look pretty shabby by comparison!

Thanks again, everyone! The DPS community ROCKS!