My new photography page. Comments welcome!

NEPats37 · Mar 13, 2007

http://www.angelfire.com/planet/jimsphotography

leave comments on what you think. Let me knoe what you liked and did not like.
Thanks

nabero · Mar 13, 2007

Since it seems you're intending to use this site for business, to get more clients to photograph at events...I think it's really important to have examples of events you've done right on the page. I know you mentioned to e-mail you for pictures of events, but putting up some awesome photos from events would make people say: "wow, I hope my party looks like that!"
Hope this helps!

cheers!

NEPats37 · Mar 13, 2007

nabero said:
Since it seems you're intending to use this site for business, to get more clients to photograph at events...I think it's really important to have examples of events you've done right on the page. I know you mentioned to e-mail you for pictures of events, but putting up some awesome photos from events would make people say: "wow, I hope my party looks like that!"
Hope this helps!

cheers!

Thanks for the advice I just need to get permission from those people first before I can do that. Hopefully I'll be able to add that soon.
Thanks

Jim Gratiot · Mar 15, 2007

Just to expand on what Nabero said... not only should you have pictures of the events, but verbal (or video) testimonials raving about how wonderful you are.

Also, I'd get rid of the Google Adsense banners... they scream "amateur." (And you should be able to make MUCH more money with your photography business than you will with the Adsense revenue.)

Rewrite the copy on the home page... explain exactly why you are the right person to take pictures for somebody.

Put a few of your best pictures on the home page... the self-portrait w/ camera doesn't do much for me.

You talk a lot about fair pricing... so I would have a link to a "prices/services" page so that people will know exactly what to expect from you. In other words, are you a $10/hour photographer or a $250/hour photographer?

mr e · Mar 15, 2007

Well if you really are trying to use this for business, then first you need to get off angelfire and get some hosting (even cheap) and a domain name, that way people have something to type in directly to get to your site.

Then get rid of all of the ads, they just don't look good, and as Jim said, you should be able to make more money regardless of them.

Then, (and I'm not trying to be mean) look around at basic web page layouts (three column, two column, etc) and find something you like and model that, and keep a consistent feel between all your pages.

Then when you have a decent layout going, you need a color scheme, I would recommend googling "color scheme" (here's the first link that came up) and find a pleasing color scheme to use.

Finally comes content, you can get three easy pages with "Home", "Contact", and hopefully you have some sort of "Gallery". Then you could split the gallery up into different genres if you shoot more than one type of event. You could even include Prices for a fourth page.

On your Home page I would include basic information about yourself and your business, where you're located, how far will you travel, stuff along those lines, that people will be looking for when coming to your site.

Then on your Contact page, email, phone, address if it's relevant, or just city/state.

Wow, well hope that helps at least somewhat

NEPats37 · Mar 16, 2007

updated check it out now

Alex_B · Mar 16, 2007

for some strange reason prices and contact just display the html source code instead of being interpreted as html ...

maybe you should name the files prices.html and contact.html ... or make it directories containing index.html (like prices/index.html)

Alex_B · Mar 16, 2007

oh, same for gallery2

Jim Gratiot · Mar 16, 2007

I would still lose all the ads... they do nothing but distract from your site..

And no offense, but some of the pictures you use as examples (like the beach shot) seem to be average snapshots, at best. If you're trying to get clients, you have to have excellent examples of what you can do.

Alex_B · Mar 16, 2007

Jim Gratiot said:
And no offense, but some of the pictures you use as examples (like the beach shot) seem to be average snapshots, at best. If you're trying to get clients, you have to have excellent examples of what you can do.

Could not have put it better myself.

only place your very best images on that webpage. If you do not have enough good ones, go and shoot more, until you produce more of them.

NEPats37 · Mar 16, 2007

the links should all work now

mr e · Mar 16, 2007

Well, you seemed to pick the easiest things out of what we mentioned to change, which is nice, but the easiest things obviously do the least to improve your site.

I see you have some navigation, that's a start, now keep it consistent throughout the site, keep the links the same. There should be a "Home" link even if I am at your "Home" page for example.

It's a good start, I hope you continue to improve your site, as I believe it can really help out any business if done correctly...and hurt if done badly, but best of luck to you.

alan927 · Mar 17, 2007

You seem to be building your site manually, which is difficult to do and unnecessary in this day and age.

Check out JAlbum - free software that creates image galleries quickly and easily. It will line the photos up, automatically create navigation from page to page as well as traversing folders, etc. There are over 100 skins to choose from, too, so you can make it look however you want.

I use JAlbum to build my site: Alan927.com

Preview of a new automotive site I'm working on: 2007 Detroit auto show

I would also recommend cropping the photos so there's no "white line" along the edges.

- Alan