Would appreciate some feedback on my updated website.

RoiSoleil

Hi all,

It's nice to have a little bit of time to post here again (used to post as Achtung Barry). Becoming a daddy meant photography had to take a backseat for a while but looking forward to getting back into it. I did however spend a bit of time focusing on the business side of things and set up a proper business as a sideline. I've given the website an overhaul and I'd really appreciate any c&c, suggestions etc. I built the site using Wordpress and the theme is called 'Aperture'. It fulfilled my wish to have a full screen slideshow on the home page while still having plenty of text content when you scroll down.

The 'web store' tab will take you to my Fine Art America web store. I find FAA to be an excellent way of selling work online. They offer framed, canvas, metal and acrylic prints at pretty much any size and they ship worldwide. I tend to sell mainly to the US market (about 50%) and the rest in Ireland, UK, Canada and Australia mainly. FAA also let you set your own prices. They give a base price and the rest is up to you.

I haven't done anything in the blog yet so please excuse the placeholder articles.

I'd really appreciate your feedback on the look and usability of the site as well as the photos. I switched my domain name to buyphotographyonline.net as it attracts a lot more buyers. The old domain, barryocarrollphotography.com will still take you to the new site.

Anyway you can find the site here:


http://www.buyphotographyonline.net/

tricky D

Some quick feedback.

Too many images on the preload slider, slowing loading down. There's no navigation available for the slider and the individual slides don't have a linking.

Use I and my much less in the text copy. Think more along what I can do for you type of copy.

Try to avoid centre aligned text below 'Fine Art Photography' panel. Right aligned is much easier to read.

Try to break up the 6 Services panel text a bit using more list oriented layout. Compare the Buy Prints Online copy with the Available Print Formats copy; the Available Print Formats is much more readable.

Avoid opening new tabs for links.

I'd look at more direct linking of photos on your site to them Web Store.

Make your email addresses mailtos.

Cracking photos.

RoiSoleil

tricky D wrote: »

Some quick feedback.

Too many images on the preload slider, slowing loading down. There's no navigation available for the slider and the individual slides don't have a linking.

Use I and my much less in the text copy. Think more along what I can do for you type of copy.

Try to avoid centre aligned text below 'Fine Art Photography' panel. Right aligned is much easier to read.

Try to break up the 6 Services panel text a bit using more list oriented layout. Compare the Buy Prints Online copy with the Available Print Formats copy; the Available Print Formats is much more readable.

Avoid opening new tabs for links.

I'd look at more direct linking of photos on your site to them Web Store.

Make your email addresses mailtos.

Cracking photos.

That's really great and useful feedback tricky D. I really appreciate you taking the time to take a look. You make some excellent points that I will take on board.

1moreyr

Great photos.
1. How about justifying text - looks better or wrapping text in some cases around photos.
2. In photographic and web design services change some of the I's to avoid repetition - Photo commissions, photography lessons and photo restoration all start with I.
3. Text in stock photography - you have "how how".
4. Would take out please contact me in photography lessons, photo restoration and web design. You have a contact page so this is a bit repetitive. Also putting your email in the middle of photo restoration looks odd.
5. In your About page change "I also enjoy capturing the beauty the natural world" to I also enjoy capturing the beauty of the natural world. You have also described Ireland as beautiful 3 times so maybe change some of the wording.
Best of luck

RoiSoleil

1moreyr wrote: »

Great photos.
1. How about justifying text - looks better or wrapping text in some cases around photos.
2. In photographic and web design services change some of the I's to avoid repetition - Photo commissions, photography lessons and photo restoration all start with I.
3. Text in stock photography - you have "how how".
4. Would take out please contact me in photography lessons, photo restoration and web design. You have a contact page so this is a bit repetitive. Also putting your email in the middle of photo restoration looks odd.
5. In your About page change "I also enjoy capturing the beauty the natural world" to I also enjoy capturing the beauty of the natural world. You have also described Ireland as beautiful 3 times so maybe change some of the wording.
Best of luck

Great feedback. Thanks a million 1moreyr. Sometimes when you work on something for so long, you miss a lot and you repeat yourself without realising.

1moreyr

I love proofing (very sad I know) and still miss things when I am writing myself. Meant to ask you how you will stop people from taking screen shots and printing images out themselves. Photo I clicked into had no copyright watermark across it to stop people copying it

Splinters

1moreyr wrote: »

I love proofing (very sad I know) and still miss things when I am writing myself. Meant to ask you how you will stop people from taking screen shots and printing images out themselves. Photo I clicked into had no copyright watermark across it to stop people copying it

You'd be doing well to get any kind of reasonable quality print from a screenshot.

Also the kind of cheatskates who'd attempt that aren't the kind of customers who'd typically be buying high quality prints.

RoiSoleil

Splinters wrote: »

You'd be doing well to get any kind of reasonable quality print from a screenshot.

Also the kind of cheatskates who'd attempt that aren't the kind of customers who'd typically be buying high quality prints.

As 1moreyr says, you wouldn't get any kind of decent sized prints from a 1200px image. I don't really like using watermarks. They do get stolen by companies for web use from time to time. When that happens I just send an invoice along with proof of my ownership of the image. Most pay up in fairness.

fret_wimp2

Its a good idea to get feedback. When looking for a wedding photographer i eliminated 40+ simply by having a quick look at their websites. If their shop front is terrible, hard to use, hard to locate images on it, im not going to enter to enquire further , move on, there are just so many photographers out there willing to make the task of looking at their work and finding out about them very easy.

The good:
-you have some nice images

The bad:
-way too many images. You should only be putting up your absolute best images.
Its like having too many shelves in your shop with way too much stuff on them.

- you have the same images up there in colour and in b&w. of your best images, decide if they work better in colour or mono and upload only the best.

-You have over 10 categories, but they are not really categories, they are labelled like albums of holiday photos on flickr.
Your into selling fine art images. You shouldn't have more than 2 or 3 categories, and even that is pushing it.

-your home page is nothing and does nothing. Its a big section of an image and a menu where i have to hunt for what i want. The home page should be doing something. At the very least it should be a slideshow of your absolute best 5-10 images, with clear links leading to where i can buy them, learn more about you, services etc.

-its slow to load. Took just over 12 seconds on my ipad over very good wifi. If i had just viewed 15 other photographer sites, opened yours and it took more than a few seconds, i probably wouldnt wait.


Overall, as a blog site or a showcase of your work for family and friends thats not flickr, its fine. For a professional site you want to entice people in and make it easy to see your wares and easy to buy, its not good.

Apologies if thats harsh, but its your shop font. It needs to be clearer than clear to find what your selling, both in navigation and by not having your shelves cluttered with way too much stuff.

RoiSoleil

Thanks a million fret_wimp2 for taking the time to have a good look at the site and give such detailed feedback. I appreciate it. I do agree that there are too many images in the home slideshow causing it to load slowly and also that there are too many images in the galleries. You suggest 2 to 3 categories. What would you suggest as categories? I've often struggled to find a way to organise my shots in the gallery: by location? by genre? by style? etc.

Thanks again for your feedback.

dinneenp

1. On homepage break up your text (I am a photographer...) Break it into 2 or 3 small paragraphs. Why not add a 'call to action' with a link to. like this.

2. It could be just me but I wouldn't have social media and e-mail icons/links on the homepage, it can distract, bring people away from your site straight away.

3. 9- That's a lot of links on your homepage navigation bar. How are people to know what 'other' refers to? You could have 'Photos' and then sub menus for colour, black and white, other.

4. I'd get rid of the cat image from the homepage; you have European cities and they 1/2 a cat head ?! Also the photo of Samuel Becket bridge- would people outside of Ireland know it, why not replace with a more internationally known icon of Dublin?

5. Home page fine art photography-
Fine art prints of all my photography can be purchased from the web store- make web store clickable. Same applies to several other areas (contact me)
All orders are printed, framed and shipped by Fine Art America- could some people think you only sell framed prints?

All orders are fulfilled by Fine Art America who offer a wide choice of sizes, formats and framing options for all of my photographs. - people don't care who it's fulfilled by, just mention

Again could be just me but 'welcome to my website' doesn't sound great.

About page- can you get rid of the breadcrumb- home / about? I'd also shrink the grey space. 'The Website'; to me this sounds wrong, how about 'My Website'?

Contact- include an e-mail address, some people prefer to send from their e-mail. You have Facebook and Twitter on right hand side but why not mention them as contact methods in your text? Like this
maybe young kids aren't you target market but a lot of them use twitter more than e-mail.

Colour- You're forcing people to pick a category immediately, make Colour a page of it's own with a link to each colour category (like landing page on web store?)
Personally I think there's too many photos on the one page (looking at Dublin in Colour). It's overwhelming. Have X per page, best on first page obviously.

Web Store- as mentioned above you're directing people away from your site. There's a widget you can use on your website for the FAA store if you want. (even though I think views on your site through the widget don't increase view count whereas views on FAA do.)

I've only given comments on what I'd change, didn't comment on the many good points. They're excellent images, very strong and colourful.

tricky D

dinneenp wrote: »

Again could be just me but 'welcome to my website' doesn't sound great.

No, it's not you. 'Welcome to my website' should be nuked every time - it's weak copy and implicit anyway.