Thoughts on new website?

[xerubus]

I would really love to hear some feedback on my new site... http://www.markcrossphotography.com .

I will be using this site for the business side of things, and using my existing galleries as a place where i can store images for posting on forums. The purpose of the site is to draw more attention to the photography rather than the design. I've tried to get a simple look, which is easy on the eye.

Some sections are still being fine tuned, such as the pricing page. Other than basic design and layout, I'd like you to 'pretend' that you are a consumer... would the site lead you to find out further information about the product?

cheers and thanks in advance....

[xerubus]

oh... and just one thing to remember... if the gallery is slow, it's because there are too many of you on there at one time i've tested it during non peak periods over a slow link and it responds quite fine.

cheers

[sirhc55]

Nice one - simple and to the point. I would be a little wary about prices though. I have done 4 sites and none of them wanted prices showing - basically so they were not showing the competition.

Chris

[xerubus]

i agree completely chris... the last thing i wanted was a flash page or a bloated page which is distracting and doesn't sell the product....

i won't be having an prices directly on the page... more information about packages etc etc blah....

thanks mate...

[sirhc55]

As a designer myself I love white space. Although I have Flash etc I have never used it and probably never will.

Good luck Mark

Chris

[JordanP]

server seems to be down - can't get there

[xerubus]

that's a bit strange... i can get there (i'm remote of the server at the moment having a cup of coffee) ... ?

[JordanP]

just got there from your link in your signature - no probs...

[xerubus]

good... i'll continue enjoying my coffee then

[leigh999]

Hey Mark,

I like the site - I was recently checking out local photographers sites just to look at the galleries and yours definitely compares with the best of those.

The thing that struck me was that the style is simple and modern - focussed on showing the images in their best light. Obviously this is a good formula or everybody wouldn't be doing it and it certainly appeals to me as a consumer. The weddings photos you have are great - perhaps you could try to show a few more family/children portraits as I understand this is also a popular area.

Also I was checking out a book at the Brisbane Council Library recently (I am pretty sure it was Professional digital imaging for wedding and portrait photographers by Patrick Rice) which actually had a whole chapter about how to 'sell' to the client - ie tips about packages and the sort of wording to use in your publicity material and website. I think it is important that the site text is as professional as your images (not that there is anything wrong with what you have already).

One little thing - I know it is still a 'work in progress' but as it is live right now I would take out the "yadda yadda yadda" if I were you.

Good luck with your business.

Rebecca

[xerubus]

thankyou for the reply Rebecca ... much appreciated....

you're right... i'd better get rid of the yadda yadda yadda and put something a little more professional in there just incase someone does stumble across the site

regarding the children/family portraits, i'm yet to do some more to put in the portfolio.... the goal is to have a few different family shots, as well as wedding shots to show the ability of different styles...

if you remember the name of that book i would be very interested in having a read... need to educate myself as much as possible at this stage in time...

cheers

[Onyx]

The site seems to follow the tried and true formula for pro photogs' sites. I guess that's a good thing - simple, uncluttered, gets to the point.

If you like to push the boundaries just a tad in your shooting (as you've mentioned elsewhere on here that you do), either have that as part of your marketing spiel or try to illustrate that through certain images.

[leigh999]

No probs Mark - it must be daunting doing all of this for the first time and I wish you the best of luck.

The book is "Professional digital imaging for wedding and portrait photographers" by Patrick Rice and you can get it from any Brisbane City Council library. There is a branch in town at the City Plaza next to the town hall that has this book.

The publishers of the book have a series of titles - with more than one discussing professional wedding and portrait photography. There is a list of their available books in the back of the book I mentioned.

Good luck!

[xerubus]

The site seems to follow the tried and true formula for pro photogs' sites. I guess that's a good thing - simple, uncluttered, gets to the point.

If you like to push the boundaries just a tad in your shooting (as you've mentioned elsewhere on here that you do), either have that as part of your marketing spiel or try to illustrate that through certain images.

onyx... you know me far too well... the problem i have, and believe me i've been debating it for many sleepness nights, is that most 'clients' don't want edgy or artistic for wedding albums... i guess as i progress as a photographer and find my niche, i will be able to lead clients into the product i would like to see them have... but for now i'll need to play it safe to see whether or not i have what it takes to enter into a market which is flooded with talented and admired photographers....

does that make sense, or only to me?

Rebecca... thankyou... i appreciate it....

cheers

[ajo43]

Mark

You asked us to act like customers so I'm going to put my ruthless customer's hat on and tell you what I think.

1. The look and feel of the site is awesome. Clean, artistic and gives me a confident feel about your work.
2. The breakdown of categories is a good idea and I like the categories. I would suggest a commercial category or a corporate category. I expect one of the best ways to make revenue as a photographer is to take pictures for annual reports or brochures. Can I suggest, take some corporate portraits of your mates in suits, maybe a picture of a work environment, a corporate HQ building (although be careful of permission here) - just look through some annual reports and see the kind of shots that they take.
3. Do a 'product' category. Take some pictures of products. Maybe a pic of a fantastic seafood dish etc.
4. I would re-order the categories to put commercial first.
5. You need lots more different photos (not necessarily lots more photos). When I scroll through your photos you have too many pictures of the same people or from the same event. In my mind I thought, he has been to one wedding and one air show. I would put maybe only 2 shots from that wedding (be ruthless) and one from the airshow. You've got to get out to the footie (even local clubs) and take some real closeups. Maybe go to a local school and offer your services free for a sports day in exchange for them allowing you to put the shots on your website.
6. You probably don't have them yet but what I think works great on websites is say in the wedding gallery a very short testamonial quote from a happy couple.
7. This is my opinion which some may disagree with but I don't like the use of the word "us" or "we" to make your business sound like it is bigger than it actually is. I don't mind when a site says "I" or "my" to emphasise that you are the main man.

Don't take any of this the wrong way. If I thought your website was crap I wouldn't even take the time to comment. I think it is close to what you need but just not there yet.

Cheers and good luck.

[Greg B]

.... the problem i have, and believe me i've been debating it for many sleepness nights, is that most 'clients' don't want edgy or artistic for wedding albums... i guess as i progress as a photographer and find my niche, i will be able to lead clients into the product i would like to see them have... but for now i'll need to play it safe to see whether or not i have what it takes to enter into a market which is flooded with talented and admired photographers....

does that make sense, or only to me?

Mark, I like the site, congratulations.

My suggestion, what about having a "For those looking for something different..." section where you acknowledge that while most people are looking for traditional, or traditional/modern photography for their weddings, there are those people who want something very different, and you are happy to accomodate/discuss/work with them etc...

Just a thought.

cheers

[atencati]

Xerubus, I like the site, it is a little slow however. The wedding shots (bridal party at the depot) are Awesome. Wish my pics were that good, oh wait, its only been 6 months and I don't have the pics yet. Wish I could have shot my own wedding. Anyways, I like the format although it seems a little small, could just be my resolution though. Keep up the good work, your pics have given me a few new ideas. Thanks.

Andy

oh, and now I finally know where you got your avatar!

[xerubus]

thankyou to everyone ... i appreciate your time....

Jonesy... you have answered every question i could possibly want.. i owe you a beer some time... your ideas are great and i shall start the brain storming ... thankyou...

Greg... voila... great idea and it will give me a chance to show some of the more edgy shots... cheers

Andy... thankyou for the comments... i'm looking at ways to add a little more speed to the site... reducing the amount of shots to only a select few will definitely help... thanks... and the avatar.. that's my wife

cheers and thanks again guys...

[xerubus]

Just an update... mainly for Rebecca's sake

the pricing & package page now has content..... only question i would ask is whether as a 'happy consumer' you would enquire further about my services....?


cheers

[PlatinumWeaver]

I cant put myself into the position of consumer, but I can go through the page as a designer..


1) The menu at the bottom changing is a nice idea, but could get confusing. If it was me I would either keep the menu the same for all times or change it to keep all the items there all the time, but remove the hyperlink for each object when you're on each object's content page.

2) It looks like no-one else has commented for over an hour so I should be okay, but the gallery loads slowly. Not just a little but a lot... i'm on 512/128 ADSL and for it to take at least a minute to load 14 400x600px images is really bad.

3) When you click on an image where the thumbnail has loaded but the main image hasn't it displays [ Image loading ] over the top of the existing image, this is quite hard to read or even notice on some shots, that text on a black background would be easier to see.

4) The font you use for your links, the grey font is a little difficult to read on the brown background.. the red is impossible.

5) On the same links, there is no way to navigate back from say landscape to weddings or weddings to corporate other than hitting the back button.

6) In order to get to your gallery you need to...
a) Allow Javascript
b) Allow pop-up windows
c) Have flash installed.

I would suggest pick one of these, three will alienate people. I personally use javascript for various things, so I made sure that I wasn't hampering functionality by using the other two.

7) You might want to make your contact section have a mailto link as well as just the address, just a little thing.


Now that all that's out the way, it really is a good looking website and you have wonderful shots. I don't see anything there that would stop the majority of consumers from investigating further.

Oh...

Maybe a downloadable file of your pricing structures.. for those that want to print it off and get final approval, if they just try to print the page they'll only get what's currently within your iframe

[xerubus]

First up... Dean... I appreciate the time you have taken ... thankyou...

1) The menu at the bottom changing is a nice idea, but could get confusing. If it was me I would either keep the menu the same for all times or change it to keep all the items there all the time, but remove the hyperlink for each object when you're on each object's content page.

I like the idea of just removing the href... thanks...

2) It looks like no-one else has commented for over an hour so I should be okay, but the gallery loads slowly. Not just a little but a lot... i'm on 512/128 ADSL and for it to take at least a minute to load 14 400x600px images is really bad.

i think this was more to the fact that there was no less than 12 people browsing at the same time... there are still a lot of people looking at it... i guess that's what happens when forums such as ours gets very popular

each image has been reduced in size and quality quite a lot... and average about 20-30k each....

3) When you click on an image where the thumbnail has loaded but the main image hasn't it displays [ Image loading ] over the top of the existing image, this is quite hard to read or even notice on some shots, that text on a black background would be easier to see.

hmmmm... see what i can do....

4) The font you use for your links, the grey font is a little difficult to read on the brown background.. the red is impossible.

eeeek... i've never paid attention to that.. you are right.. terrible on the eyes... ta....

5) On the same links, there is no way to navigate back from say landscape to weddings or weddings to corporate other than hitting the back button.

i'll have a look into that also...

6) In order to get to your gallery you need to...
a) Allow Javascript
b) Allow pop-up windows
c) Have flash installed.

I would suggest pick one of these, three will alienate people. I personally use javascript for various things, so I made sure that I wasn't hampering functionality by using the other two.

i might try and see if i can just embed javascript into the page rather than a popup with flash.. had a few people comment on that issue....

7) You might want to make your contact section have a mailto link as well as just the address, just a little thing.

yes.... i'm also going to add separate emails for weddings, landscape, etc etc ...

Now that all that's out the way, it really is a good looking website and you have wonderful shots. I don't see anything there that would stop the majority of consumers from investigating further.

Oh...

Maybe a downloadable file of your pricing structures.. for those that want to print it off and get final approval, if they just try to print the page they'll only get what's currently within your iframe

that's on the way... just have an accountant looking over it for me as it needs to be spot on if the clients take it away with them...

once again... thanks mate... i really appreciate you taking the time....

cheers

[Onyx]

Mark, did you create the website yourself? May I ask what tool(s) you used?

[xerubus]

i created everything myself apart from the gallery popups... which are made by a product called simple viewer....

all done on a linux box using vi .... the best editor known to man

if i was to do it on a windoze box i'd probably use notetab... but that's because i'm not a pretty gui sort of person.... i'm a simple editor person...

[PlatinumWeaver]

Thank you for being so very gracious when I pointed out my opinion of a few minor issues.. i know if someone came along and nit-picked my page i'd probably not be to happy about it..

I'm with you on the simple text editor approach, I have a friend doing a multimedia/webdesign course and they're just using things like dreamweaver, you try to have a conversation about w3c validation or anything other than 'press this, click that, choose the color here' and he gets lost..

[xerubus]

Thank you for being so very gracious when I pointed out my opinion of a few minor issues.. i know if someone came along and nit-picked my page i'd probably not be to happy about it..

I'm with you on the simple text editor approach, I have a friend doing a multimedia/webdesign course and they're just using things like dreamweaver, you try to have a conversation about w3c validation or anything other than 'press this, click that, choose the color here' and he gets lost..

no thanks required.... i asked for comments and you replied exactly as i wanted.... i like to tell it as it is.... and i expect the same in return

i know what you are talking about... one of my mates is a coldfusion guru... and i'm always having a lend of him that he should learn how to code basic w3c compliant code