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10/24/2008 12:32:54 AM · #1 |
I've been working for the past month on a new photography website and it's finally up and running today! www.tombakerphoto.com The old site is completely gone and the new one has a bunch of new photos and features. Let me know what you think!! :)
Tom |
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10/24/2008 12:36:36 AM · #2 |
Pretty slick site. A little slow to load the Travel gallery, but nice all the way around.
You have some amazing pictures on there. |
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10/24/2008 12:39:34 AM · #3 |
| Wow Tom. Amazing gallery. Very simple but effective wesite design. Good luck. |
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10/24/2008 12:44:26 AM · #4 |
Very nice!!!
Clickable link //www.tombakerphoto.com/ |
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10/24/2008 12:54:12 AM · #5 |
thanks ;)
I always forget to do that! |
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10/24/2008 01:22:30 AM · #6 |
Beautiful! It's slow on my computer (but that's because there's a filter on our web that checks everything) and the sizing is off for my screen, but everything's off for my screen (including DPC) so not a big biggie.
Your work is incredible too! I like.
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10/24/2008 01:29:04 AM · #7 |
I like that the front page loads lightning fast ... and I like the simple effective navigation ... and I like the progress bars ...
Oh, and the pictures are superb, too! Great job. |
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10/24/2008 03:39:15 AM · #8 |
| Thanks everyone! I'm glad you all like it! |
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10/24/2008 04:53:51 AM · #9 |
| Simple yet stylish, relatively fast and effective. The photos are fantastic. I saw the propeller shot - is this the one you were asking for help in the forums for awhile back? It came out great! ...as did all of your product shots. |
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10/24/2008 06:25:27 AM · #10 |
It's a nice site but I have a few issues with it.
First if I click on a link it takes a while for the pictures to load. You might want to make the file size a tad smaller just to get that extra speed.
Next there is no navigation to any of the other links and the first couple of times I clicked the back button on my mouse which gets me to the welcome page. Then I found that if I click your name I can get back to that screen but I guess in my mind if I click your name it should be the way to contact you.
Which brings me to the point, how would someone contact you if they wanted to?
Nice pictures though. I wish I had things like that around me to take pictures of. |
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10/24/2008 06:40:59 AM · #11 |
| I like all except for the front page. Those photos flicking in from the side just looks cheap to me. And that front page is a first impression and it needs to be lasting - put a great photo on it, show what you're worth from the very first click - don't advertise for Adobe (they can afford their own promotions some place else). But the overall speed (very good) and simplicity of the gallery pages seemed nice... |
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10/24/2008 09:20:26 AM · #12 |
| I like it ... I think that it navigates very easily .... unlike Joe, I think that clicking on your name should take you to the home page, not a contact page ... IMHO that link should be right where it is ... the images load very quickly for me, I've had no issues with the speed at all ... nice job! |
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10/24/2008 09:59:17 AM · #13 |
I used to design webpages for a living so feel I might be able to add a little here hopefully.
Firstly nice clean design which is good (although photographers sites often go for a more artistic and very modern / funky layout but that is very dependent on your target audience).
Points I would address:
Most important one of the lot for me is that it is not optimised for 1024x768 and as this is the most widely used screen resolution you are alienating a huge amount of possible customers, I would address this asap if it were my site.
Personally I would lose the "Enter" page this is very old fashioned and every unneccesary click is a potential loss of visitors so you need to up the impact value, the best way to do this within your current layout IMHO would be to have it go straight to your main.html - as mentioned above I would also remove the adobe link, if the visitor does not have the plugin installed the web browser will normally provide a link to the relevent download anyway.
Talking of the main.html I would not have the links across the page as they currently are, instead I would lower them and place them under either one static picture that really WOWS the viewer or a selection of images that rotates slowly, I must say this would be quite easy as you have some very impressive shots in that portfolio, you need to show some of those to your potential clients as quickly as possible!
The images load very quickly on my broadband connection but you might want to make it a little more "low tech" friendly, I would do this by having a preview of the images in each portfolio shown under the main image which can be selected by the viewer and will take them to that particular shot. This would save them from having to go through every shot if they do not wish to. The best way to impliment this would be to have a script that shows maybe 4 or 5 of the images ahead of the one on screen and the previous image or two as well.
Overall a nice job so congratulations on that, I am very impressed with your portfolio though that is amazing. |
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10/24/2008 10:12:56 AM · #14 |
I keep waiting for someone else to break the ice and point out what is seriously wrong with your site(s). I guess I'll start.
In doing so I am always compelled to set the tone by saying what is good, but I don't think that's why you started this thread so I'll keep it short. Your images are really nice and viewability and navigation through the images is easy and smooth.
Websites are designed with a goal in mind, usually for one of three reasons: 1) To advertise a photography business such as weddings, portraiture, etc. 2) To display your work to share your creations with the world. or 3) To sell your prints to make a profit.
What doesn't work with your website(s) starts with the assumption that the purpose of your website(s) is to sell prints. It is not painstakingly simple for a viewer to become a buyer while perusing your work. Viewing the images is easy and entertaining, however, if I wanted to purchase a print it becomes a difficult task to do so as I encountered numerous roadblocks or hinderances.
I tried to "become a buyer" after I decided on a print to purchase and found that I had to leave that print to click on the purchase button at the bottom of the page. This button redirected me to another website (a big no-no) to make the purchase. However, when I go to this "purchase" site I have to once again find the print that I wanted to buy..."Hmmmm...now which one was it?"
Once I found the print I couldn't figure out what the print size and pricing options were. While viewing an image I clicked on the shopping cart icon on the top right only to get the response that nothing was selected yet. Eventually, I found the popout column on the left side of the image that had another shopping cart icon. After clicking on that I had to choose between small prints, medium prints, and all prints. I was asking myself, what does this photographer consider my desired print size to be, small or medium? I know what I want but I still don't know where to find it.
Actually, in playing the role of the buyer I would have lost interest long before I got that far. Heck, I'm losing interest now while typing this ;)
The point is that the more hurdles that you force your customer to jump over the less likely you will be to make a sale (still assuming that primary purpose of this site is for sales rather than display and share). IMO you need to make major changes to the site that allow a potential buyer to see the print and price options while viewing the image that they are interested in buying. When a customer first sees one of your beautiful images and says "ooohhh" is the moment that they need to have the ability to choose a print at their desired size, know how much it will cost them and place it in their cart immediately. Any delays or hinderances to making that purchase greatly increases the chance that they will change their mind.
My website was designed with this in mind from the beginning. Check it out if you would like to see what I am referring to. When you select an image on my website you are immediately presented with all options available with that print as well as the associated prices. It is simple for the customer to immediately (while "ooohhhing" about the image) select their option and place it in their cart and easily move on to the next image. There is no cumbersome moving from one site to another, trying to remember which image they were considering, and they are left in the original site ready to choose their next purchase.
This is a major change and will require you to add a financial transaction program to your website.
I hope that my criticisms were not too harsh considering all of the hard work that you have put into your website(s) and that you find this post useful.
Good luck. |
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10/24/2008 02:57:50 PM · #15 |
Day two and it looks like I already need a huge overhaul! Thanks for your input everyone!
From the bottom up:
 Art Roflmao: That was the same propeller shot and the magazines editors were pretty impressed it came out so well. Did I ever mention that the propeller manufacture liked it so much that they purchased the rights to use it as an ad?
Dirt_Diver: There's a navigation bar with links to different galleries, contact, etc below the pictures. Perhaps it didn't load correctly when you opened my site? I'll look into that...
pineapple: I was thinking about the flickering images too but in the end I decided I didn't want to be like every other photographer out there with static images. It only flickers in the beginning and not when you click galleries, but I'll definitely think that over and possibly change it. I also like your idea about putting a picture on the first page. (and the only reason I have Adobe's logo was obviously to allow others to download Flash, but I'll remove it)
Mark-A: Great point- I'm going to work on getting it to 768 today. I haven't had any issues with the width but the height is bugging a lot of people. I have the "enter" page because our teacher told us that Flash pages can't be searched in Google, etc. Is that not true anymore? I like the idea of large photos circulating at the home page instead of the galleries. That can be easily changed.
yakatme: Thanks for taking the time to write all that. I went with zenfolio.com (a third party site) so I didn't have to deal with cash transactions, printing the photos, or shipping to the customers. I've never sold online before and their services looked very nice and straightforward. Once you're in my Zenfolio account I tried to make it as simple as possible to find the pictures, by putting them in the same gallery. Would it help if you could press "purchase" under each picture and it would lead directly to that one on Zenfolio? That's a great idea to list the prices with the photos, and I can do that quite easily.
How do you deal set-up your eCommerce? It looks extremely professional, but how do you deal with printing, taking orders, credit cards, etc? I'm just guessing, but it seems like you have to approve each order, go to the printers, wait for your print, package it, then go to the post office to mail it. Do you have a studio or assistants where you can do this all in-house? (that's what I hope to do one day) What if you're away on vacation or unable to fulfill orders? I'm going to start implementing as many changes I can from your recommendations and try to make it as easy as possible for other to buy prints. Thanks again for dishing that out! |
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10/24/2008 03:28:00 PM · #16 |
Unfortunately it has been a while since I did any design work (several years) and I never really got involved in flash but even if what your teacher says is true I doubt the enter button page will get you any visitors at all, think SEO and you will immediately see that there is nothing on that page for Google / MSN / Yahoo etc to pick up on anyway.
A far better way to do it would be to try and design the pages so you can give a little information about each picture that is being displayed at any given time. Your biggest problem may be that the images may not show up in Google images which I cannot say for certain again because my knowledge of flash is very limited.
I personally would have watermarked the images as in Yakatme's site and probably not used flash, instead call them from a database and at the same time you could call the pictures info as well, this could be fairly easily done if you have any php / sql knowledge or equivalent on Windows machines.
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10/24/2008 03:59:50 PM · #17 |
I agree with a lot of the criticisms.
A couple of things that bothered me: when moving from one gallery to another, I have a thumbnail, but no more text to explain which gallery it is.
I like to use my keyboard to move through a slideshow (plus have a customizable automatic option like on Zenfolio), instead of having to click my mouse every time.
However, there is also a lot to like - the clean, white, simple look really appeals to me. Your photos are beautiful and the simplicity of the page design lets me concentrate on them.
I thank you from the bottom of my little heart for NOT playing music at me, that always sends me running right away !!!!!!
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10/24/2008 08:32:29 PM · #18 |
Originally posted by Beetle:
when moving from one gallery to another, I have a thumbnail, but no more text to explain which gallery it is. |
I'm fixing that right now :)
Originally posted by Beetle:
I like to use my keyboard to move through a slideshow (plus have a customizable automatic option like on Zenfolio), instead of having to click my mouse every time. |
Hmmm...I thought I did that. I'm starting to hate Flash.
Originally posted by Beetle:
I thank you from the bottom of my little heart for NOT playing music at me, that always sends me running right away !!!!!! |
I was thinking of you when I didn't add music! ;-)
Mark-A - I'll have to work on that, because you're right in saying that it would be nice for them to come up in image searches |
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10/26/2008 07:18:02 AM · #19 |
Originally posted by Tom:
Dirt_Diver: There's a navigation bar with links to different galleries, contact, etc below the pictures. Perhaps it didn't load correctly when you opened my site? I'll look into that...
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Okay I see them now, sorry I guess I didn't see them the first time. Actually what I did was try to use the scroll wheel to scroll down and it didn't so I assumed that there was nothing there. It didn't even dawn on me to look for a scroll bar on the right. |
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10/26/2008 07:50:15 AM · #20 |
Lord luv a DUCK, man. Those images are GREAT!!
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10/26/2008 05:47:01 PM · #21 |
Originally posted by Greetmir:
Lord luv a DUCK, man. Those images are GREAT!! |
ummmmm....thanks(?) |
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10/26/2008 06:29:17 PM · #22 |
| who designed/made your website?? I need to get a new one because my max picture size is 600 pix and 160k :( |
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10/26/2008 07:54:36 PM · #23 |
Originally posted by Tez:
who designed/made your website?? I need to get a new one because my max picture size is 600 pix and 160k :( |
I did 100% of everything :) It was made during a Flash class I took last semester in college |
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10/26/2008 08:06:45 PM · #24 |
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10/28/2008 06:22:43 PM · #25 |
| Thanks for all the comments!! |
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