Surfing through a zillion photographer sites for inspiration, I need the opinions of others to find out what you like in a photographer’s website.
Do you like sites that have nothing more than a pretty pretty picture or Flash slideshow on the home page? Or do you prefer them to have tons of information there too?
Do you like a clean looking site with a simple site navigation with dropdowns? Or a sidebar that is minimalist but easy to find things?
All Flash sites? Or HTML with some Flash included for slideshows?
Music when viewing a photographer’s site? Or no music, ever, ever, ever?
If you need to look at some other photographer’s sites to see what I’m talking about, you can check out the zillions that I’ve bookmarked on del.icio.us.
Basically, I want to make changes to the FreshPhotography site to better highlight the options to hire us for other work. We will still continue to sell prints there too, so the existing functionality needs to stay on the current images. There will still be a photoblog with the option to buy. There will also be information on portrait, wedding, and corporate photography. So a lot of things need to be there, and I want them to be well organized.
Now that my missing notebooks have returned from the depths of the underworld in my car, I have a feeling that site sketches are going to be under way soon!
10 replies on “Informal Survey…”
No music, ever, ever, ever!
/agree no music! I hate sites that play music for you. If I want music playing, I’m probably already playing it! I can never find the “stop” button on those sites fast enough – and ones that don’t even offer a stop button I rarely come back and visit again.
Some flash is ok – sometimes even more than ok. All flash = bad.
Simple navigation = good. Maybe focus the navigation on the types of users coming to the site. Get them to “self select” – since there’ll probably be different types of users coming to the site. Those that interested in print purchases. Thost that are interested in Wedding photos. Those that are interested in Portraits. etc…
Also, I’m not crazy about drop down navigation. Too much like “mystery meat” navigation in my opinion.
For photography sites – I prefer simpler sites. I’m looking at the photos – not the web design. I remember reading an article about web design and how newer sites have less “pixels” ie. less clutter, less distraction, etc. I think this should be especially true for a photography site. The less distractions on the page the better.
*please note that these are all opinions. Other opinions vary, blah blah blah. 🙂
If you do want to have music, let the user turn it on (and make that button obvious). If a site turns on music on its own I am usually less disposed to stay there/patronize that business. I agree with what Jennifer says about simplicity, both in design and navigation. Having to jump up and mute stuff and try to find stop buttons in the first few minutes is not my idea of simplicity.
When looking at pictures, I usually prefer to click through pictures rather than have the site do an automatic slideshow. Judging by a lot of photo sites I see (shutterbug comes to mind) I may be in the minority on this, but you did ask for *my* opinion. When looking at, say, 20 pictures, there are probably going to be one or two that I want to look at for a long time and really study. There are some I would rather not spend much time looking at. When viewing slideshows, invariably I spend most of the time going “come ooooon” and then trying to find the pause, rewind button when I see a really interesting picture.
Simple is always best in my humble opinion 🙂 But lots of relevant content as well!
No music evah!!! I like the idea of howing the vistor select where they want to go – portraits, events, commercial photography, prints…
howing = having – sorry, typing at an angle on the couch
I have no problems with flash being included, as long as the site is not totally flash. But no no no no no no no to the music!
No music, I run away from those sites. Keep it clean and simple. Use photo examples for your buttons. portraits, events, etc.
No music EVAH. Gah.
The simpler the better. Drop down navigations bug me…a lot of times the bottom of the nav drops down past where I can see things.
Flash? The simpler the better. 😉 That’s my mantra!
I like to KNOW about the photographer. Easy on the flash. Ability to see larger versions of an image (even if they’re watermarked). A little bit of color but not bonanza. Oh and categories, in case I don’t want to see weddings with babies.