Can I have a critique on my site please

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Gel

Gel

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Name
Chris
Edit My Images
No
Mainly my income is from weddings.

I'm getting a lot of hits via adwords but not many enquiries, in fact last week google brought me 140 hits from my wedding ad yet not one point of contact or call.

I know there is the argument that the wedding side of things should be seperate from other stuff as it suggests I'm more specialist. But does that hold true in reality?

Is it the quality of my work?
Is it my price?

Input would be greatly appreciated, the start page is on my portraits but the ad takes you directly here:

http://www.brightonphotographic.co.uk/Wedding-Photography-Sussex.html

Thanks in advance,
Gel
 
Site

the menu onthe left would be excellent if it was in a DIV, which stayed on the left, allowing the content to the right to then scroll

you have a site where i have to scroll up and sideways on a huge monitor - thats an achievement. I would consider setting a lowwer max height fo rthe site, and also consider making the left-right controls more obvious and/or styling the scroll bar (yes you can do this in a DIV)

The price list / text contains some things that are irrelevant to couples. They expect you to have great cameras, no need to list them. I dont care if your partner has known you for 5 or 10 years. I want to know my wedding will be done perfectly

There are some typography issues - the difference between the headlines and text is slight, this makes reading the text mundane. Colombs would help readability

Defo have 1 site for weddings alone, the rest is too much for brides and grooms, and will make oyu appear to have no focus


Photography - there are some excelent shots in there, and some less good ones - I think it would be worth asking for a critique of the lot, and seeing what spins out. For me, a bit of fill flash would help a lot of the shots a lot. however, this is a personal taste thing

General - get a decent email address and landline number
 
Thanks for the input.

Xarra, On camera flash using the white bounce card and a bit of work in lightroom.
Took 4 attempts.

Richard, what would you say is an acceptable max height?

Thanks,
Chris
 
Hmmmm.... lots to take in on this site.

Main comment is the busyness of the page menu and the lack of structure in your textual bits.

MENU
The weddings want seperated out somehow, whether it be it's own site or subsection of the site. Personally, I think a seperate site if this is the main focus of your work.

I find ot too cluttered. By that, I find there's too many options on it. Promotional, Event and Commercial I feel should all be under one heading of corporate.
Why have Family, Pet and Portraiture. I like portraiture and feel the other two can be incorporated into it.

You have four wedding titles in there too, but if taken out to a seperate site, this would resolve this to one link. Also, if I was looking for a wedding tog, I would find the 'pin up & boudoir' off putting. Not sure why, but the two really aren't associated in my head and I find this a turn off from your site if I was after wedding pics. Glamour is (better but) not much of a better title, and although it is a line of work, is it one you want pushing out from the from page (or screaming from the rooftops)?

Ummmm... looking down the left side, you have pricing & contact as one menu option then right below that you have seperate links for both pricing (which gives you the same info) and contact, which although basic is just what it says. Why have 2 sets of links to the same info?

Pricing
To me, this seems fine, although your singling out asian style weddings to a higher price bracket does seem um..... can't think of the word. Its almost as if you are purposely making them out to be something more difficult and therefore you will pay the premium. I'm not saying they are as easy, but my thoughts (correct me if wrong) was that it is obviously a time based thing as I know these are a lot longer (days instead of hours) in the saddle for the tog and hey, everyone deserves paid for their time. rather than point out that 'these cost more', I suggest it might be more proactive to put a range of prices
Custom packages available, prices from £399 - £599, please call for a detailed quotation to meet your needs
Click to expand...
tailoring it to each customer. You know inside that you are looking to add the extra premium for the extra work/time so work that into the individuals quotation rather than target it upfront.

Pricing & Contact Page
When in your pricing & contact, the text window is too wide and forces me to scroll right. Doing this moves the text on top of the menu and it looks very unprofessional. As pointed out, listing your equipment is not required and I would say remove it. The bit about you, I would say put in an 'about us' type page and keep 'pricing & contact' just to that. On the contact side, you have your postal address as a footer, but no phone numbers or email address???

Finally (I hope, I do tend to ramble), When in the pricing and contact, as mentioned earlier the text is just all the same. Headings and structure is required to make this a little more readable. Use a fixed width with a full justification for the text, embolden the headings and make it look presentable. Right now it's just a widespread of samey text that is difficult to disgest (especially having to scroll sideways and down to read it).

I know I have covered some of the same points, hopefully you can see where I am coming from though.

K
 
No, it's all good and your not rambling.

I'll be making a lot of changes...effectively a cull.

I was misleading myself by thinking that by showing all that I can do and by giving out all the info possible it would be better.

I agree with the singling out of the Asian groups. It's because I'm offering a package of £799 for all day all image photography.
The problem is a Sikh wedding for example took five days as there were so many images hence the increase in price.

I'll make some changes now.
It's all in CSS so tidying up the pricing page may take a bit longer.
 
OK, you've had some good advice, but I really don't think anyone has really hit the nail on the head yet and I wouldn't want you to spend £££'s on your ad campaigns and not see much of an improvement.

I'm not sure what the norm is for photographers websites, but from experience I would say a visitor to enquirer conversion rate of around 1 to 2% is realistic - maybe even 4 or 5% with a reasonably well designed and optimised site.

What really stands out for me is that you have to make it a LOT easier for people to get in touch with you. Your average internet surfer is extremely lazy - so you simply can not expect them to hunt through your content to find an email address, or even expect them to have an email account on the pc they are using.

If you were my client, the first things I'd recommend you do are:- (in no particular order)
- split the prices and contact pages up - there's so much content on this page it makes the contact details seem less important and hard to find
- make it obvious that you can click the email address, white links amongst white text is pretty bad for usability, as a rule you should be able to tell its a link by just looking at it
- add a contact form - again people are lazy and don't like to compose a proper email - if you prompt them to fill in a little form - they will!
- make sure that 90% of the time some sort of call to action can be seen - or at very least a link to the contact page. The way the site works at the moment your menu disappears off the side of the page and takes with it the one link you desperately want people to click!

It might be worth reading up on "call to action" there's loads of good info on Google ...
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q="c...s=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

It's not my area of expertise, but you will also need to make sure that your adwords are sending you quality visitors, and are giving you value for money otherwise they can be a bit of a money pit.

good luck! :)
 
4 x 6inch £0.75

5 x 7inch £1.50

A4 £3.00

A3 £8.00

A3+ £9.99

Very cheap prints!
 
Very quick first impressions on the images - the colours. They've had a certain PP on them to give them that retro look. I think that would put people off. My feeling is b&g's and (more importantly) their older relatives (brides mum) want good old fashioned simple colour photographs. We as photographers might like the muted colours etc but I'm not sure it's what the clients in your price bracket are looking for.

HTH
 
tpd said:
4 x 6inch £0.75

5 x 7inch £1.50

A4 £3.00

A3 £8.00

A3+ £9.99

Very cheap prints!
Click to expand...

Not bad are they.

I'm using OCP inks which works out 30p a cart, sheet of Ilford Galerie A4 30p sheet, £2.40 gross profit per print, bride buys 50 prints etc.

ryanyboy:

I had a massive cull today and reorganise. The colour thing is an odd one.
The Bride from the Sikh wedding loved them that way and one three different enquiries the Justin and Susie wedding was referred to by the client as something they picked me for.
All that leaves are the Sara and Andres and Sara and Matthew ones which are in normal colour.

I'm really struggling with the changes I've made because logic is saying to me, if I was the client, the more I saw that was good, regardless of what area it was in would show me what a good photographer they were.

Yet, everything I've been told says less is more, to the point of even removing my pricing.
 
Gel said:
Thanks for the input.

Xarra, On camera flash using the white bounce card and a bit of work in lightroom.
Took 4 attempts.

Richard, what would you say is an acceptable max height?

Thanks,
Chris
Click to expand...

The issue is on the contact and pricing page that has a verticle, not horizontal layout. If you can make the info fit the same verticle space as the other pages it wil llook fine on 99% of screens

Also

When you look at it, it looks a bit unbalanced - the gap at the top above the images is dead... suggestion - put the logo, with the menu in a LHS static div, and the content in a RHS scrolling DIV, get the arrow scrolling navigation either to thr right of the div, or underneath
________________________~____________________
logo.....| |
Menu...| scrolling div - content _____|
fixed...| | >> |
div......| (scrollbar in div) |_____|
______|___________________~_________________|

- Arrow in fixed div that floats on the right edge of thebrowser window over the content (in this way the menu is allways available. Set the z-index so it is on top
- left DIV fixed, static, and set width
- Main DIV fluid width, floated left, overflows with scroll bars underneath (style them if you want)set z-index so it is underneath

You can float a left arrow on the lefft next to the menu if you want

If you are feeling clever, you can use javascript/DHTML to detect mouse movements, and slide the div left and right without the need for scrolbars or arrows

If you are also feeling really clever, after an initial period, you can make the left menu collapse, but leave a overlapping tab, which when clicked will make it fly out again over any content thats there

Consider the use of the Coda-Slider script, it deals with scrolling DIV's in a pretty swish way
 
Richard King said:
well the diagram didnt work

lol
Click to expand...

I'll have a play with it later Richard, thanks for your input.

I did have retractable menus, the link to an old page is below, it isn't working as it should becasue I changed the CSS since (I can change it back easily enough) but I was worried the customer wouldn't 'get' the way the menu worked.

This is the thing, trying to keep it simple, on the link below the menu items disappeared off the page with just an arrow showing.

http://www.brightonphotographic.co....-photographer-located-in-brighton-sussex.html

Steve, I put it together with dreamweaver and now tweak it with firebug in firefox.
 
hi

i like the colours and the simplicity of the design

have you tried tables for laying out text on a page.

i am just building my site . i am using frames though they are generally frowned upon. thay are sometimes useful in the right places.

this is my testing area for my ideas
the links aqt the side do nothing at the mo

my site is http://www.stevelythgoe79.co.uk/

Cheers Steve
 
Looking a bit more slick and simple :thumbs:

One comment on the menus, can you make them cascaded and always visible insted of them swapping out. Having the 'Main Menu' to navigate back I find umm... clumsy? Not sure that's the right word, please don't take offence.

I will call back when you work further on the menus/structure.

Actually, a couple of other things, you don't have an email clicky on the front page, your copyright sits in the left menu, surely smaller and at the bottom (footer) would be less intrusive and visible on all pages. The jumping menus between pages is confusing, but I know it's a work in progress so will leave that for now ;)
 
ka$h said:
Looking a bit more slick and simple :thumbs:

One comment on the menus, can you make them cascaded and always visible insted of them swapping out. Having the 'Main Menu' to navigate back I find umm... clumsy? Not sure that's the right word, please don't take offence.

I will call back when you work further on the menus/structure.

Actually, a couple of other things, you don't have an email clicky on the front page, your copyright sits in the left menu, surely smaller and at the bottom (footer) would be less intrusive and visible on all pages. The jumping menus between pages is confusing, but I know it's a work in progress so will leave that for now ;)
Click to expand...

All good advice.

Originally the Menu said:

Wedding Photography - Varela
Wedding Photography - Gray
Wedding Photography - Hasson
Wedding Photography - Khaira

Which apparently made it look like there were four photographers which is why I changed the menus to just:

Wedding Photography

Then a seperate set of menus.

It's taking some time to get used to the layout, it looks barren almost!
 
What's crazy is:

I've made all these changes and nothing, not a peep of business since friday.

The only change I made today is I changed my wedding prices from:

799-1299

to

599-1299

and I got a booking for November.
 
here are some possible ideas for you

1)the homepage ,
why not have your options on the left
in the middle make a flash anim showing your range
of services and some details about your sevices

2) create a page call something like "what my customers siad" and
put feedback in their with an image or 2

3) their mabe some room for contact details

these are just ideas

Cheers Steve
 
This bit:

'Final images are finished in five additional colour treatments including the original untouched versions.'

6 versions of each image?
 
Yep, six versions.

They get 4 DVD's
Main full sized images on one
Spread across the other 3 are:

Black and White
Sepia
3 other custom colour treatments depending on the wedding, an Indian one needs different work.

Then they all get copied to a seperate folder in 800 pixels at the long end so it's easy for them to email and so that they don't look poor when viewed on the windows viewer.

Not difficult to do as it's a simple actions thing but it's nice to get all that.
 
Radiohead said:
But why?

It must be total overload.
Click to expand...

Not at all.

Process all the images in colour.
Load the colour Jpegs into lightroom
Set the colour to how you want it to be, copy the settings to all.
Export to a folder marked 'DVD1'
Then load those images and export them to another folder call 'Email and Viewing' at 800px at the long end and also the same images again but watermarked. (I ask the couple if they are putting any online if they could sprinkle a few of the watermarked ones in there as well, some put all the watermarked ones up.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

It doesn't take a lot of effort at all and as most couples are on honeymoon for a week I can do one a day if I like. The most time consuming bit of the export is the exporting itself so I just leave it to complete unnattended.

But, I'm running a dual raid i7 running at 3.6G, it will be fast :nuts:

I guess as I give the couple all the images in high res anyway then I may as well give them as much variety as I can. For the sake of an hour or so I can give them not one, but 4 DVD's.
 
No, I meant overload for the couple. 300 photos from a wedding turns into 1800 - and how do you achieve a consistent style within an album with so many different colour treatments.
 
Gel said:
Yep, six versions.

They get 4 DVD's
Main full sized images on one
Spread across the other 3 are:

Black and White
Sepia
3 other custom colour treatments depending on the wedding, an Indian one needs different work.

Then they all get copied to a seperate folder in 800 pixels at the long end so it's easy for them to email and so that they don't look poor when viewed on the windows viewer.

Not difficult to do as it's a simple actions thing but it's nice to get all that.
Click to expand...

why do that - wouldn't it be better just to present the one version of the image in colour/b & w as you think best?
 
tpd said:
4 x 6inch £0.75

5 x 7inch £1.50

A4 £3.00

A3 £8.00

A3+ £9.99

Very cheap prints!
Click to expand...

Gel said:
Not bad are they.

I'm using OCP inks which works out 30p a cart, sheet of Ilford Galerie A4 30p sheet, £2.40 gross profit per print, bride buys 50 prints etc.
Click to expand...

I don't think he meant cheap in a good way.

Your print prices do not reflect your other charges.

Here is a link to the print prices of another Brighton photographer.
http://www.silverweddings.co.uk/wedlog/index.php/price-list/

You should base your prices on the current market levels.
 
I did mean cheap in a good way.

Currently the clients I am attracting want their images in high resolution on a DVD. Most of the time they have said, before I even get to any printing that they can 'use snapfish' if they want to print any off and they're like 19p or something silly.

I've sold one photobook this year. There are no 'albums' as such.

The client pays for my services on the day and all the images taken (barring duplicates and poor exposures}. This is fundementally what I am being asked for with every enquiry, they want all the images.
I do however, reduce the number of images I take.

I don't currently bulk up my services with albums, photoframes or anything like that.
If the client asks for that I'll give them a quote.

Another thing to consider too, is Jon Silver actually busy?
In Brighton we have a huge photography base, the uni teaches it, gumtree is full of wannabe togs all offering cheap and free photography.

I use OCP inks and Ilford Galerie paper. The output is indistinguishable to the naked eye compared to the genuine canon inks. Seriously I can't tell the difference. I wouldn't go through all the trouble of calibrating my monitor just to get poor prints only to have them thrown back at me.

I've had them in direct sunlight for 2 weeks now and when I remove the blanking strip from half the print there is no fading whatsoever.

Understood the point of not overloading a client with images. Granted, but they are there on seperate DVD's to view at their leisure. Nobody is forcing them to look.
One client picked me after falling in love with the colour work I did on the Justin and Susie wedding.

My fear is, price myself high, price my prints high and have no trade.
As mentioned earlier, I lowered my price bracket by £200 and I got a call that day after not getting any for two weeks, coincidence?

Also, is Jon Silver actually busy 52 weeks of the year?
Down here in Brighton there is a Uni that teaches photography and there's a wannabe wedding tog on every corner almost, gumtree is loaded with cheap to free wedding togs.
 
I did mean cheap in a good way.
Click to expand...

I appreciate you did but I think the comment from tpd was in shock from your low prices.
:)
 
Ah ok. I guess I'm in the cheap bracket.

Here's an example of Brightons competition, front page sponsored ads on google so £1.45(ish) a click.

Wedding Photography £775
350 prints and an online gallery of
hi-res files for free download!

Wedding Photographer £480
Capturing Your Special Memories
Studio Perfect Wedding Photography

2010 Packages from £550
Reportage style. B&W & colour.
All inclusive rates from £550.
 
Those are package prices. I was commenting on your individual print prices, which compared to the link I gave you are very cheap.
 
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