# Does my webiste stink?



## Tight Knot (Aug 30, 2012)

Hi all,

After seeing how many hits my site had from thephotoforum.com members today, I thought I would ask for advice on the website.
Anyone interested in spending some time evaluating?
I am always open to good critique, and value a lot of peoples opinions here highly (there are some I don't give a rat's hind-quarters about also, but I will never let you know who you are, lol).
Looking for general site evaluation, photography evaluations and even pricing evaluations. 
As a noob with less than 2 years under my belt, and slowly (I repeat, SLOOOOOOWLY) going pro, any advice would be very much appreciated.

Thanks all,

www.legacy-photography.net


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## tirediron (Aug 30, 2012)

*Moving to the Website Forum.*


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## Tamgerine (Aug 30, 2012)

If you're serious about going professional, I would consider hiring a professional designer to make you a website. I'm not going to say your website stinks, as that doesn't really help you. But it is definitely not what I would consider up to par with a professional photography website. I can tell you did it on SmugMug because you have the branding at the bottom, and it looks pretty much like every other SmugMug portfolio out there.

You've got a lot of clutter at the bottom with the subscription hyperlink, the copyright, the SmugMug branding, AND the counter. You don't really need a counter. Google Analytics is a really amazing free tool you should check out, as it tracks all of your visits, stats, where your traffic is coming from, and more.

As for your main page, if you do want to watermark your photographs I would suggest doing it somewhere else within the frame and a lot more tastefully, because huge text right across the entire photo looks ridiculous, and always has. People want to enjoy your photography, not your watermark. Some people may disagree, I don't. I've never seen a photograph look better with a watermark, but I have seen them look a lot worse. You can do it tastefully without distracting from the photograph itself. 

The bio on the front is somewhat confusing because you have two people but only one photograph of a person? Your first paragraph is also formatted and spaced very differently than the second one. You should try and keep all your text consistent with each other unless you're putting emphasis on something specific. 

As for your galleries, that is a LOT of galleries to browse. You should only put your best work up there on your portfolio, and keep browsing simple and efficient. People on the internet don't have time to wade through a million photos - they're impatient as heck. If you really are selling all your photos, I'd consider condensing the categories a little bit and highlighting your favorite ones as "most popular" or "specials."

Your ordering page has confusing breadcrumbs on it and says legacy photographical, which isn't the name of your business in your logo. I would also leave out the name of your laboratory and SmugMug, AND EZ Prints. That stuff is confusing, and is just extra stuff that means nothing to your consumers. They don't know or care who BayPhoto or EZ Prints it. Just say you have excellent products and leave it at that. That's what they care about. They don't need to know where you get it from and something they can ALSO do is look up that lab and see how much YOUR cost is for the order and say, "Well gosh why are you charging me 30 dollars for an 8x10 when the lab only charges you 1.10?"

I also didn't see a pricing list? Please correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know how customized you can get with your SmugMug ordering cart, but whatever is up now is confusing as heck. The more choices and options a customer has, the more likely they're going to get confused and just leave. You have so many products on there I wouldn't even know where to start looking for something I wanted to buy, THEN I have to choose the size, and do I want a frame, or what type of mounting? What's float mounting? What will look good in my living room? You should be answering all those questions.

There's a lot to be honest. I'm not trying to trash on your website, but if I were a client, I would probably leave your website fairly soon. There is just too much stuff to look at and I wouldn't know where to start. Don't take this negatively - you're probably not a web designer. I'm not either, that is why I got someone who IS to design my website. 

The more time you spend messing with your website is the less time you spend taking photos - which is what you WANT to do. If you want a professional appearance, hire a professional.​


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## tirediron (Aug 30, 2012)

Does it "stink"?  No, I don't think so, but I would say there is a LOT of room for improvement.  
Thoughts, in no particular order:  Your home page shouldn't really (IMO) be your bio page, there should be an 'about' page instead.  Your home page should be a nice, simple intro, with one of your best images as the showcase.

Where are you?  I couldn't find an immediate answer to that.  That needs to be clear.  If I want to hire you to shoot a birthday party, it helps to know if you're in my area.

LOTS of formatting issues, missing spaces, line feeds, etc.  

I would ditch the whole Smugmug thing and get your own website, on your on host, and get a proper domain name (.net is not really supposed be a commercial domain).  

You have some nice images, and a lot of so-so images.  I would really pare this down and go for fewer, better images.

You will likely get lots of negative comments about the white text & black background.  I like that style (my own 'site is that way), but based on a LOT of feedback, I'm going to be changing it soon.

Just my $00.02 worth - your mileage may vary.

~John


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## DiskoJoe (Aug 30, 2012)

Your website is kind of boring. It looks stock and amateur. I would suggest getting a better web layout then what you have currently.


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## Tight Knot (Aug 30, 2012)

Hi Tammy and Tirediron,

Thanks for such good feedback. I really appreciate it. I don't take offense in the least, I NEED to know where to improve, so that I can progress. The worst place for a person to be in life, is thinking that they are perfect, and that they have nothing to learn from anyone.
One of the reasons I went with Smugmug, is because they organize the printing and payments directly, without me having to get involved. How else would you recommend going about this? 

As far as the actual photography, what do you think? My problem is that I have no problems looking at other peoples photography and analyzing to see whether its good or not. I do however, have a MAJOR problem doing that on my own photography. From what I hear, that's pretty normal.
Also considering that I have been doing photography for a total of 21 months, how do you think I have progressed?


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## Tight Knot (Aug 30, 2012)

DiskoJoe said:


> Your website is kind of boring. It looks stock and amateur. I would suggest getting a better web layout then what you have currently.



Hi DiskoJoe,

Thanks for taking the time to look and reply. Anything more specific that you could recommend?


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## MLeeK (Aug 30, 2012)

It's got issues, but it's a decent start and it's by far not the worst I have ever seen. 
The first page is the page that should SELL your photos. It should be the best of your best images. Not a bunch of type. 
Your title: reduce the size of the names under the title.
Move your bio's to an about page. Is English not your first language? I'd suggest you have someone edit it for you. You have some terrible run on sentences and poor writing. The content is good, it's just the execution.

Ordering Info-totally unnecessary. If you are a professional I'd hope you are using a professional lab and printing at a professional quality. It's a given. 

WHat is it you are trying to do here? Are you trying to become a portrait photographer or sell artwork? There is a lot of stuff in your galleries, but there is no real definition as to what you do anywhere. I'd suggest a tag line for your front page and an explanation of what you are in the intro of your boi's.


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## Tamgerine (Aug 31, 2012)

Tight Knot said:


> Hi Tammy and Tirediron,
> 
> Thanks for such good feedback. I really appreciate it. I don't take offense in the least, I NEED to know where to improve, so that I can progress. The worst place for a person to be in life, is thinking that they are perfect, and that they have nothing to learn from anyone.
> One of the reasons I went with Smugmug, is because they organize the printing and payments directly, without me having to get involved. How else would you recommend going about this?
> ...




Hmm, I think all that comes to to what you want and where you're trying to go. Do you want to make online sales, or in person sales? If you want online sales, pick a few products that give you the best profit margin and only sell those with limited options. That way you can push THOSE products and it's less confusing for customers. However, if you want to sell all of those things you need to do in person showing and sales, where you can advise on print size, products, framing, paper surface, and all of those things. 

There is a different business model for everyone depending on what your ultimate goal is. This is how I do things right now for example: I use Zenfolio, but only for client proofing and sharing as a web gallery. I have a main website for my portfolio and all that. With ZF you also have the option to sell directly through them, but I don't. Once I'm finished post-processing, I go to the clients house and show them their photographs and we discuss products and ordering. I find this works best for me because I actually get to sit there and interact with the client about their photographs, and can educate them about good products, and make suggestions as to what will look good in their home. They tell me what they want, and I place the order. I hand deliver that order with my own branding and nice looking packing. 

However, you're always going to sacrifice something. For example, I sacrifice my time, but I feel the gains are worth it. If you sell only online, you gain time, but you may sacrifice sales potential and customer interaction. This is what works for me right now, but in a years time it may not work anymore and I may change to something completely different. It's an on-going process where you are constantly developing your business model to something better. 

You just really have to decide what you want to do, and what you want your business to be, because that is going to dictate how you should present yourself and sell your work. "Everything" is a very poor business model. Not even WalMart sells everything, even retail giants have a very specific target market.

I also noticed something else about your website very bothering. When browsing your galleries and photos, if I click the "back" button it takes me to the previous photo instead of the previous page, which is very annoying because if I viewed 20 photos I would have to click back 20 times in order to get back to the previous page. It's either this, or I have to click back into galleries, and then find where I was at for viewing. The less clicks to navigate your website the better. 

As for your photography, it's decent but I don't see anything I haven't seen before. My own personal standards for photography are ridiculously high though, and I haven't even begun to meet my own standards as a photographer. Again, it depends on what kind of photographer you want to BE. If you want to work for National Geographic you have a long way to go, but if you want to sell nice looking photographs as art for your friends and family then I think that's fine too.


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## Tight Knot (Sep 23, 2012)

Hi everyone,

First of all, thank you so much to everyone who gave me such great feedback on my site. I am now back from my travels, and have some time to devote to changing the site around.

I do not have the money to hire someone to build and maintain my site for me, so i will be doing it myself.

My main reason for going with Smugmug was the fact that they handle all the tasks of fulfillments of the orders, from accepting payment, to having the lab print them, to offering a money-back guarantee on the purchases.
What other software (preferably free, if not, at least very cheap) would allow me to accept credit cards, and other methods of payment ( I currently do use Paypal, so I guess that is an option), and allow me to have a shopping cart with different options of printing sizes, quantities, qualities and cool gifts?

I don't mind ordering directly from the lab once the customer places an order, and it more than likely won't delay the orders more than a day or two at max.

The other thing is where do I find good templates to use for a photography website?

Just as a heads-up, for anyone else using smugmug pro, they are about to be almost doubling their pricing on their Smugmug Pro accounts (takes effect in October, if I am not mistaken). So I need to do something PDQ.

Thanks again to everyone for their invaluable input.


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## MLeeK (Sep 23, 2012)

Zenfolio is half the price of what SmugMug currently is. 
In your shoes I'd probably go with a zenfolio account for the sales part, but a website from something like PortfolioSitez. I think my website costs me $5 a month and I have customized it to exactly what I want. It's pretty simple. I love it. 
There are several others like PortfolioSitez, but I found them to be the cheapest with the best templates PLUS the customization I can do on my own. I am sure the others here can give you a bucket full of others.


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## Tight Knot (Sep 23, 2012)

MLeeK said:


> Zenfolio is half the price of what SmugMug currently is.
> In your shoes I'd probably go with a zenfolio account for the sales part, but a website from something like PortfolioSitez. I think my website costs me $5 a month and I have customized it to exactly what I want. It's pretty simple. I love it.
> There are several others like PortfolioSitez, but I found them to be the cheapest with the best templates PLUS the customization I can do on my own. I am sure the others here can give you a bucket full of others.



Thanks MLeek, I will look into both of those.


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## Tight Knot (Sep 23, 2012)

MLeeK said:


> Zenfolio is half the price of what SmugMug currently is.
> In your shoes I'd probably go with a zenfolio account for the sales part, but a website from something like PortfolioSitez. I think my website costs me $5 a month and I have customized it to exactly what I want. It's pretty simple. I love it.
> There are several others like PortfolioSitez, but I found them to be the cheapest with the best templates PLUS the customization I can do on my own. I am sure the others here can give you a bucket full of others.



Just a quick question, it appears that Zenfolio also offers webites, how do I combine the 2?


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## MLeeK (Sep 23, 2012)

I've never used one of the ordering services as a website, personally. I do all of my ordering in person and if I have to do ordering I upload to the root of my site, so... I am a LITTLE lost there. 
This is my opinion on how I'd do it:
With any website you can use an external link in your navigation. Create your website as you want it to show your work however you want. The home page, about, contact all of that stuff in your hosting/website provider. Then create another navigation link to an outside page for your "Ordering" and link that into the zenfolio or whatever ordering program you want to use.


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## Tight Knot (Sep 23, 2012)

MLeeK said:


> I've never used one of the ordering services as a website, personally. I do all of my ordering in person and if I have to do ordering I upload to the root of my site, so... I am a LITTLE lost there.
> This is my opinion on how I'd do it:
> With any website you can use an external link in your navigation. Create your website as you want it to show your work however you want. The home page, about, contact all of that stuff in your hosting/website provider. Then create another navigation link to an outside page for your "Ordering" and link that into the zenfolio or whatever ordering program you want to use.



Sounds like a plan. I'll check into it and let you know how it goes. Thanks for the input.


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## toyztransporter (Sep 29, 2012)

I wouldn't say your website stinks.  I would recommend the first thing seen on the front page is examples of your work.  When someone goes to my site, I want them to say "Wow!" when it first comes up.  Then, they can navigate as they feel necessary after that.  Other than that, your galleries are organized very well and it's easy to navigate your site.  Hope this helps.  Good luck with whatever new design/concepts you come up with.


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## CA_ (Sep 29, 2012)

Short answer: yes. But, Wordpress to the rescue. If you're somewhat savvy, you can set one up yourself and there are tons of free and very good templates for photography themes that will look fantastic.


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