p.1 #1 · Top 3 Mistakes in Wedding Photography Websites
What are the 3 biggest mistakes you see in wedding photography websites?
Not too concerned RIGHT NOW about SEO- let's leave that barrel of monkeys for another thread.
We can also leave out "Images load too slow" or "Site loads slowly on smartphones".
For background info, I'm moving (hopefully UP) from the SmugMug world to something more advanced, and have budgeted for designing a website with the following:
Portfolio (maybe a link to my existing SmugMug account)
Testimonials
Investment aka Rates- not sure if I'm going to post them or not
-Link to Blog
-Link to Facebook
About
Contact- How many hours coverage? Where? Prints or digital files?
No, I'm not going to do this myself. I realize my limitations.
p.1 #5 · Top 3 Mistakes in Wedding Photography Websites
Music on the website.
Images on the splash page are the same as in the portfolio.
Portfolio has 97 images. But only 2 couples. To me it looks like they did 2 weddings and built a website.
Blog page has way too many images to load and requires a mile worth of scrolling.
About page is more of a life story than the gist of your qualifications and experience. It's nice your wife bought you a camera and you have discovered a passion for photography. But do you have any qualifications. Do you have a degree in photography? Have you done a workshop? How long have you been a working professional? Are you a professional or are you just hoping your eagerness will get you a job? Inquiring minds want to know.
Way too many portfolio categories. Weddings, Landscapes, Sports, Fashion, Family, Editorial. And having the same image in more than one category. And having an image of a homeless person in "Editorial." Also having a category called "Film."
p.1 #8 · Top 3 Mistakes in Wedding Photography Websites
Scott Mosher wrote:
Putting music on their site and making the mute/stop button hard to find.
Thanks. I can certainly identify with that pain. Come to think of it, though, it would be really cool if a web designer could find a way to ID competitors viewing my webpage, and then just have the music switch to "Dancing Queen", "Electric Slide", etc...
Now I just hope I can get that out of my head before going to sleep.
p.1 #9 · Top 3 Mistakes in Wedding Photography Websites
Swoop,
Thanks, lots of good, relevant insight there, will be sure to avoid repeating those.
swoop wrote:
Music on the website.
Images on the splash page are the same as in the portfolio.
Portfolio has 97 images. But only 2 couples. To me it looks like they did 2 weddings and built a website.
Blog page has way too many images to load and requires a mile worth of scrolling.
About page is more of a life story than the gist of your qualifications and experience. It's nice your wife bought you a camera and you have discovered a passion for photography. But do you have any qualifications. Do you have a degree in photography? Have you done a workshop? How long have you been a working professional? Are you a professional or are you just hoping your eagerness will get you a job? Inquiring minds want to know.
Way too many portfolio categories. Weddings, Landscapes, Sports, Fashion, Family, Editorial. And having the same image in more than one category. And having an image of a homeless person in "Editorial." Also having a category called "Film."
p.1 #10 · Top 3 Mistakes in Wedding Photography Websites
I think another thing to be cognizant about is the increase in the use of tablets to browse the internet. If your site is flash based, this precludes many of those folks.
p.1 #11 · Top 3 Mistakes in Wedding Photography Websites
Not *inherently* mistakes I think, but I haven't really ever seen fully working implementations of the following:
-Portfolios with browser filling images that automatically resize. Often I'll visit a portfolio, and the image is resized to fill my browser window. Problem is, either 1) the image being resized is smaller than my browser window, so upsampling it looks terrible, or 2) the image is larger than my browser window, in which case it takes too long to download, and then the resizing algorithm still makes it look jagged when it's downsampled.
-Websites where parts of the menu cover up parts of images. Most commonly I see this in frame filling site layouts, where menus and such are made to float and fill the browser window as possible. But some seem to be designed assuming that everyone is reading them on an HD or higher res monitor, with their browser maximized. So if your browser isn't maximized, or maybe you're on a laptop without an HD screen, menus float in and cover up images.
-Websites that resize your browser window.
-Too many clicks to see something other than a thumbnail, and awkward image browsing. If you have to click "weddings" and then "featured" and then "Jack and Jane" and then select a thumbnail to see an image.... and then hit back, and then pick another thumbnail to see the next image... well, I think you lose interest pretty quick.
p.1 #13 · Top 3 Mistakes in Wedding Photography Websites
I don't think it make sense to ask other photographers what your website should include.... many of them will give you biased answers based on how their sites are set up. Those answer may or may not be relevant to what YOUR clients think or want to see. You should ask your clients what is important to them.
p.1 #14 · Top 3 Mistakes in Wedding Photography Websites
^ What?
Asking clients as well for sure but not making sense asking other photographers? Didn't you put thought into making your web site and assuming you did doesn't that provide you some wisdom to pass on?
I agree about no music.
Too messy/ too simple. The first part of that is probably obvious but there are a lot of photographers think they are going uber cool by being too minimal, just white, just a name just like one in five other sites (that stat is off the top of my head but you get the idea).
Too prophoto. Similar thought to my second one and that is most prophoto sites look the same just a different color and logo. Photographers then have the audacity to talk about there brand. Although a site is only part of your marketing the more you look like all the others the harder it is to convince a client that you have anything more to offer other than a price difference. Look the same = having to compete on price which drives the market down.
p.1 #15 · Top 3 Mistakes in Wedding Photography Websites
Marcus Watts wrote:
^ What?
Asking clients as well for sure but not making sense asking other photographers? Didn't you put thought into making your web site and assuming you did doesn't that provide you some wisdom to pass on?
I agree about no music.
Too messy/ too simple. The first part of that is probably obvious but there are a lot of photographers think they are going uber cool by being too minimal, just white, just a name just like one in five other sites (that stat is off the top of my head but you get the idea).
Too prophoto. Similar thought to my second one and that is most prophoto sites look the same just a different color and logo. Photographers then have the audacity to talk about there brand. Although a site is only part of your marketing the more you look like all the others the harder it is to convince a client that you have anything more to offer other than a price difference. Look the same = having to compete on price which drives the market down. ...Show more →
No... and if you read the rest of your response, you can see that you are saying the same thing... photographers websites all look so similar... so why would it be a good idea to ask photographers what he should do? My guess is that the advice you gave him, is exactly how your site is designed....
p.1 #17 · Top 3 Mistakes in Wedding Photography Websites
You would stand out when your client went to your site while she were in the office and your music starts pumping out. Just one reason why so many clients will shut you down right away.
p.1 #19 · Top 3 Mistakes in Wedding Photography Websites
deepbluejh wrote:
- How can I contact you?
These are three things which should be VERY easily accessible.
Agree with this big time. Your Contact info should ALWAYS be available. People shouldn't have to search your site for it. The moment they want to call/email you they should be able to just do it.
Also someone made a mention about how all the advice in this thread was going to be people essentially saying "your site should be like mine." Well, I'm guilty. When it comes to something like this all you have is your own experience and preferences. It's not a terrible thing, the OP isn't looking for hard fast rules about building his website. Just general guidelines and to learn from the mistakes and opinions of others.
p.1 #20 · Top 3 Mistakes in Wedding Photography Websites
One of my biggest pet peeves...not having an e-mail address listed (in addition to a contact form) and not actually listed WHERE YOU ARE LOCATED.
I cannot tell you the amount of times I have looked at photographers' websites and have not been able to tell where they were based out of. Drives me up the wall.
