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Archive 2015 · Website critique

  
 
alpinekiwi
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Website critique


Hi all.

I'm struggling with what to do regarding my website.

I am a professional photographer based in Morzine, a ski village in the heart of the French Alps. My main work is divided between action sports and weddings, with the latter being still new to me, but thoroughly enjoying it. Weddings are something I would really like to get better at and push things forward. My main wedding clients are couples from the UK coming here as a wedding destination.

On top of that, I am also commissioned for interiors, food and other subjects...

I have only done three weddings at this time (more booked): My first couple booked me as they loved my existing portfolios and my latest one booked me as they loved my ski/snowboard shots. This leads me to believe I cannot create a separate wedding site and should look at how I can have just the one brand (Damian McArthur Photography) encompassing all my genres of photography.

Any input/advice/ideas would be much appreciated.

If you'd like to take a moment to look through my website, all critique (website, images and whatever else grabs your eye) will be welcome.

Cheers all!



Mar 29, 2015 at 05:29 PM
amonline
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Website critique


Since you're posting in a wedding forum, I suspect you want to build your focus in weddings. My first opinion would be to separate weddings (and the like) from all your other commercial type work. Move your commercial/sports/etc. to another website or secondary location deeper in your site. Make your current site face become wedding, engagement, and connection based only. First step would be to reconstruct the opening slideshow into wedding images only.

Love the snowboarding bride. You definitely have a niche there begging to be taken advantage of.



Mar 29, 2015 at 05:38 PM
heikoM
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Website critique


awesome action work. Love your wedding style, too.

Yes, separate the two things.

heiko



Mar 29, 2015 at 06:08 PM
alpinekiwi
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Website critique


Thanks guys, I'm now looking into creating a wedding-specific website. I'll include links on both to each other so if prospective clients wish to see the other side of things they can.

Thanks again for your kind words!



Mar 31, 2015 at 06:10 AM
ricardovaste
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Website critique


It can be a tough decision when you're at the beginning or are branching out into something relatively unknown, but I would take the advice of the above, long term, you'll be better off separating things.

You already have a head start on a lot of people though. You have a specific market you already know you're going after.

When building your wedding brand, try to think very specifically about these people and what they're needs on. And always try to understand them better, if you move forward with it.

Best of luck.



Mar 31, 2015 at 06:33 AM
jbregar
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Website critique


First criticism... it's 2015, your site should be responsive (it should change its formatting to better match different screen sizes).

Other than that, the site looks fine... I'd echo that you probably want to separate weddings out from everything else. People booking weddings want to (for whatever reason) see that you do weddings pretty much exclusively. They don't really want to wade through other genres to get to the wedding/engagement photos.

My advice to pretty much every photographer (or whatever business, really) is that if you want your site to really stand out and be built right, you should probably hire a professional to create the site. Same with your logo, business cards, letterhead and the like. I've always found it humorous that wedding photogs (of which I used to be one) will moan and groan about Uncle Bob with a camera stomping on their turf and talk about "educating their clients" about why it's important to hire a professional wedding photographer... but when it comes to their web site or logo, they try to do it themselves (thus becoming the Uncle Bob).

Some are very successful and make nice sites... most don't though. Even though I hardly ever comment, I take a look at most of the "website critique" threads on here and find many of them to really lack creativity and the finishing touches that make for a nice web experience (like responsiveness). At least most have killed the cheesy music though.



Mar 31, 2015 at 03:53 PM
alpinekiwi
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Website critique


Cheers Justin, I've emailed Zenfolio to find out why it's not mobile friendly. It works fine on my iPhone 6 in Safari, but not in Google Chrome...

Thanks again everyone, I have another wedding on Easter Monday, so with a bit more content, I should have enough to start on a new site.

It seems with Zenfolio I can't actually have a welcome page (where both my domain names would point to) with separate entries into each half (one for weddings, one for everything else). I still want wedding couples to be able to view my sports side as my sports shots have directly led to two wedding bookings already. I think the difference I have here is that it is a wedding destination in a ski resort. People are choosing it because they not only love the alps, but love skiing also...

I need to think of a way that that showcases both genres without just linking through to the other site...


Edit: Just used the Google Mobile-Friendly Test and it came up "Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly." Weird...



Apr 01, 2015 at 03:05 PM
Unfamiliar
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Website critique



I need to think of a way that that showcases both genres without just linking through to the other site...


I think you are close already. If you take the advice to separate the sites then your wedding site would have the welcome page portfolio be made up of wedding shots only. Then your other galleries (under collections) could also be wedding focused except one gallery for sports from your location. That also gives you a natural place to link to your other site.

Then customers interested in weddings can see all wedding related stuff on the front page (just make sure you have a coupe of that snowboarding bride) and when they look for more details they can see plenty of wedding and wedding related galleries plus one for sports related activities.



Apr 01, 2015 at 04:09 PM
jbregar
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Website critique


"Mobile friendly" != responsive.

What Zenfolio is doing is serving an entirely different mobile site to the mobile browser based on how it identifies itself. A much better approach is having the stylesheet (the presentation layer) respond to different screen sizes.

One of the many reasons I'm not a huge fan of "make a beautiful web site with no code!" apps like Zenfolio and Wix.



Apr 01, 2015 at 06:44 PM





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