I added a Showit web slideshow to my wedding section yesterday with around 100 highlight images. I placed the slideshow within its own cell so it looks like it is actually part of the page, instead of the way the slideshows were loading. As soon as I can figure out how to remove the white space at the bottom without cutting the top too I will do a total redesign of the site with the layout flattering showit web since it will be my primary gallery.

David Jay is a pretty smart guy, offer an awesome program for next to nothing to a few hundred people. Soon the impressed talk and next thing you know 50,000 copies sell and David retires before he is 30 all with around a $0.00 marketing budget while building his photography brand (I'm taking notes from this lesson).

I have used this in my senior pics gallery and wedding gallery so far and my amount of repeat visitors has more than tripled in the past few days. Some people are visiting three times between breakfast and lunch. Imagine what will happen when I make my site more pleasant. I'm sure the ROI will be amazing, it has only been a few days and I already can feel the improvement.

On an unrelated note, I installed the latest Firefox update and the showit web slideshows are running almost as smoothly as they do in IE.

My Showit Web Gallery

Brady, looks like a nice site. Just an FYI, while using Firefox, I encountered your page looking like this.

Me too.

Wow, it looked decent in Firefox before I went to bed last night, I'll have to get on that soon.

Thanks

looks good in Safari! on my Mac!!

Brady,

That's a cool idea to work it in as a replacement for the gallery! I'm new to coding flash and html and all that web stuff...so good luck finding the answer.

I'm curious to know what you do to track how often your site is visited and how many are repeats? Anyone else doing this?

Kevin

P.S. Chris...you're a model example of a true OSP addict!!! I noticed the firefox tabs.

BUSTED!

I analyze my site logs everyday to get a feel for how a user interacts with my site. You can usually tell how often the site is visited through unique visitors (not hits), how much of the site a person views by tracking their IP address on each page, where people enter, where people exit, what times of the day and days of the week are popular, where people are visiting from, how people found your site (link location or search query), if people are following your promotions (use a special address, www.site.com/promo, this will show up as the entry page and you have an easy way to track ROI) and what natural/unrelated events cause traffic spikes or dips.

I use pair networks to host all of my websites and have easy access to my log files from my control panel. To find yours read your hosts FAQ or contact tech support and ask for Logs or Site Traffic Report. In my opinion one of the best resources online for web development is WebmasterWorld.com. You should set up a free account and spend a week reading all of the useful info in the forums.


I sure hope so, it is the best way to build a profile for your average client before you ever meet them and to ensure that your site has maximum impact.

A free hit counter like http://www.statcounter.com/ works well.

I wish I was that smart! haha... but I was thinking about what you said and it reminded me of a story that my dad told me...

When he first got into the mortgage business the rates made a huge drop and there was this huge refinance boom and everyone really needed to refinance but he just couldn't help everyone that needed his help and he said he felt like a doctor walking out onto a battlefield with 100's of soldiers who needed what he could offer but there was no chance he could reach them all.

Even if I did sell 50,000 copies and make millions I'd still be right here b/c I think this is where God has called me. It really has nothing to do with money or success or anything like that. I'm here because God has blessed me and put me here...

..and I really think these Showit applications are going to be able to not only help us photographers but I think there going to really stoke out our clients too! Before people had to wait and wait and I'm sure it was frustrating for them and now they can see their pictures right away.

...I bet it can scale even bigger than that! Just tonight I shot a rehearsal dinner for a couple from Switzerland and the grandfather of the Groom gave an awesome toast and talked about several people who had gotten ill recently and couldn't make the trip to America for the wedding...well now even they will be able to see the wedding pictures the night of the wedding through the internet and still feel connected to the family in that way.

We're so lucky/blessed/privileged to live in this digital age!


DJ

Didn't your great grandfather say:

We're so lucky/blessed/privileged to live in this photographic age!

and your great grandson will say:

We're so lucky/blessed/privileged to live in this holigraphic age!

Hey Brady,
Right now the flash object that is generated with the slideshow is designed to work at 780X600, basically taking up the whole screen. This does not make it nice to "embed" into your normal site. We understood this problem and so designed it from the beginning to also be able to generate a flash object that would embed at the size you choose. It didn't make it into the first Beta, but should be in the next release. Sorry, it wasn't ready yet , but it will make what you are trying to do there work a LOT better, soon...

Kevin,

hehe. Gotta use the program and all its capabilities to our advantage, right?