Soooo I've been putzing around with my new website, a design shamelessly stolen from an Italian fashion photog (but something I've since seen elsewhere too, so I don't feel so guilty bout it). Colors are the same as my old site, so it doesn't feel too whiplash to me. Homepage uses the same concept I had on the old one, which I get tons of great feedback on (though image size needs to be refined).

Temporary homepage: www.saraheinrichs.com
(All galleries live, info & pricing coming soon.)

Goals:

* A clean, simple, no frills site that lets the photos do the talking. No music, no animation, just a wide selection of tasty photographs.
* Something a little different from the average photographer's site, so it will stick in people's heads a bit.
* Easy to navigate, but with lots and lots of photos for those who dig a little deeper.
* Consistency. My current site has been cobbled together over the years and contains so many different styles it makes my head spin.
*

Not yet completed:

The info and pricing sections (they still go to my old site's pages.)
Two or three more wedding galleries and a special wedding info section.
Slideshow section (any ideas on where to put it?)

Contemplating...

I've been wondering whether I should set up a splash page to divide the wedding, portrait, and nature stuff up. It would leave more room for more information in the wedding/portrait stuff, might be easier to separate wedding and portrait price lists, as well as info on how to purchase the landscape stuffffs. What do you think about leaving it all in one site as opposed to splitting it up a bit? How do you deal with SEO with a splash page that only has a little bit of info?

Do the scroll right galleries bug, or do you like em?

Does it fit well on your screens? (I'm hoping the scroll right galleries will take advantage of the increasing numbers of people on widescreen monitors, without looking craptacular on a traditional screen.)

Image size. Too big, too small, just right?

Name (logo coming up sometime soon). Too small?

Any other feedback, general or specific? Thanks so much for taking a look!

Bump.

Anybody? :/

Hi Sarah,

It was great to meet you at OSPW, and I'm excited for you to have a new website! Here are just a few thoughts, fwiw.

+ I really would encourage you to have separate websites for your portraits/weddings/nature work. It's all beautiful - you have oodles of talent - but imho it's too much info for one website, and it targets different clients. I think different websites (entering through a single splash page) would be ideal; as it is right now I think you're trying to do too much. Less is more.

+ the scroll galleries made me a little dizzy. I like the background color a lot, and the size of the images. But it strikes me as borderline amateur... I do not mean to offend at all, but it doesn't have the polished look and feel and function of a professional website. Think about the expectations of your target audience; in fact, it's probably even more helpful to have some of your clients give you feedback on the format, I think as photog we've seen toooo many other photography websites and come from a biased place of what a website "should" look like.

HTH, can't wait to see the final website! Loved your landscape work, btw, made me a bit sad to not be closer to SLO.

-Dawn

Yay! I was beginning to think I had written some chain mail type threat of cosmic punishment for anyone who responded without even noticing it.

Thanks so much for the honest feedback! Exactly what I neeeeed.

I'm of two minds on simplicity of it. While I know it wows clients and I'm partially jaded by seeing too many of them, I'm just burned out on wiggly animated flashy flash sites where every border draws itself and everything seems so polished. I kinda like taking a deep breath and having it so very simple.

But amateurish is not the goal. I think part of the problem might be the menu to the left. Right now they're just quick gifs and no drop down menus to divide them up. And I've always thought the landscape yummies didn't really fit, but they're just so much a part of me that it's hard to let them wander off into the unseen. Time to figure out how best to split it all up...

Great idea to have my clients take a look see. I've done the friends and such route, but they go all googly over everything (never believe your own hype where friends are concerned, let me tell ya!) so I can't trust their feedback.

Thanks, Dawn!

hi sara -

a few things:

1) I am not sure about the side scrolling. Various people have tried that over the last few years and it's never really caught on. IMO - it is so unlike the standard way a website works that you will get a significant number of people who will not like it or be confused by it. A website is like a book, if it strays too far from from the convention of pages and text going left to right it is going to be sidelined as people have a natural discomfort with things that are too different.

2) ditch the graphic buttons and use html buttons instead (faster load times and they indexed by search engines)

3) Even though the picture montage on the front is a cool idea, it is rather high-concept for the web. I would venture to guess that a large group of your website visitors do not know what that montage is really there for (or saying) because they either don't take the time to think about it or because it appears to be something else and they can't figure out why it doesn't work (The first time I saw it I thought the pics were supposed to be buttons that would take you to those gallery categories because other sites use photos just like this for navigation). You should see if you can find an easier way to make illustrate your tag line ("tell your story") that makes a more immediate impression.

BTW - great pics... they look wonderful!

ken

i think the site is nice! but to be honest the front page is too long by having to scroll and putting it into a reoslution equalling 100% would squeeze it all up.

i would personally if you wanted the front page to be the same to get it in a flash screenshow and then itll be more impacting towards the viewer.

im honestly alittle confused as to what the site is about, the pictures connote a story yet the photographs galleries dont. maybe my perspective. but i love the idea! was that your idea or the italians?

if you need some help with the site drop me a PM, im rummaging on some new things, that havent been released yet so we could help you out!!!

Hi Sara-

I always love looking at your images but I agree with what others say

The side scrolling is a pain-because I spend so much time on my computer I love using my scrolling button on my mouse and instead I have to think about it and either push the side arrow (takes a bit of time) or move the bar along the bottom

I think people now a days want their info fast
They want to see what they want, get the info and have it presented simply

As much as people hate bludomain- they have cool, simple templates and even their html templates look very simple and sleek

I think people are so used to flash and websites that move that an html site that has nothing fancy may appear amateur

By no means is your work amateur and that is why I think you may want to look at some flash features

I'd love to see the story-maybe have a few slideshow stories so that it follows the

tagline

I think the images would be stronger if its one per screen and scrolling kind of mish mashes them together. I don't really notice each photo but all the photos together-which may work if they told a story but not as a gallery of several ifferent subjects

I love the photo of the baby yawning but it gets lost in all the photos

as far as size- bigger is always better

I love the opening but it is kind of long and some people may not scroll to read it

IMHO, I would take out the maternity shot in color of the girl leaning on the rock-there is something about it that is not appealing and I think you have such strong gorgeous work that you don't need it.

sorry id disagree, but html sites can look very professional, especially if your internet speed is slow, looking at a flash site is an instant close the page! remembering alot of people dont care about internet and so most will have dial up, well thats for europe anyway! so an html site is twice as good as a sticky flash site. the only way around the flash problem is by using a professional web designer who knows scripts to program the site to read what the user has, but thats difficult due to firewalls!