let me know what you think, as don’t know any other way of doing it so some advice would be great please, as I am pretty new to Blocs so my knowledge is getting there slowly.
I would like to look at a better shop
thanks
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Hi @Mario346, there are a few immediate things that jump out, and this is based on just looking on my phone (not in the office today).
The copy on the slideshow is very difficult to read on a couple of slides.
On every page, the copyright line and social logos are squished into what looks to be a single column, and on your portfolio pages (music, celebrities etc), they’ve jumped up and are overlapping the photography.
Pretty easy sort outs, I think. I’ll report back if no one else does once I’ve looked in a bigger screen.
Best of luck.
Hi Mario,
Im new to all this too ! but nice 1st site and congrats on getting it up. It’s simple and does the job that its supposed to do.
Now its up, you can get advice from people here who know about good design, I will give my input which is what I personally like to see.
Some issues i see from first glance are:
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On the first page i’m hit with an image straight away, I would love to see a nice header and your logo in the middle. To me a website is your shop window, imaging a restaurant - soon as you walk in, you are not given the main course at the 1st step. So a nice banner, and then maybe some text introducing you.
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About you: I think a nice photo of you on there. Maybe image in portrait and text to the right? your choice…but people like to get to know you.
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The first image is one of a car hanging on a crane ! my first impression was this is from a crime website or this was taken generally on a facebook post - its a great image, but your portfolio has some AMAZING photos there !!..in fact, some I want to show my kids later as they love planes etc. Those should be the ones hitting the 1st page
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Id like some styling with fonts…so have a play with that and also layout of images, get some nice ones on these pages.
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A basic colour scheme maybe too? 2 colours always works nice…your call.
Play with the text and columns of images etc…all good fun !!!
More than anything - enjoy it !
Hi Mario,
Great first attempt, a couple of things:-
Maybe optimise the photographs a bit more so they load on the page quicker.
There a few typos on the about page.
I’m no copywriter but:-
We are Jace Photography & News Media
I have been a photographer for over 30 years, I started off photographing friends and families birthdays, weddings and christenings on film with my first camera, an Olympus OM101 which was a great little camera with a SLR Power Zoom.
I received an SLR Canon 300EOS, unfortunately I didn’t have all the lens, it was just the 50mm that came with the camera
Then in 2006 I purchased my first DSLR Canon EOS350 which at the time I thought was a professional model, unfortunately it didn’t live up to expectations.
After a few upgrades, Canon 60D, 70D, 6DMKI I now work with a Canon5DMKIII and the MKIV you are constantly learning about camera techniques and settings, it never stops. I currently gather News for the North East and Lincolnshire.
Pete
Another good person to chat to about photography is @Flashman - he has years of experience as a photographer and blocs too - so worth asking him.
But great work - and keep playing with it.
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Hi @Mario346, In regards to your shop request. The product offered by PayPal is pretty basic. Most of us on this forum are using a paid (monthly subscription) store option from either Ecwid or Shopify. For me personally Ecwid is my favourite. However, as we speak, I’m working on a website selling paintings / photographs as you do. As this site is for a NGO I’m building it on a free shopping cart platform, Abantecart. You will need to get into it and spend some time understanding it. It’s much more complicated compared to Ecwid/Shopify. But hey, its free and so far I’m positively surprised with the outcome.
Jerry
thank you for that really appreciate it, I will look into it and learn it
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thanks AdieJAM, yeah I am constantly working with to see what it can do, I hope @Flashman get back to me
@TrevReav thank you, never thought about checking it on a mobile thank you for that, I will have a look and see what can be done
You really need to make your photos smaller and compress them. The portrait images are huge! I checked and one is over 3mg and 1600 x 2500 pixels. You have to take into effect the user’s experience. If the page loads slow and images then also load slowly once they are clicked on most will not stay around long to look at many. I try and keep all photos around the 200k size. It’s ok to go bigger if you don’t have a lot of photos on a page but as you add more the page/image load time goes up.
The photos are so large that someone could easily download and print their own.
Hope this helps,
Casey
I normally don’t, if I was going to sell some I’d just include a small copyright notice in the lower corner.
Casey
@casey1823 thank you will look at that on the home page do you suggest the carousel needs to be smaller
You know it’s really a personal choice. I prefer either a full screen images or ones that are cropped to look more streamlines. One drawback on using carousels in on the mobile side they tend to look pretty small. I often make single image for mobile.
Casey
I’ve been out of the photography game for a while now, but I did it full time for many years working in various countries. Nowadays it’s just occasional shoots for web clients.
The images definitely seemed a bit slow loading so I would look at optimising those a bit for web.
Overall it feels a little bland in terms of the web design. Clean is good, but photographers have a tendency to go over the top with the white/grey/black combo. There are thousands of fonts out there and they all have their own personality, so using one weight of Helvetica everywhere seems like a wasted opportunity to shine.
Clients will hire you based on how you communicate visually and your site is basically their first introduction to your work in most cases, so look at areas like font choices and size, colours etc. Don’t be afraid to use shadows or fine borders around the images to help them standout. Subtle animations will also lend a sense of thought to the presentation, but avoid going mad there.
You could try something like a full page hero bloc on the home page with an image that has major impact, then let them scroll down to read about the your work and steer them towards your key objective. I don’t think clients will be that interested in your camera history and after 30 years I am sure there is a lot more you could talk about like what you try to achieve with your photography and how you work with others etc.
On the contact page you have a button that says submit, which is never a good idea, but strangely has a line going through the text. You could use a smaller button there, change the wording and don’t be afraid to change the shape or colour. That is a call to action, so it should stand out from the rest of the page. No phone number? That’s your choice but most photographers want to be contacted.
The styling points should really be carried over to the gallery side as well. You also have overlap on the print size toggle selectors which isn’t a good look. For the shop side Ecwid is worth looking at.
I don’t want this to sound overly negative or critical, because you have done well to get this far and it’s not a bad starting point. It basically needs a step back and then approach it with the idea of adding some tweaks to make it more effective for you.
@Flashman thank you, no not at been negative or critical to be honest think I need to hear it, I have taken on board what the others have said link using colour at the moment I have used a colour in the footer, I am currently resizing the images instead of 100% I have taken it down to 60% so hopefully wont take long to open up
I see what you mean on the Contact page the line through Submit but when you move your mouse over it the line disappears mmmm
I thought having 30 years of camera history people would have thought he knows how to use a camera
no you have not been overly negative or critical thank you
I notice that the web site shows up as “not secure”. Websites today should have SSL.
For websites that do not sell anything OpenSSL is OK. It is free (at-least in the US), you just need to use a hosting provider that supports it. How ever if you are going to sell stuff you probably need to get a little more secure (paid)SSL. Most users who have a little web sense will be hesitant to enter a credit card number on a non secure site, even if you use a third party credit card processor.
I also don’t see a Privacy Page that states what you do with users information or whether you use cookies. It is especially important if you take credit card purchases.
The photo galleries are too big. The portraits are too big and take a little bit too download, they bounce around as they load and most people may be annoyed. You may want to limit to one photo per person and have it link to another page that has additional photos of just that person. This way you reduce the number of photos on a page. A little caption on who the singer is and when/where they were taken.
Regarding the talk about cameras I guess it just depends on your target audience. My background was mostly working with cosmetics companies and I think they would have just taken it for granted that I either had the right equipment or would hire it in if needed. It was practically all Hasselblad or Sinar for that work, but instead you could talk about the experiences you have had working in different locations etc. List some of your clients and subjects perhaps.
One of the difficulties with a photography site is that you have to highlight your images and you want it to remain clean without excessive clutter, but at the same time it remains a challenge to put it mildly if you want to pick up search traffic. You might consider adding a blog for that purpose and Volt would be an option there to help bring in more visitors.
If you take a look at https://blocs.store you will find a lot of alternative brics that will extend your design scope and many of them are free, while others are currently discounted for Black Friday. Practically everything from Cazoobi is free.
As mentioned above, the SSL is important and I would argue essential nowadays with GDPR for legal reasons. You also lack a privacy page and terms & conditions for your store. I would suggest you should also have a copyright page with full details.
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@Johndw yeah I had noticed that shows not secure I will be contactign my provider to ask about this
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