Website Launch

<p>Hi guys<br>

Well i have finally gotten round to building the illustrius website to help bolster sales and profile. I think I have done a resonable job but feedback from other photographers is very much welcomed.<br>

I have tried to keep it simple and clear, and have used a company called viewbook to host the whole thing as i dont know anything about html and web design and dont really have time to learn.<br>

have a look at the site and let me know what you think, if you have your own website can you input what works best for you and what doesnt/didnt?<br>

The site has been up for about a week so visitors to the site have been mostly from friends and friends of friends however, from the 180 peope who have looked at the site i have a 46% bounce rate - any ideas how to improve/reduce this?<br>

Finally, someone told me that because the website changes from www. to http:// then it will never rank in google searchs regardless of how well i keyword etc - any truth in this?<br>

Appreciate anyone who takes 5 mins to have a look I know a lot of people ask to review their sites but it all helps improvement. I appreciate that the site is flash based and may appear slow on some networks.<br>

The site is <a href="http://www.pdbphotography.viewbook.com">www.pdbphotography.viewbook.com</a><br>

Many thanks<br>

Phil</p>

<p>Bounce rates are hard to decipher because it depends how the Website pages are structured (individual, flash, etc.) and the fact is many people hit them from a search engine and quickly leave (the time on the Web page stat). I'm not sure the person who told you about the prefix is right. The "http://" is necessary for the complete URL, so without it any browser simply adds it and all search engines stores and uses the complete URL. I can prove that by using Google to search for wsrphoto and I'm the first one in the list.</p>

<p>I like the images. But only initial confusion was getting to the gallery Web page. I would simply use the word "Gallery" to go straight to the Web page of images and simply add a link to the "Products and Pricing" Web page, skipping the "Images for Sale" Web page. That Web pages seems redundant to me.</p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

<p>Hi Phil,</p>

<p>I've heard about viewbook and I think you can get unlimited web design support for that flat fee per year, yes? If so, I would put them to work.<br /> <br /> 1. This is a bit nitpicky, but the title of your page (up on the header on the very top of your browser) just says "pdbphotography" - it would look more professional if you have them change it to PDB Photography - Fine Art Prints or whatever you would like to go after your name. Or you can leave it blank, whichever. But I would change it to proper grammar at least.</p>

<p>2. I would forgo using one photo as your background with text on top and instead split up the page where you got text on one side and one nice portrait photo on the other - or perhaps two or three photos in a collage. In your gallery, I think the portrait boat/fog image would work perfectly.<br /> <br /> 3. Your images are spectacular, but like Scott said above, they are hard to get to. I would change the "Images for Sale" icon to "Gallery" and eliminate that landing page as well.<br /> <br /> 4. I would get rid of that logo since it goes against the color scheme of the site. Instead, make a much larger logo that goes across the entire length of the page, or just simply type "PDB Photography" across in bold letters. Either way, the blue is distracting and it is way too small. It just looks thrown in there.<br /> <br /> The hardest part is done - you have spectacular images. It's just that people don't know it by going to your site and they tend to turn away. The image you have on there now is very nice, but to be honest is not the best in your gallery. I think you chose it because of the negative space up top would work well to put text in, but if you divide the page up between text and a photo/photos, that would fix that.</p>

<p>Thanks for the input, have started making a few changes as stated. In Terms of the front page image, i have had some business cards made and a portfolio book published and have kind of used that image as the theme for them all so will keep that, although i understand what you are saying and agree with your suggestion. I have played around with using a smaller version of the picture but it doesnt look as good. I have changed the wording to Gallery which hopefully makes this clearer.<br>

My plan with the website is to add commissioned work on there with a password protection that i can give to clients so they can access and choose images etc.<br>

One final note, Christopher, I dont understand what you mean by "and eliminate that landing page as well." - what is a landing page?<br>

Cheers again</p>

<p>Hi Phil,</p>

<p>The landing page I was referring to is the page you "land" on when you click on Images For Sale - like Scott said, you should just go straight to your gallery. <br /> <br /> I wouldn't worry too much about the image if it's your trademark then - it's a great image.<br /> <br /> Have fun redesigning and like I said before, your photos are great which is the hardest part!<br /> <br /> Best,<br /> Christopher</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Ah right, thanks Christopher, i understand and have changed it so now it goes straight into the gallery. have also made it go straight into a slide show which i think looks nicer.</p>

<p>Thanks for the comments, hopefully it will be a successfull venture!</p>