Full Website Review - Please

[jvphotography_lacy]

<p><a href="http://www.josephvincentphotography.com"> My Link is here. </a><br>

What do I need to change, in design, text, images, messages etc?<br>

Thanks!</p>

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[stephen_mcpherson]

<p>Joseph - overall your website looks great! I do have a few comments that you might consider:<br>

1. Discover Style - ??? - just ditch this whole section and put the contact information under a new section called "Contact". Ditch the email tab and make the email address in the "Contacts" a hot link.<br>

2. Explore Costs - ??? - again be direct. Call it pricing or packages, but be direct. Your VP days at Citibank are showing - :). Put all your shooting in the gallery.<br>

3. See Weddings - ??? - It's a gallery. Call it that. While your gallery is great, IMHO there's too much stuff here. Maybe do three weddings in a top row and then a shower, a boudoir and an engagement in a lower row. Sometimes less is more. I thought that was a nice touch by the way, not just focusing on the weddings, but also wedding associated events. That's great marketing.<br>

4. Learn About - ??? - How about "About Joseph"? Some of the content from "Discover Style can go in here. <br>

5. Testimonials - ??? - You had a very glowing one from the bridal shower. If you have one or two more, consider putting them here. I really like the way you presented the "thank you" from the bridal shower; very clever and direct. And again clever marketing.<br>

Steve</p>

[jvphotography_lacy]

<p><img src="http://josephvincentphotography.com/clads/april15.png" alt="" />Hi Steve and thank you for responding. Let's recraft my site then.<br>

First, which 4 weddings do you think I should keep out of these? http://josephvincentphotography.com/3-see-weddings/<br>

I have something pretty amazing to share from goggle analytics this morning and if it pans out to be the case on my site this could be a game changer, so stay tuned.<br>

What GA said last night was that all those links had a near equal number of page clicks. Think about that for a second.... 1-4 ALL got clicked by everybody who went there. The only one they didn't click was the email link.<br>

That tells me one thing for sure, it's easier to get them to click everyone of these links than the many I had before. If the naming had anything to do with it, who knows, but they clearly clicked around.</p>

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[john_mcclain]

<p>Hmm that is very interesting data for sure! Honestly, I felt it was a little bit of forced differentiation from usual website menus but hey if it works it works! I like your site and your work. You have a definite look to your work that remains consistent while still having variety. My one critique is the length of your pages. This may just be me but I'm not a big fan of very long pages that require so much scrolling. Is there any sort of feature within your analytics to show if visitors to your site scroll the entire length of each page?</p>

[jvphotography_lacy]

<p>Hi John, isn't that interesting? Yeah those names....LOL<br>

The people yesterday were all about the written pages and cared less about the galleries.<br>

That exit rate was 7% on an intro slideshow, the last slideshow I had was at 40-50%. They are clicking through after the intro now and the most popular link was the Discover Style. <br>

If it was the name or the position of the link on the page who knows, but if those numbers in GA are right, it's a good thing.<br>

They may not like my work or my price but if this data is correct, I'm getting them to click around on my site and on most of it.<br>

I don't know how to show these galleries, sometimes I use slideshows, other times not. I need to fix that but don't what to pick.<br>

GA has something called average time on page. I'm not sure how accurate it is but it is a metric.</p>

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[grh]

<p>Are you sure that those clicks yesterday weren't a result of you asking here for a review?</p>

[jvphotography_lacy]

<p>I'm not sure of anything Gary, but even if it was, it wouldn't have been that dramatic.<br>

I never claimed it was all clients, it was "some" though because GA said the were not just from Photo.net.<br>

For me, it wasn't the number of clicks but how even the numbers were that struck me. That's the first time I've ever seen something like that and I've looked a LOT.<br>

I changed some things around today. I changed one link called become a client. I'm anxious to see how many clicks that receives.<br>

I also changed up the link order based on the number of clicks yesterday because what that data told me was they wanted to see images before cost, so I arranged the links in this order today.<br>

Discover, See, Cost, About, Become a client ( which is the email form) as those were 1,2,3,4,5 in popularity yesterday.<br>

I've got to do something with those galleries and I haven't a damn clue.</p>

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[jvphotography_lacy]

<p>Yesterday's stats are interesting. 15 people from Photo.net came.<br>

Bounce rate was the same off the intro at 7% but...<br>

Changing the link order seemed to have made some difference. It's not as even as before.<br>

Not as many clicks to the portfolio section as day before yesterday. It would seem they need to read my discover page first and after they do more people will go to the galleries. Less people went to the cost page.<br>

It's also interesting, that people seem to click on the second link more than the 1st if the title is see weddings. If see weddings is the 3rd link, they click on discover, cost then see 3rd. If see is listed second, they skip right over Discover and cost and go straight to see.<br>

I'm going back to my old order to see if the clicks run more even again.<br>

Discover, Cost, see, About, Become a client</p>

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[jvphotography_lacy]

<p>I changed up the galleries today too. I removed all the long scrolling images on the text pages and put them all in one auto slideshow gallery on the see weddings page.<br>

I also removed all the full weddings and just kept the 4 specialty shoots. Now all I have is one main gallery with over 150 images in it. Too much maybe.<br>

The bottom line is if the phone rings, so the next step is all about which images to show, and how best to show them. </p>

 

[jvphotography_lacy]

<p>Yesterday was more of the same. They skipped over the discover link and went straight to see weddings more often.<br>

I'm considering combining the pages learn and discover.<br>

I did have one phone inquiry.</p>