I have recently redesigned and rebuilt my web site from the ground up. I spent several months researching functionality, looking to build something with high artistic merit, but that also had all the necessary functionality for running and developing the business of a professional photographer. I will leave it to others to determine if I have fully met those goals thus far.
Of course, there remains some design tweaks to be made and I”m still developing some additional functionality i.e. an online reservation calendar and some content. But the basic elements are all there, and I”ll describe them next.
First, I wanted the site to represent the medium – to be visual and have significant visual impact.
I did not want the principal site pages to be overly textual, and indeed, they are not. In fact, the majority of album navigation is achieved by clicking on an image. The home page presents a number of work categories i.e. Portraits, Events, Weddings, Commercial, Modeling and Stock. Lead images from multiple albums associated with each work category are presented as an elegant “flow” of images – the visitor can use arrow keys, mouse thumb wheel, or a mouse to drag a handle on the slider bar to maneuver the image flows. Clicking on any image pulls up a Flash-based slide show. The slide show will play automatically, or the user can hover over the thumbnail ribbon which will pop-up larger thumbnails. A click on a thumbnail will bring that image into full view. Lastly, while only two background images are loaded presently, more are on the way. The background images are either composite or single images that fully represent the work category. They provide a very elegant feel to the site.
Second, I wanted to protect the images I post, and that is accomplished with two different mechanisms.
The images that make up each imageflow are relatively low-res images generated from the original, with reflections. So downloading those images will require further cropping to get rid of the reflection and none of image flow images link to the high-res images unless I so specify.
The fact that the majority of images are presented within a Flash slide show protects them from download except in the case of screen-shots – which of course, would also result in very poor image quality.
Third, I wanted the site to make it easy for a client to buy prints or stock images, without having to implement my own cart.
This is achieved by linking images presented in a slide show to a printing service. Right now, I use www.fotki.com. I only have one recent shoot linked in this way – a family portrait and party shoot – but clicking on any image in the slide show takes the user to that event on fotki.com, where all of the high-res images are made available for download or printing, or even putting into albums.
I envision this same mechanism to work for the sale of stock images in exactly the same way, even though in that case, the sales will likely be downloads only.
Forth, I wanted to make it easy for clients and prospective clients to understand my business policies, request shoots on-line, and I wanted to be able to easily publish more content, both text and images.
Right now, only the Modeling Work Category has a related top menu. But all of the work categories will have their own custom menu, where the business end of the site can be accessed. These menus appear anytime a Work Category is selected.
Additionally, the entire site is built on a Content Management System platform. Thus, adding new content is a very easy task and doesn’t require programming.
I would appreciate any feedback people might offer as to the site. And, I hope others will feel free to contact me if they have any questions or desire to work with me in some way. The site, and my business model are designed to support multiple photographers.
Cheers