Advice Before Finalising My Website

[KrisBrud]

Hey There,

So after much pain, angst, frustration, sweat and nearly broken screens i'm very close to finalising my own website to display my 5 years worth of better images (mostly landscape and some streetscape), and also offer them for sale. I'm aware that this will most likely provide very little to no income, however I decided to actually follow my passion and avoid later life regrets. I've been determined to see it through, regardless of the ridiculous amount of hours I've sacrificed.

At the moment I have the images available for digital downloads through 3 sizes; small (800x530), medium (2000x1325) and large (4000x2649), via a WordPress e-commerce plugin *removed*. I'm aware of the potential issues with selling digital images, but after much deliberation, I've still determined that this is still the most effective method for my circumstances. I also have a product link to *removed* to handle any framing requests. Again I've deemed this the most efficient method at the moment, until otherwise convinced.

The one element I've still not been able to settle on is pricing. I've done countless research and read all of the philosophies (and often heated arguments) surrounding this. I'm aware that this is very subjective and that people will be prepared to pay what they deem fair, however this has not helped me finalise this component thus far.

Therefore I'm seeking advice from people with similar experience or informed opinions and thought that this forum would be a great place to find this.

Any suggestions, advice or learning that can be shared would be greatly appreciated, so that I can complete the work to date and start focusing on trying to actually attract people to the site through marketing and promotion.

Any other general advice/suggestions would also be much appreciated, please be gentle though :)

website: http://www.kristianbrudenell.com

Thanks in anticipation.
Kris

*edited* post edited to reflect site rules - please read our site rules (http://www.ausphotography.net.au/forum/misc.php?do=vsarules), in particular rules 3-7: admin

[mikew09]

Hi Kristian. The ability to scroll through images once an image is enlarged I like myself but no biggy. The magnify glass effect with the mouse over I would try and loose if possible, I found it increasingly annoying and on some images shows some poor detail, this will be due to the image size etc but to the un-educated in photography may be make the image less attractive to a potential buyer.

Over all I found your site user friendly being nice and easy to navigate. Response times to render pages and images seem acceptable enough to keep a customer engaged. Believe it or not, time to loose a customer on a website is less than a couple of seconds these days if the page is a bit slow to render up.

I also like the site in general and has a good professional feel about it.

You probably already know this, but, imbedding keywords etc is an art to get the best possible find rate on the web. It is worth spending some time with a google search on best practices for search engines along with best practice for customer interaction.

Hope that is helpful

[Dylfish]

yeah mate smash the SEO side of things. I see you using wordpress so make sure you get the YEOST SEO plugin and do some work with it. There's tonnes of Tutorials out there if your not familiar.

[ricktas]

My suggestion is a question.

Who are your customers?

[KrisBrud]

Thanks for the responses so far. Much appreciated.

Mikew09 - Really grateful to you for offering your time and providing feedback. Your suggestions have been well noted.

Dylfish - I'll certainly give SEO the due consideration it requires and will certainly have a look at the suggested plugin.

ricktas - That is another (and obviously critical) consideration I've been fighting with and why my expectations for any sales is low. As i see it at the moment, families and friends might be interested in the non-digital products (linked to another site) as they are quite unique and somewhat novel. They may also have limited interest in the digital downloads to create their own cheap wall hangings. I'm also hoping to derive some general traffic from people with interest in photography for the specific locations. I'm hoping some interesting blog entries to accompany these and considered SEO might help. The other potential customers might be for my services, whereby I'll have some examples of my work and hopefully project my overall potential competency/professionalism, without displaying previous and unsuitable previous customer images.

I'm realistic about my expectations and the reality of the current environment but still want to make as good a fist of it as I can.

[ricktas]

OK. so you want to market to family and friends first and foremost. You need to have a plan to do so. You need a way to contact them, make it happen regularly and keep the site fresh and interesting. Family and friends will only look at a photography site once or twice, then if nothing changes, they rarely come back to it. So you need a plan to keep changing the images around, make it fresh and exciting... all the time.. and contact them regularly telling them what is new... so they keep coming back to look again and again. Once you hook them into visiting regularly, then they are likely to start mentioning you to their own friends etc.

The net thing is there are millions of blog's all hoping to post interesting stuff and get read, but there are very few blogs that get a really good following. Study some of those, not necessarily the photographic ones. Look at how often them post, do they talk about themselves or do they talk about/to their audience.

Going beyond family and friends, try and ascertain what sort of person would like your photography..and buy it. Chances are it will not been 16 year olds..but do you know if it will be young married couples, older persons etc? Once you know your market, then you can start targetting them..and your blog posts tie into that as well. No use posting stuff about walks in national parks, when your audience is not interested in walking in parks. Get my meaning? Hope this gives you something to think about.

[KrisBrud]

Thanks ricktas

[Mark L]

Since I really like AP as a place that has help me heaps, I'm not going to look at your w.w.w.web place until you post some photos,or get a bit more involved on AP. You might find your photos don't cut it (and get advice on how to do better) or everyone is totally amazed with your photos. I wouldn't know.;)
And if your photos happen to be really good, maybe you could offer CC to others striving to get better here.;)
Bugga, forums=involved for me.:confused013

[mikew09]

I tend to agree somewhat with Mark L's comments. If you haven't contributed much to this great site with photos etc maybe good to do so, I am always happen to give advise but this is a great site with great purpose and contribution is the key.
I might add, this is also one of the few sites that is extremely well managed and adjudicated by the forum moderators so it is worth while seeking photo critiques here as you wont get that usual nasty style of unwanted criticism here like I have seen on so many other sites.

[KrisBrud]

Mark and Mike - Yes it's certainly my intention to start posting photos for feedback leading to improvement and hopefully I can offer some of my own.