Re: Re: Photography Portfolio Website

#21149
Duncan Rawlinson
Keymaster

Hi there,

It’s great that you’ve got your site online. Way to go!

My first thought is that you should trim your images down dramatically.

Only choose some of your very best images to showcase on the main area of your site. You can then backfill and flush out your site with the rest of your image libary.

The title tags on your main page are:
Siesta Key, Miami Beach, Sarasota, Tampa

I would recommend you put at least your name there.

In fact I would recommend your name being on your site more frequently assuming you want to be known.

The contact me page needs some work as well. The facebook links don’t work and the paypal button doesn’t work either.

The site itself is a bit heavy and the main page weighs in at about 1.5MB. That’s not a problem if you expect your visitors to have fast internet.
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/tJ8mP7tPp/http://www.takenbylala.com/

Even with extremely fast internet the models inquiry page will take almost 17 seconds to load and is like 20MB (very heavy)
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/Imwns6xwH/http://www.takenbylala.com/#!models-inquiry/c22d8

So you may want to reduce the size and the number of images on certain pages.

I would remove these images from being featured prominently as they are not your strongest:

http://static.wix.com/media/f57ec0_2c228fe70173cd1ecfc22b10cbca9624.jpg (the pose doesn’t work, although sunset is good!)
http://static.wix.com/media/f57ec0_5325d00e102785992c6ded6064f0f20c.jpg (out of focus)
http://static.wix.com/media/f57ec0_703320c5a9a83bf96dca3bb05ab2432b.jpg (the tree is overpowering)
http://static.wix.com/media/f57ec0_b7236d22e692c97ceb06ca33f464849b.jpg (same)
http://static.wix.com/media/f57ec0_d8e2a3d3ba144a1def2eb861bc7cabe4.jpg (everything is great except her bikini bottoms look a bit odd…)

Again I want to emphasize that the best thing to do is remove all of your weakest images and showcase only the strongest.

Also focus on what you want your users to do.

Do you want them to contact you, browse your images, or hire you?

Keep in mind when you are using a service like wix you are very dependant on them. They may not be in business in 5 years or 10 years so just beware.

Also don’t be afraid to showcase your modelling website that I saw on the contact page. You should feature the fact that you we’re (or are) also a model. I’m sure up and coming models would love to be photographed by someone who has been there and done that… One way to link the sites together is to use the footer of your website. You could put something like this:

Lala Photography by Laura Marie Odonnell

In other words I think you should feature yourself more prominently.

In any case you’ve done well and I don’t want you to be discouraged by this criticism. I just want your site to do well!

The more you work on your website the better it will do over time!

Websites are never finished. They are works in progress.

Keep shooting and having fun with it!