The site is coming together so fast now which is wonderful though over Christmas I have had a break from it but would keep having a wander through it to see what my first impressions were each time, does the font need changing? Is the colour of the banner right? Do the galleries look well laid out? Is it easy to navigate from page to page photo to checkout?
So much has changed from how I originally envisioned the site design and much of that change is for the ease of my customers despite the fact that I wanted it to look different. For instance I have a side navigation whereas I was only going to have a top navigation so my photos could take up the full width of the page, which incidentally they do on zoom. The benefit for my customer of this and as a knock on effect for me is to get easier sales and give more visible access to my galleries.
By having only a top navigation if people were at the bottom of my page to get to other pages they would have to scroll all the way back up to the top, it would make it less customer friendly, less self promoting, and if people can’t remember what else is in your navigation when they are at the bottom of the page then they might easily get distracted and head off to a different site.
By having a side navigation it means people are never that far from my page lists and just to be certain they are also in my footer. I know I myself have scooted away from a site that hasn’t had side navigation forgetting until a few days later that there was another page I wanted to look at and even then I’ve not necessarily gone back.
I would love to say that this side navigation came about because of my own shopping experience but that’s not so; it’s interesting how easy it is to get caught up in what you want and what you think your customers will love without remembering your own frustrations when shopping online. I have to credit my web designer at SmartDeCat for making me think about this and for sending me off once again to study sites like Amazon to see how the ‘big boys’ do it.
I think virtually all SmartDeCat templates have side navigation and this annoyed me no end as it didn’t fit in with my proposed look and granted I could have paid a bit more and had the top navigation and my splash pages, (remember those foot stamping sessions?), and ignored the advice. However, I did my homework and begrudgingly admitted that the advice and experience of the company, who have been in the business for a long time was for me, spot on.
Something that I have avoided is flash, it was never on my list of must haves as many times I’ve been frustrated waiting for sites with it to load, and Trevor, the Editor of this magazine also points out to me that flash is a problem for compatibility with use of the internet on mobile phones. Iphones and Ipads are failing to load images with flash leaving instead ugly boxes with crosses in them unless they have a HTML alternative. With so many people using smart phones now to surf the internet it does need to be something that we consider.
As I’ve been wandering through my galleries doing checks I’ve become more and more selective about the images that I have there, quite regularly pulling images I feel don’t measure up and do my work justice. I’m really glad to have this chance to study them before the site goes live as once the search engines start logging pages you have to be mindful about how you remove pages or products. If you don’t leave a link from an old page to a similar image or page then search engines will still serve up your old page which as it has nothing on it will be shown as a 404 error page and quite possibly means you’ve just lost a potential customer that goes away never to return.
Many hosts will allow you to create custom error pages and it is worth doing. This way all links to moved or deleted pages are automatically served a 404 page with the same look and feel of your main site and allow the visitor to search the site directly from that page.
One thing I’m going to be doing before it goes live is letting my friends have a wander around it to see what their initial views are, do they find it user friendly? What thoughts spring to mind? Quite possibly they will come up with things that I as not only the biased creator but also someone who is very familiar with the site won’t see or even thought about. I’m fortunate enough to have friends in different countries that will no doubt have different shopping views on things so I can do my best where practicable to make it user friendly to many different cultures.
Notes
- It’s the old chestnut, what have you put on your site as a luxury because it looks impressive but actually doesn’t aid the speed of your site or your customers, it’s so much better to get it right before going live than changing your design continually within the first few weeks making customers have to get used to new navigations at every visit.
- Try to take a fresh look at your site, so difficult when you are working so closely with it; don’t be afraid to let friends and business contacts have a look at it before you send it live, their observations could be invaluable.
- If possible remove all doubtful pages from your site before you send it live. Over time you’ll probably make many alterations to your site which will mean removal of pages or products; please remember to create a new link from that page so search engines don’t serve up 404 error pages serving to frustrate the searcher and lose you a potential customer.
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Living in the beautiful rural county of Yorkshire it was perhaps natural for Ruth to have an affinity with the countryside and its wildlife. Creativity is Ruth’s driving force finding an outlet in television & radio she worked for many years as producer for BBC & ITV.
However a love of photography and for being surrounded by nature called her to go back to her photography training and bring pleasure and joy to people through her connection with our planet.
Staying in the moment when taking her images allows her to experience the natural magnificence unfolding before her eyes. It is this moment of mediation, of gratitude, that she evocatively conveys through her images.