Archive for e-commerce

Starting a Photography Business: Part 16 – Design Changes

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. Read More→