I was asked by a non-profit agency to review photographers who volunteered to participate in a gallery show promoting the organization.
I was given about 60 names and web sites to review. Some photographers’ web sites were excellent, fast and easy to use. While others crashed my computer.
Was one of the sites yours?
Sometimes Flash sites or complex programming doesn’t always translate very well with all browsers. Other times the image file sizes were way too large or not compressed enough. The bottom line was it didn’t matter why the sites slowed down my computer. The problem is the photographer’s internet brochure is slowing down the prospect’s computers, too.
If a web site slows down my computer to a crawl or even crashes my machine, I won’t be back. I’m sure other viewers have made the same choice; that hurts business.
Some web sites were hard to navigate or required me to click too many buttons to see topics or images of interest. I needed to view different types of photographs to get a feel for each photographer’s abilities. Some web sites asked too much of me. In some cases I had to think too hard. The last thing you want is for visitors to have to work too hard to find the information they are seeking.
Your site is cooler than mine.
Some sites were just confusing. Unorganized. Some of the best-looking sites used Flash templates or a top-notch hosting service. Of course, Flash sites tend to be harder to find in the search engines. This is why my site continues to be built with mostly HTML code and lots of text. It’s not as flashy, but I get the rankings.
Ultimately, you need to test your web site. Try different computers, browsers and operating systems. A couple years ago I realized that 30 percent of my viewers used the web browser Firefox. (It is even higher today). I generally use Safari to surf the web and my site looked great. But, when I open up my web site in Firefox the entire site design was skewed. I realized then I needed to pay much more attention.
The last thing you want is to lose an opportunity because your web site is a struggle to view.
Rosh
