Matt Lancaster's invitation to provide feedback on pre-launch website, with free gift

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Hello NPN community,

I have developed my photography website and am interested in feedback from my photo community before I announce the public launch.

If you are interested in providing constructive criticism and are one of the first 10 people to respond, I will direct message you the URL. I would then ask you to get back to me within one week with your feedback.

For your effort I will gratefully send you an 8x12 print from my personal collection.

Serious interest only.

Specifics:

For this initial launch I have purposefully kept the site simple to use and navigate. There are only a few pages, including 6 themed galleries with 10 images each. As I add images, they will be constrained to similar 10-image themed galleries. My questions:

  • Are the galleries appropriately sized (10 images)?
  • Is the grid-style gallery layout appropriate and helpful?
  • Do you like the concept of emotion-themed galleries as they relate to the information on the About Matt page?

I intentionally develop a different presentation and content than other photographers in order to distinguish myself. However, I also shoot travel, architecture, and traditional landscape subjects (mountains, forests, trees, flowers, coastlines, etc.). My questions:

  • Should I develop more similar emotion-themed galleries to put those into or develop another idea for how to present those?
  • Any suggestions for what that presentation is?

The intended audience for the website is art consultants, art buyers, advertisers, and others looking for images that convey emotional themes. My questions:

  • Do you think this will appeal to that audience?
  • If not what suggestions do you have to enable the site to appeal to that audience?
  • What audiences do you think this website and these images will appeal to, if different from the intended audience?

As with every photographer’s website I want to convey my personality and a sense for who I am. My questions:

  • Does the site sufficiently communicate a real person behind it?
  • Is the tone warm and inviting, cold and sterile, or something else entirely?

As I develop future versions I can add various pages such as an artist statement, client list, blog, a more expansive About Matt page, print options, upcoming travel, and others. My question:

  • Of all the possible content I could add, what would you suggest is necessary for this initial launch vs V2.0 or V3.0?
  • What suggestions do you have for more content, especially considering the content presented and my personality?

And then I would welcome any other thoughts, ideas, advice, questions, and criticisms you may have about presentation, content, or whatever else strikes you.

Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you!

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Matt, if you are still in need let me know.

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Hi @GEGJr. Thanks for stepping up. I’ll DM you with info.

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Matt, shoot me a PM. I would be interested, willing to provide feedback.

I’ll assume that you haven’t made the url public, which is why you simply don’t post the link for general feedback?

One thing to comment on which doesn’t need a peek, might be the number of images. I’m guessing you might get a broad range of opinions on this. And trust me, my opinion isn’t based on experience in sales… so keep that in mind. :wink:

I wonder if 10 images per gallery is enough? I get the theory that you want to get the point and message and show your very best. There’s good reason not to plaster viewers with hundreds of images.

Having said that, could it be said that just about any photographer has 10 great images on a subject? Does 10 images represent a body of work? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I’ll put it out there.

Admittedly, my website is the opposite. Originally database driven to include the ability to search for specific images - ie. stock based approach. With a large number of images, a potential buyer could “browse” and really get a feel for a large body of work. The key would be searching ability so that maybe an art director could find just what they were looking for.

I once had a client who was an art consultant and liked to show my work to clients (led to a sale or two…) They liked to be able to look for images that fit their particular project. For example, searching for “Spring colors” or “calming landscapes” might result in many dozens of image examples (important takeaway is keywording! if you are going to have that feature.)

Now I have nearly 400 images on my site. Again, I’m not an active marketing genius and I know that’s probably too many. But on the flip side, I’m darn proud of my body of work and so why let it decay on my hard drive? I don’t really care if I have too many.

On the flip side, is 10 images in a given theme enough to convince a client to hire you? What if they like a particular themed project, but don’t see an exact fit? Do you have more for them to pick from? Or is that enough for them to hire you to shoot for their project?

Those are a couple of my questions. Happy to look at your site.

Lon

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