1st: I appreciate your comments, Mark. I agree with you on some points.
Are your sites examples of great css design? No offense, but if I
was a client getting ready to drop $4K-10K on a wedding I certainly
want to be "WOWED" by a really slick looking site with all the
trimmings - yours don't "wow" me at all (although the photography
on the slowfizz site is very good).
[LOL]
Nah, those 2 sites are just a legacy part of my sig more than anything.
Most of our professional work is at the state/higher education level.
The sbahns site is for our little side business my wife started 10 years ago (given the area and everything, that site does fine for the intended customers). The slowfizz site was a project I did for a Cisco training class, and I've left it up 'cause I sometimes like to show people a couple of the pictures. I'm in the process of updating slowfizz cause, well, it's up and being viewed so I should make it current and prettier =)
[lol]
Didn't expect our sites to wow you at all
We are photographers working
in a visual medium (and sometimes audible as well if we are doing
DVD slideshows) and our sites should reflect that visual style.
It's a matter of who you are marketing to, and the high-end
customer doesn't want a "corner drugstore" site. They want
something different, a "high-end boutique" where having money is a
prerequisite to shop (and having a highspeed connection is "having
money). All of the fore mentioned sites load very well and quickly
on my machine and it's 3 years old - AND they compliment the style
and image of the photographers very well, better than any "css"
site I have ever seen.
'Course, we both have different opinions on CSS =)
I love some of the templates at csszengarden.com, for instance.
I've got no problem with a Flash page if it's done well. I just don't think 90% of Flash sites are. I've got hundreds of photography websites bookmarked for reference in my redesign efforts on slowfizz, and there are a lot of high-end dogs out there =P
Of course "tech savvy" people who are only interested in speed and
performance get bogged down on a flash site - but that is not the
"average" client.
Btw, I'm sorry if my tone on the previous email really stuck in people's craw. It's just how I feel, I don't expect everyone to take it as gospel.... but I wish some would [laughs]
Anyhow =)
There have been studies that measure a page's load time and how long the viewer is willing to wait.
Not only that, when navigation schemes stray too far from what is considered the web standard (dpreview is a great example of 'standard' web navigation), people get frustrated and move to the next site in their Google search.
I don't know why people who aren't 'tech savvy' wouldn't care about page display speeds, either. From the research I've seen (and been a part of), page display speeds are incredibly important to tech novices as well.
Now, what you said about a site selling a photographer needing to look sharp.... That I agree with.
Amazingly, people with crappy fast-loading pages done in FrontPage, with Times New Roman fonts in a myriad of colors, actually book clients. Similarly, big dogs with money to spend on pretty (yet hard to use, long to load) Flash-intensive sites do well, too. They both do well in the market the intend to serve (and both may opt to play [groan] music upon loading). I honestly don't expect the FrontPage guy to get many of the Flash guy's clients (or vice versa).
'Course, an accessible/usable site that's pretty and fancy and slick will appeal to everyone. I'm not against Flash at all, nor making sites look as great as they can. I'm just against poor design.
At the time, the Corvair looked pretty slick.... but the design was a little wonky. There are far more bad pages that look pretty and function like cr@p than there are great pages that look pretty and function like gems.
When tech becomes more accessible, more people without the full suite of skills to produce true quality work emerge (think that one guy who uses a P&S Olympus for his wedding work,
with on-camera flash).
My beef is with poor design and superfluous elements, more than with Flash sites in general =)
--
-Steve
Marra
http://www.sbahns.com
http://www.slowfizz.com 