Photographs on websites

[la vache!]

Regarding photogalleries, what looks best to potential customers? I want to do some changes to some pages on my website as I think the pages are too long, but I don't want to reduce the number of photos, in fact I want to add some more. Do you think it is better to have a click through gallery on a page (so when you first look at the page there is just one photo), or show all photos in small size which can then be clicked on for a larger photo?

[alexia s.]

I like to have an overview - to see all photos in small size which can then be clicked on for a larger photo.

[paolo]

Controversially, I like to see all pics in large size, so all I have to do is flick at my mouse wheel to see everything. You should try to minimise the amount of clicking a site visitor needs to do to see what they want to see.

I spread out the images across different pages: inside, outside, the village, local area, winter, etc.

I don't like thumbnail galleries because I can't see what the pics are of, and if I can't see what they are of, I am unlikely to click on them.

[vrooje]

I am somewhere in the middle between Paolo and Alexia.

I dislike having to wait a long time for a photo gallery to load, so I don't want the pictures to all be full size. However, I also don't like those itty-bitty thumbnails that don't actually show you anything, so I suppose I prefer "large thumbnails," i.e. image size 300-400 pixels on a side. That's not too big, but it's enough to show some details. Then I make all those clickable.

Though actually, I don't really have any photo galleries on my site -- like Paolo, I spread them out across different pages.

I do not like the more typical "slideshow" where you see one image at a time by default, can't skip around within the images, and don't necessarily know when the slideshow is going to end. Those don't take proper advantage of the medium, in my opinion.

[la vache!]

Thankyou very much for your opinions on this - in that case, I may keep things as they are, but perhaps reduce the photo sizes slightly. The problem is, I have 3 gites and want to show as many photos as possible of the inside + outside, but I don't want to create anymore pages are there are already enough.
I have seen the slideshow on some other good websites, but agree with Brooke - furthermore if the first photo doesn't interest you, you don't look any further!

[Garri]

Like Brooke, I am in the middle but whatever you decide don't make them pop ups.

A nice idea would be say a line of 5 thumbnails so that when you mouse over them the bigger picture appears above.

You could set up a few galleries for each aspect of your house, each with 5 thumbnails. And put a descriptive caption for each one.

Also, pics of the area as seen from the perspective of house, again with captions.

Too often I'm seeing photos on private sites of pics that are clearly not the house but the locale. Nothing wrong with that but give me some details of what these photos are of.

[paolo]

I should add that if you put lots of large pics on a page, don't just shove them all together at the top because they may take a long time to download and lose you your visitor. If you intersperse them in the text they have something to read while the pics download.

[Garri]

Susan, take a look at this solution...

http://www.pixelpost.org/v1/index.php

[Yvain]

Susan, in addition to photos on my website I use SmugMug, which has a small annual cost but is really simple to use. You can drag and drop photos into it from your pc. I agree with Paolo that the photos need to be big enough to see but then expandable, which hopefully mine are.

See www.chateausimon.com

Regards
Yvain

[mvus]

I decided to opt for a medium size 350w image across the board for my websites so you can see the property clearly without having to click on to enlarge which I hate, especialy when there are lots of them. I split the pictures up as interior and exterior instead of trying to fit them all on a single page.

[Garri]

Nice photos pja!

[paolo]

Incidentally, I think h-r often do a poor job compressing the images and they look washed out when they appear on their site

So it's not just me then! Every time I upload pics to holiday-rentals they appear washed out and I enter into a dialogue with them, send over my original jpegs and ask them if they look the same - eventually they go very silent. If you try to compensate by over-saturating the pics before sending them they look even worse. Very frustrating, especially as pics are far the most important part of an ad.

[Alan Knighting]

Paolo,

I often think that optimising pictures for the Web means they are optimised for speed and to hell with the quality.

I'd rather wait two or three seconds for a good quality picture than get rubbish right away.

Alan

[Garri]

I guess h-r are trying to reduce their server overheads by batch processing all images coming into their system. Eats into their profit margins.

[mvus]

And from what I've read on this forum they currently don't allow users to link their websites.