Picture-Perfect
Consultant David Alpert says that based on research conducted by his company, the second page most homeowners visit on a home improvement Web site is the photo gallery. And although it’s difficult to distinguish yourself with this section — almost everyone is going to have nice pictures on their site — not doing this part well will reflect negatively on your company.
There are several ways to set up a picture page, but probably the most straightforward way is to use a “thumbnail” gallery. A thumbnail is simply a reduced-size version of a photograph, which a user can click to view the full-size image.
If your company does several types of projects and you have a lot of pictures, it may be a good idea to have separate galleries for each, or even a different gallery for each project. The first screen could have each category (kitchens; bathrooms; and additions, for instance), with a clickable picture for each. When the user clicks on “Kitchens,” they would be taken to a page with pictures of several different kitchens. Homeowners would then click on a kitchen to see the full photo gallery of that specific project.
Photo galleries can be tedious to peruse if users constantly have to use the “Back” button on their browser. To make your site easier to use, set up the photo gallery as a slide show. One option lets users click to the “Previous” or “Next” pictures, while a more complex alternative automatically advances the slides.Your Web designer should be able to do this for you.