Competetive Analysis

1. http://www.123photography.co.uk/indexportraits.html

This is one of the top sites that comes up when I search for a portfolio photographer in Yorkshire. This would be one of the competitors as this site offers a many different types of photography including Glamour, which would be the market Laura Bainbridge would be aiming for.

The sites appearance is quite corporate and the layout is rather cluttered. There doesn’t look to be too much thought to have gone into the layout and for a photography site there appears to be quite a lot of text.

The layout and links are not clear. The main navigation at the top are obvious enough but aren’t particularly attractive to look at and look quite amateurish.

Having clicked onto the Glamour Photography Portfolio to look at the gallery I am navigated to a page with different layout to the main pages which is a design floor. Clicking the images makes them open up in a new window.

I feel that this site would have benefited from having a more regimented layout that was consistent throughout. I don’t think it is a bad thing that the images open in a new window but I think there are more attractive ways of doing this, such a using Lightbox.

2. http://johngardnerphotography.com/portfolios.htm

This site has some really great examples of work and the initial impression I got from the site was a professional one. On further investigation it is clear that the design of the site has errors.

A brisk flick along the top navigation bar highlights the errors with the sites layout; certain pages have a completely different banner that is a totally different size to the others. Even the pages that have a banner that is the same size all have a different image behind the banner which again provided problems with consistency.

In addition to the banner problem the pages with the smaller banner also are wider and the navigation shifts position also. This gives the impression that you have left the site and I was inclined to press the back button to get back to the site rather than use the navigation links available.

The thing that the two sites so far have in common is that they have examples of more than one genre of photography which is broken up into categorys. As for this project I am aiming to make a small site I will only be displaying one genre of photography on the site. Laura Bainbridge has provided photos of different genres but as there will only be one gallery I wouldn’t want it to look confused.

Overall the work on the site is strong and some of the design elements are nice, such as the banners, unfortunately the whole thing is let down by inconsistency.
3. http://www.imagemaker.org.uk/index.html

This is my favourite site so far. The look of the site is by far the most professional and slick in regards to design. The navigation is clear and the content is primarily kept down to the photographs which I think is a bonus.

One thing I would point out about the navigation is that when on the home page you are presented with a set of images which are the navigation and unfortunately there are no words to support the images. The result of this is that you don’t actually know for certain where the link will take you. You are able to hazard a guess by the look of the pictures but it isn’t made clear until you actually go into the page.

Another area where this site is better than the others is the way in which it displays the photographs. On this site the pictures are presented in a square and so are all neatly presented are within a bounding grid. Clicking on the image you want to view then makes it appear in the box to the left.

This is something I would like to incorporate into my design to allow the audience to view the photographs without navigating away from the page within which they thumbnails are contained.

Overall I think this a really successful site with little wrong with it and I would hope that I can make a site with a similar amount of functionality.