Here’s an example where we have a site in a browser window and we make the window more horizontal (by dragging the window out to the right) to show you that behavior.

Design 5 – Chelsea

Design 3 – Brooklyn Bridge

Clients can log in to APhotoClient from your website or an iPhone.

Here are 5 reasons why APhotoClient is the best image delivery tool available:

1. Simple and Intuitive – Your clients will not need an instruction manual to operate it.
2. Mark favorites, comment and download images all in one location.
3. Multiple Collaborators Per Shoot – Everyone can mark their favorites and make comments for the group to see.
4. Multiple Shoots Per Client – One location for all your client’s shoots, all they do is log in.
5. Works seamlessly with your APhotoFolio Website – Clients never have to leave your domain to see the images they hired you to take.

From a portfolio website perspective I’m sure you can imagine why it’s important that your potential clients have a good experience using your site over your competitors even if they don’t know why.

When creating APhotoFolio websites I came up with a list of UX practices based on my experience as a Photography Director and from reading several books that I then built into the sites. Here are some examples:

Where Am I?
Nobody likes being lost and a website with hundreds of images can be an easy place to get lost. We give users visual clues where they are using physical indicators, color and boxes.

What is important here?
Nothing teaches you the value of hierarchy like working at a magazine. Hierarchy on a website helps the user determine what is most important on the page, where to go first and how to navigate the site. You can easily create hierarchy on our sites with size, position and color of text on the menu.

Which things belong together?
We give you precise control over the spaces between items because grouping is another important user feedback to help determine what belongs together.

How much is here?
Often overlooked on websites is letting the user know how much content is available for them to see. It’s easy in the physical world to look at the size of a store and quickly determine how much is available and how much time it might take to look, but online it can be quite difficult. That’s why a menu that shows everything available, thumbnail grids and numerical feedback are important parts of our websites.

How clear is the communication?
We give you words, icons and color to communicate with, but I believe simplicity is most important. A site should be clear in its mission. If there’s anything that separates APF websites from the rest of the pack it’s our commitment to simplicity.

With D5 we give you the ability to control how big your images go. You enter an upper limit for the size of the picture box and it stops resizing there. Nobody in the world has this feature.
Go (here) to learn more.

Here are some photographers using the new designs:

New-D3
http://jeromepix.com
http://pauledmondsonphotography.com
http://gracehuang.com

New-D2
http://geoffreybarish.com
http://finnohara.com

Here are a few of the changes you will notice on the surface:

The navbar (bottom navigation) can be positioned on the left (see it here)  or center (see it here) and each item is now represented by an icon and/or text label, plus you have full control over what is displayed (names, order, size).

(click to see larger)

You can now choose between 4 different kinds of arrows for the mouse navigation.

There are now 11 different image transitions available (you can also set how long the transition takes to happen).

There are now 7 different menu item indicators available (tells you where you are in the menu).

The menu text can be anchored to the top, middle or bottom of the menu.

We built a new scrollbar and have settings so you can adjust the position (left, right plus horizontal and vertical offsets), width and transparency.

Design 3 thumbs now slide in from the right and you can adjust the background transparency.

Design 2 has 12 possible thumbnail display options. You can choose between 1 and 4 columns of thumbs and between small and large sizes.

Videos now come with captions. The captioning system has a unique feature that allows you to change what the caption says as the video is playing. Have a look (here).

Finally, we’ve added the ability to put clickable social networking icons on your menu.

BONUS: You can now use the scroll wheel on your mouse to scroll the thumbs and text pages.

Don’t forget that changing colors, adding a logo, video, homepage slideshow, custom contact form, custom fonts and changing images, text, pages and galleries whenever you want all comes standard with our websites. Making changes to your site without calling a programmer is a core belief here at APF.

Enjoy.

A thousand bucks plus $17/month gets you a website with all the upgrades included. Don’t pay extra to make it your own.

Want to add a logo? Included:

Want to change your font or add your own? Included:

* Email us your font if you don’t see one you like already and we’ll add it for free.

Want to change the colors on your site? Included:

Want custom fields for your contact form? Included:

Homepage slideshow? Included

Video? Included

Wordpress? Included

Ok, I think you get the idea. Calling someone up on the phone to make changes to your website sounds like 1999 not 2009.

Things like:

• Images that fit whatever screen the viewer is on
• Clicking an image to advance to the next
• Using the keyboard arrows to advance
• Emailing a specific image out of your portfolio
• A unique url to each image that makes sense
• Clicking the browser back button and actually going back one image
• Thumbnails that are big enough so you can actually see the image
• iPhone compatibility
• Palm phone compatibility
• Blackberry compatibility
• Easy to locate phone numbers and email
• A blog that’s on your url

These are just pesky little details to some but they are so very important to APhotoFolio websites.

Many of you agree.

We also built a new demo area to show off all our clients:
http://live.aphotofolio.com

And a new manual for all the sites:
http://apfmanual.com

Next we will be launching the client area that’s been in Beta testing for the last 2 months with our photographers and then we’ve got more designs coming.

Stay tuned.

Next, we preformed a major overhaul of the deep linking. One issue I was having because we create clean url’s (actual words not a string of gibberish) was getting foreign characters, symbols and punctuation to work. Since the category/page/gallery name is used in the url this prevented people from using that kind of stuff when naming things. Problem solved with the overhaul.

Then, I had requests from our photographers for various features like using the left and right keyboard arrows to advance the images (done), justify left for the menu text on design 1 and 3 (done), a randomizer in the initial slideshow for design 3 so a different image order is displayed each time someone visits the site (done) and the initial loading indicator needed to display longer so we fixed that (done).

Finally, we’ve been working hard on building a client area that can be added to all the sites. This will allow your clients the ability to log in with a unique username and password to see all their shoots. Then they can download images, leave comments and mark their selects. I think it’s going to be a fantastic addition to APF.

(click to make bigger)

(click to make bigger)

Here are the major features I think you’ll enjoy:

• Images advance quickly as a low res fpo loads first then the original image snaps into place (this is optional).
• All galleries are represented by a thumbnail image for quick viewing.
• The Menu is hidden but appears when you mouse-over the top menu bar.
• The Thumbnails load in the background and are hidden until you chose to view them with the mouse navigation or the text/icon link.
• All the features along the bottom navigation bar can be customized (insert your own labels, use icons, text or both).
• As with our other sites you have full control over the colors, fonts, logo, galleries, categories, pages, video, border widths, image size, number of images, number of galleries…
• *bonus: when clients head for the url box in their browser to visit another site the menu drops down for one last chance to check out more work*

Design 4 Clients

I hope you enjoy our latest design. I think it’s fantastic.