Some Friendly Advice…

Here’s a friendly bit of advice for any of you who are thinking about starting a stock photography website sometime in the future. If you’re going to trumpet the fact that you’ve got several thousand gorgeous images in your catalog, make darn sure you’ve implemented some sort of search mechanism, preferably by keyword. Sorry, browsing just won’t cut it.

The last thing a designer — who is probably working on a tight schedule to begin with — wants to do is click through several gajillion pages of thumbnails, only to discover that you don’t have what they’re looking for. Even if they didn’t take the time to browse your site this time, chances are they probably won’t be returning anytime soon because they know the effort that it’ll take to find a potential image won’t be worth it.

Whatever the case, you’ve just lost some business and have automatically given your competitors an advantage.