Thanks for checking out this week's ForegroundWeb Newsletter. Every Tuesday, I share tips to improve your photography website and grow your business. If you have any questions or need more information, just reply to this email — I'm here to help.

QUICK TIPS

1. Avoid over-use of color

A minimalist website is usually built upon a main background color (usually white works well for photography sites) and one or two accent colors. Small patches of color are great to guide the user’s attention, to tell them what’s important on the page.

Too many splashes of color turn into clutter, try to keep things simple. With fewer elements on the page, the color usage becomes very important. The color palette you use, and the quantity you use it in, can help or harm your website.

So besides shades of gray, limit the colors used on your site to one or two. Except for call-to-action buttons, which usually need to stand out, other page elements should not be taking attention away too much from the stars of the show: your photos.

If the search functionality is really important for your site, then, by all means, make it a prominent feature in your header area:

A more discreet option, and this ties into our topic of navigation, is to include a small search icon into the menu (usually to the far right).

Here’s an animated GIF of how such a search box could work:

But remember that a header search box will not solve a site’s navigation problems.