Happy Tuesday! I come bearing educational content:

P.S. Let’s follow each other on Twitter/X, quickly, before the whole company goes under: @foregroundweb

Let’s hit it:

QUICK TIPS

1. You should have between 5 and 7 items in your navigation menu

Web-design guidelines recommend between 5 and 7 items in the navigation menu, inspired by some (rather old) studies about how many things people can keep in their short-term memory.

Most popular photography websites appear to be following this unwritten rule, although more than 30% have 8 or more menu items, going up to 14-15 in rare cases.

And if you paid attention to the chart above, I reviewed a site with... wait for it... 26 different menu links at the top of the site. Talk about being confused when trying to navigate that site!

Takeaway: Keep your navigation menu as simple as possible while limiting options to 7 or less. You can always include more pages and links in dropdown menus.

2. The first paragraph on your About page is critical

Imagine people that only read this first paragraph and then they move on to another page. What will they learn about you just from these first few sentences?

You get bonus points if you dedicate your opening sentence to your audience’s challenges & objectives! This shows them that you care about their needs, and that you acknowledge their struggles.

And then state the critical facts!

Quickly explain what, where, and how you do your work.

Your intro paragraph basically becomes your photographer's elevator pitch, a few sentences describing your target audience and what you’re all about, making visitors resonate with you and what you stand for.

If you begin the page directly with “I was born in… and then I went to college in…”, people might already feel sleepy :-)

And don’t start with “Hello, I’m John Doe and I...”, that’s too cliché.

Takeaway: Adipiscing diam donec adipiscing tristique. Imperdiet dui accumsan sit amet.

3. Quality over quantity.

Have you seen photography websites where they put closely related photos, like variations of the same photo, next to each other? Like the same photo in both color and black and white?

To me, it just sounds like the photographer couldn't make a decision about what's better.

So why should I trust them?

If amateur photographers get this wrong, hopefully, AI-based culling & editing tools like Imagen will get it right soon:

DEEP DIVE

Understand the difference between strategy and tactics

For photographers, the Internet is flooded with tactical opportunities: researching the best gear, building a site, posting an article, scheduling some social media posts, sending an email campaign, and shooting a photo project.

These tasks don’t need too much decision-making, they rarely cost anything more than time, so they’re simpler to do.

Outlining a tactic is simple: you succeed if you actually do the thing. 

“If I follow these tips, this checklist, great, I’m all done.”