- Reduce
- Resize
- Reorder
- Re-purpose
Reduce the number of photos.
Eliminate repetitive photos, blurry photos, photos with poor lighting, and other unnecessary images. Imagine you were submitting photos to your local newspaper or the national publication for your organization. Wouldn’t you send them only the best photos that you have to offer?
Identify 10 to 20 photos that best represent your chapter event. Why only 10 to 20 photos? It’s the Internet! There are far too many websites, social media channels and the like competing for our attention. Let’s not forget mobile devices. Who wants to swipe through 100 photos? Keep your galleries short and sweet.
Resize full high resolution images.
Do not upload full size images to your website photo gallery. This bears repeating: do not upload full size images to your website photo gallery. Super large photos have no place in your photo gallery. Not only do they cause slooow loading website pages, but they also impact viewing experiences on mobile and tablet devices. Use an image editing software to resize your photos to a width of somewhere between 800 pixels and 2000 pixels. Generally, I aim for a width of 1024 pixels.
Reorder your photos.
Show your best photos first. The Internet jungle is fast-paced, easily distracted, and impatient. Your website viewers may not stick around to click through your entire photo gallery, so make sure they see the photos that best represent your chapter and event first.
Re-purpose your photos.
Your chapter Facebook page is the perfect complement to your chapter website galleries. Don’t let your website do all of the heavy lifting for your photo galleries. Facebook allows people to tag themselves and to easily share photos. Here’s an idea: post 10-20 of your best photos on your chapter website photo gallery with a link to the full photo album on your chapter’s Facebook page.
Other Considerations
Take High-Quality Photos
What do I mean by high-quality photo? Good lighting, good exposure, good depth-of-field, and good composition. Whenever possible, your chapter should strive to take the most professional, high-quality photos that you can. Why? Because your website and the content on your website is a reflection of your chapter. While Facebook and Instagram are great for smart-phone photos, selfies, and impromptu photos, consider hiring a reputable photographer to capture memories for your signature chapter events. Or invest in a good DSLR camera with an external head flash unit.
Photo Storage
If you are looking for a place to simply store and archive all of your high resolution photos, consider an online file storage service such as Dropbox or Google Drive. If you would like to store and display your high resolution photos, consider Flickr. With Flickr, you can categorize and tag your photos so that you can easily search for certain photos or albums. Additionally, you can embed your photos from Flickr on your chapter website.
Conclusion
Photos provide a much richer website experience. However, not all photos are created equal. Don’t let poor quality photos reduce the quality of your chapter website (and ultimately the perception of your chapter). Your chapter website should have plenty of fresh, high-quality photos. The next time you create a photo gallery for your chapter website remember: reduce. resize. reorder. re-purpose. Your website visitors will appreciate it!