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Question: What is the inspiration behind clickbooq? How did the concept come about?
Jennifer Wu: clickbooq evolved from a boutique web design firm my partners and I started in New York in 2002. Quite a few artists and photographers approached us to create custom portfolio websites for them, but the cost to design each custom website and a content management system (CMS) was prohibitive for them.
Without a CMS, these clients could easily rack up thousands of dollars in change fees every time they wanted to create or edit portfolios or update links and contact information. We thought, why not create an application that lets photographers create and design their own websites and manage their portfolios? The key was to make it as user-friendly as possible plus incorporate flexibility for maximum creative freedom.
Question: What initial challenges did you face when you first introduced your product? What were the key elements you strived to set yourself apart from the competition?
Jennifer Wu: The key challenge in developing clickbooq was striking a balance between artistic expression and site usability. Most photographers will tell you when it comes to images, bigger is better. Coming from the web design world, we know this can cause usability issues - you've got to consider screen resolutions, bandwidth, and browser compatibility. We also wanted to maintain a streamlined user workflow - so we maintained a 3:2 image ratio to cut down on image prep time.
Our experience creating websites since the early days of the Internet has provided us with insight into what site visitors really want - clean, easy-to-navigate websites with updated content. Wedding clients don't want to see every photograph in your repertoire nor should they have to mouse and click excessively to see your work.
What sets us apart from the competition is our web design and technology expertise. We spent a lot of time orchestrating our application so it can easily be updated and new features added. As the needs of our clients change, we can anticipate changes in the market and incorporate them into their website.
Question: With an above average price tag, what are the top three convincing points that would draw a photographer in choosing your product?
Jennifer Wu: One of the features that many of our users like is the ability to change their designs as often as they want. Most of our competitors either design the site for you once or make you select from pre-designed templates that can't be changed or customized. During our initial research and development phase, we found most photographer's portfolio websites revolved around the same core elements with slight variations: rounded or square corners, site outlines, drop shadows, etc. So what we did is simply build all of those elements directly into our application's design component.
More advanced users can push the design even further and incorporate completely custom artwork. That's where our BackDrop feature comes into play; it allows you to upload your own design or artwork to be used as your site's design. For example, you could upload a website design that looks like a Polaroid back, or perhaps an ornate art frame. The possibilities are literally endless.
One of clickbooq's greatest advantages is how easy it makes it to create and manage your own website. With clickbooq's web-based application, you can design a website from scratch in just a few minutes with professional results. The Toolbox, as we call it, is one of only a handful of truly GUI-based (Graphical User interface) content management systems available in our market. There is literally no code to learn or programs to master. Everything is simply drag-and-drop and click-to-edit; just like you're used to doing on your computer already. I would say that most of our users never even bother to download the User Guide! The Toolbox is very organized and flows from one section to another in a logical process. Plus, you can see real-time changes being made with our built-in preview windows.
Another reason clickbooq is a top choice is because the sites themselves are very easy to use. Our base template structures were designed for optimal site usability and feature a clean and uncluttered user interface. You can access any section of the site with just one click; there are no confusing menus or hierarchies to get in the way of a smooth and enjoyable viewing experience for your site visitors.
Question: You offer a cookie-cutter approach to create digital online portfolios. Some argue the numerous disadvantages of such approach: such as the limitation of individuality and creative control. From a photographer or artist perspectives, what would you recommend to newcomers or veterans: what's the balance between style, presentation, reliability, and cost when it comes to redesigning your portfolio site?
Jennifer Wu: The word "cookie-cutter" has some negative connotations to it, but what we have standardized are tried-and-true web design principles to all clickbooq websites. You, as the artist, will still be presenting your art and creativity, but your portfolio site needs to have a design framework that achieves the most important function of your website - to present your body of work in a clear and logical manner. Don't make it difficult for your site audience to view your work. When clients are deciding between a photographer, they will easily skip over the photographer whose site is difficult to navigate or understand how to use.
Your website should still be aesthetically pleasing and a good reflection of your personal style. That's why we give you the ability to customize your website with so many different options. Take a look at the featured websites on our Gallery page; you'll see how each photographer has created a distinct look for their website, but still maintains the core site usability that's so important.
We're all for custom-designed sites, but often times it means losing the ability to update your site yourself. Or you'll need to be much more hands-on with the code and server aspects. Some people don't mind this sort of thing, but for most, it can be a nightmare and a major time and money investment. There is literally not enough time in the world to stay competitive and up-to-speed in both professional photography and computer programming. A service like clickbooq takes the tedium of doing website and server maintenance off your hands and gives you more time to focus on your work.
Question: Search Engine Optimization or SEO has become the buzz in recent years. In addition to traditional marketing (which is often expensive), properly SEO optimized sites present many natural web exposure opportunities. More and more photographers are starting to become aware of this technology trend. What is clickbooq's take on expanding more into this market awareness on top of your existing SEO features
Jennifer Wu: All clickbooq websites automatically serve an HTML-based version to search engine spiders, which are sent from Google, Yahoo and other search engines to scour the Internet. Because these spiders do not use a stand Internet browser to "see" Web content, it's crucial that your website is presented in a spider-friendly format that they can index easily.
Flash-based websites are typically invisible to these spiders. That's because all of the site's content is usually contained within the Flash movie or .swf file. Search engines like Google and Yahoo have gotten better about reading the content contained within Flash sites, but it's still less than ideal.
Since clickbooq websites are database-driven, we're able to automatically generate an HTML-based website on-the-fly for search engine spiders. We simply detect for the presence of javascript (which all modern browsers have and spiders do not), then serve the appropriate version of the site. The HTML version of the site replicates your site menu, image titles, captions and keywords, and external URL links. It is completely browseable, too - check out any of our sites with javascript disabled in your browser, or with a smartphone like an iPhone or BlackBerry.
All things considered, the reality is that a photographer's website is mostly images and light on the text that search engines are looking to index. Going forward, we plan to add more text-based content to the HTML versions of the site, but it's not clear yet how much of an impact this would have for search relevancy and rankings overall. My advice to photographers is to try to increase inbound links to your website by cross promoting yourself and your site, either through your work and media coverage, relationships with others in the industry, and directory listings. This maks your site more "popular" and therefore more relevant in search results.
Question: What are some of the most demanding feature requests coming from the photography industry in the recent years? What new features do you plan to offer in the near future?
Jennifer Wu: clickbooq is a constantly evolving product, and we have a long list of features and requests that we're working hard to implement. We've been out of the gate now for almost a year now and the response has been incredible. Photographers have been looking for a smart way to create and maintain a professional web presence, and clickbooq aims to meet that demand with a product that grows with their needs.
Our goal with clickbooq is to design the most flexible, most versatile, most feature-rich platform available, all while maintaining an intuitive and user-friendly application.
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