7 Second Website Test for Photography Websites
Time is ticking!
Photo: bogenfreund, Flickr
Actually, time is blazing by when someone arrives at your website. You only have 7 seconds to get your message across and capture their attention.
Are you taking advantage of those 7 seconds by getting the most important information in front of your site visitors?
If they leave after 7 seconds, do they know who you are and why they should do business with you?
Well, I’ve created a new tool that you can use to test your website’s message. Submit your site to the 7 Second Website Test, others will review it, and you’ll receive email feedback from them telling you what they perceived your message to be.
Try out the 7 Second Website Test Now!
Then, come back once you’ve received some feedback and let me know what you think.
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This is a great concept. I signed up mostly to see how the test worked and I can see how it can be really helpful to a lot of photographers (and anyone with a website for that matter.) Hopefully others will find it to be a useful tool.
-Nic Myers
Wow, this is a really go way to test the impact of your website. It will interesting to see what others think about my site. Pretty useful.
I tried it with my own site and all of the links for other photographers supplied, but non of them even loaded!
Either my connection is too slow (doubtful as it’s ADSL2) or 7 seconds is just not enough for a photographers website where you’d think large photographs need to load.
Good idea though.
John,
You bring up an interesting point. Some sites don’t load in 7 seconds. I would argue that for the sake of having a good site, it should load in less that 7 seconds. That’s just imperative. But, for the sake of the purpose of the 7 second test (to test messaging) maybe we should wait until the page loads before the 7 seconds starts. I’ll look into making that happen.
Thanks.
I spent months laboring over what would keep visitor’s interest on my web site’s landing page. I have a 28.18% bounce rate over the past 3 months, so it’s working pretty well with an average of 1:49 per visit. But now, you’ve gotten me to thinking, it could still have something more (it takes more than 7 seconds to finish loading), I’m not sure what that is yet (speed it up?), but boy, the replies I’ve received from other 7 second viewers got me thinking. So, it’s back to the drawing board…
Thanks for your insight!!!
waiting to see what other responses I get, my initial reaction is … my home page is far too busy and needs major changes! (Though I do usually give sites more than seven seconds when I first visit!)
Flipping Brilliant. I love this. I’ve never seen it before. Where did you get this? Email me/ Tweet me this needs to go bigger.
Yes, Please do adjust the test to wait till the site is loaded. I know my site can take a few seconds to load, but the images need to be pre-cached for a better user experience. I don’t use flash, but I know that a number who do take more than 7 seconds to load as well.
to photomarketer
After receiving about 100 direct messages from you all of the same message on Twitter, spamming my account, you have been blocked. next time know that less is more in marketing.
Business people do not enjoy spammed inboxes about your product
“The One you spammed on Twitter”,
I’m extremely sorry. If you had looked at my tweets you would have learned that it was a complete accident. Of course, I would never intentionally spam my Twitter followers. I had a script that I wrote to DM my followers with important news. Inadvertantly, I had left that script in an unprotected area of my site. Someone, probably a bot, found that URL and hit it a ton of times, sending all of my followers a ton of DMs. I killed it as fast as I could, but the damage was already done.
Again, sorry.
I have been recently preparing a considerable quantity of basic research on direct marketing communications for a brand new posting that i’m doing and basically felt like expressing that you webpage is pretty strong. Many thanks for the topical guidance you have established.
Hi! I’ve tried the link to the 7 second test several times and get errors when I try to create mine. I’d love to participate. Anyone else having this issue?
Thanks,
Kristin
I like the idea but got some fearsome errors upon submitting my info, thought you might like to see them.
Thanks
William
Warning: include(../twitter/twitter.lib.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/think/public_html/7secondtest/signup.php on line 105
Warning: include(../twitter/twitter.lib.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/think/public_html/7secondtest/signup.php on line 105
Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening ‘../twitter/twitter.lib.php’ for inclusion (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /home/think/public_html/7secondtest/signup.php on line 105
Fatal error: Class ‘Twitter’ not found in /home/think/public_html/7secondtest/signup.php on line 106
Kristin & William,
Thanks for informing me about the errors. I think they’re fixed now. Please give it a try and let me know if everything works ok.
Thanks.
Hi Tyler,
A few days ago I tried to submit my site for your 7 second test, I received the same errors as Kristin & William so gave up, tried again today and whilst I am not getting error advices, a message stating ‘you can only create up to 3 tests’ appears and will not let me go any further (obviously, my original tries actually registered even though they didnt work) would love to participate, can you find a work around for me? Cheers, Clare (Brisbane, Australia)
Clare,
Please go ahead and try again. I had put a limitation on this program to avoid spam. I’ve cleared out your 3 previous attempts. So, you should be good now.
Thanks.
Some sites don’t even load before the time is up. Not sure that is a fair test. Most people will at minimum wait a few seconds longer to see the site load. But, I did also go back to a few and reload them, including my own. The second time they did load faster and after that I was able to give a more fair review to those particular sites.
So, load the sites twice to give them an honest opinion, in my opinion….
Hey I was thinking a plan for an own photo related blog while checking out some of your blog articles. Unfortunately I don’t have any experience with webdesign
Did you create this site by yourself? I’m talking about a small personal blog and because of that I do not to spend any money. Maybe you can recommend some special tools. It’s clear that the site doesn’t have to be as beautiful as yours 
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