As most of you know, we have a POTD feature which uses a single image for a 24 hour span and then archives them for later viewing in a month/day/year format. While it's pretty neat, to be sure, I know that we could improve on it quite a bit to make it both more interesting for viewers and more beneficial for the photographers we feature.
While the POTD is currently one of the lowest-trafficked areas on our site, we don't believe it should be. We get hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of unique viewers each month, and the rotating top banner is a prime piece of real estate for any photographer looking to promote themselves. We currently pull our POTD submissions from our flickr group and while there's some great stuff, we think that could also source from other places to find even higher-quality submissions.
We also want the POTD to mean something. If you're featured on the POTD here, I want people to brag about it and be proud of it. It should be a nice little feather in a cap, something your mother can be proud of, and something that drives traffic to your website. Which leads me to my next question: what do you think we can do to improve our POTD feature?
I've bounced a few ideas around inside my head, and those include:
A weekly rotation featuring one photographer per week. This would allow the opportunity for you to see a larger body of work by one artist, instead of just tiny tidbits thrown up that don't have much cohesion. This would also be better for the photographer/artist and make it mean a bit more; seven days of coverage up there is a great lead generator.
Weekly or monthly themes could also be a way to go. For example, an architecture week, or an off-camera lighting month, or a landscape week, or a portrait month. This keeps everything consistent from day to day and allows everyone to scroll to a certain month to find inspiration and ideas. Being featured in a curated monthly gallery of 'the best portrait shots of March 2013' would be a cool little badge of honor, I think.
A weekly or monthly theme featuring shots made with specific gear. While somewhat helpful, doesn't really show off people's best work and I'm a big proponent of the idea that the gear doesn't matter. Would be useful for those who are interested in keeping up with new images from early adopters of fresh products, however. For example, a week of images shot with a newly released lens would give everyone an idea of how that piece of gear performs.
Our favorite shots from our flickr and Facebook groups, which is sort of what we're already doing. I like using this because active users get to see their work on their site, but like I said, it lacks a cohesion or 'wow' factor when we just pull random photos up.
The bottom line is that we want to make a platform for our loyal readers that showcases their work. We want to make it so that we can give back to the community, and I know that we can do a better job of it. If you have any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below, or drop me an email at mikek@fstoppers.com. If you have images you want featured on the POTD, again, feel free to drop me an email. I'd love to see a few submissions of seven images so I can test out the weekly or thematic ideas to see what kind of response they get.
I would suggest with the carousel on the front page of the site you have one of the items show the POD
It already does that.
My advice would be to take it out of the carousel. I personally do not look at the carousel anymore, as it seems to showcase old articles that I've already seen. The picture of the day is a nice feature as it is, it's just too hidden. It probably should be its own daily article (so it appears in the news feed), or have it more prominently showcased in the right sidebar.
agreed!! the carousel is pointless if it's displaying old articles and no point placing picture of the day amongst articles. you are better of giving picture of the day its own dedicated space/position on the fstoppers landing page and make it more apparent. If its obvious then more people will click on it.
Or you could do it in a way ACMP, http://acmp.com.au/, does it's photographer of the day. A series of images.. choice is endless :-)
The Carousel as everyone is calling it features the Top post of the last day in the top slot, the POTD in the second spot, the 2nd most popular post in the last 3 days in the 3rd spot, and the final spots are the most popular posts over the years on FS. So yes some of them are older posts but most of them are the current trending posts from the last day to last 5 days.
A great things would be to focus on a particulat process a bit like "Hello I'm John Doe and this is how I work" section
And let loyal reader speaks about how they works
I kinda agree. It would be nice to get some back story or context from the photographer. I always like to hear the story even if t is just "I wanted to shoot something pretty". So far I don't remember seeing that with the POTD.
with a link to a forum entries for more infos on the process
this way it let the page clean and the people who are interested will just follow the discuss on the forum
I just uploaded some pics to the flickr pool, I hope one of them get's to be POTD. :)
This one:
A weekly rotation featuring one photographer per week.
Weekly rotation featuring one photographer and Monthly themes sounds very good.
Finally.
You could do a rotation of weeks... do a month of a photographer a week, then a month of images with a certain lens (since there are so many camera bodies out there), then a month with a theme, then repeat the cycle.
A proper response to e-mails would most likely help too. Especially when people send in information and ideas all the time and Fstoppers never respond. I understand y'all may be busy but even an automated message would be nice. Tell us "hey were are a bit busy..."
We get hundreds of emails a day. Would an auto reply be that appreciated? We can't reply to everything, it would simply take all day. If it's something awesome, we'll definitely get back to you.
What if the POTD was the first thing on the slideshow at the top of the home page and when you click on it, it redirects to a mini post where readers can see an additional 3-4 photos from that same photographer and a link to the photographer's site?
This way you'll get the same coverage as your weekly rotation idea but Fstoppers would still be able to feature 365 photographers a year instead of 52, giving more readers a chance to show off their skills?
Or to boost views on POTD, what about having a weekly vote every friday for best POTD? It's more work on Fstoppers' part but it engages the readers on a different level, everyone likes voting and a little friendly competition is always fun. Maybe the photographer that wins could get a full on article featured on them? Just throwing it out there!
you guys could go with best surf pic best wildlife pic best street photo (exaples) ......basically have differnt photos of the day but differnt categories of photo of the day
How about the same facebook or Flickr idea but with some voting involved? Featuring a photographer for sometime might get boring for visitors who are frequently visiting fstoppers since they get to see the same person again and again. If you have a voting procedure you might get a greater user interaction and at the same time make things interesting by putting the ball in 'our' court by letting the users select the best image.
monthly theme i think would be the best along with feature photographer maybe have two part featured photographer for one week showing his images and talking about his backround while also showing themed images from many other contestants.
Weekly or monthly themes, non gear-specific. Perhaps an occasional gear week.