If you’re an owner of Internet Image Gallery, photoblog or news site, you certainly want your visitors view inside your gallery but do not leave the site in 0.5 second right after they enter.

There is a one easy way to gain visitors attention to your gallery. Lets see why visitors leave sites so quickly, what kind of tools exist to keep visitors on the site and show an easy and effective way attract visitors by your image gallery.

If visitors view image gallery or not?

Look at this statistics of two real sites:

Site 1:

Number of visits: 594 – Average duration: 428 s

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|Duration of Visits |Number of visits |Percentage of visits|

|-------------------|-----------------|--------------------|

|0s-30s |360 |60.6 % |

|-------------------|-----------------|--------------------|

|30s-2mn |32 |5.3 % |

|-------------------|-----------------|--------------------|

|2mn-5mn |59 |9.9 % |

|-------------------|-----------------|--------------------|

|5mn-15mn |60 |10.1 % |

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Site 2:

Number of visits: 1177 - Average: 226 s

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|Duration of Visits |Number of visits |Percentage of visits|

|-------------------|-----------------|--------------------|

|0s-30s |977 |83 % |

|-------------------|-----------------|--------------------|

|30s-2mn |51 |4.3 % |

|-------------------|-----------------|--------------------|

|2mn-5mn |43 |3.6 % |

|-------------------|-----------------|--------------------|

|5mn-15mn |30 |2.5 % |

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Tables show that 60-80% of visitors leave the site in 0.6 mins right after they enter one. It is arguable that the most of Internet site have the same statistics. Why this happens and how to pass this magical 0.5 mins?

Visitor has entered the site, so he or she is interested in its theme and he or she is looking for the information mentioned as this site has. The visitor is from the target audience of the site. Why does he leave the site? The answer is simple: he or she can’t find information he needs. If information hidden from momentary view, for visitors it’s easier to leave the site instead of digging its depths. Visitor just closes the window and starts looking for the next site.

How to gain visitor’s attention?

What kind of information is interesting for site visitors? For sure, the photos themselves. So, the visitor just can’t find photos while browsing and therefore leaves the site. How to gain visitor’s attention to photos? The way is simple and very well known and used by all off and on-line media: nothing is more attractive but the nice photos at the first page! Nice looking pictures are the attractive tool that works anytime and anywhere. This method is a proven by numerous number of people.

What kind of pictures can be placed at the first page of the gallery? The easiest and most beneficial way is to use pictures from the image gallery itself. If gallery has several sections, then it is possible to use different pictures for each section. To attract returning visitors, images should be periodically changed. Once per several minutes, once an hour or daily (to keep visitor’s eyes from design adaption).

Attention gaining tools

Lets see how technically implement image displaying on the site. This can be done manually but spend a lot of time and energy. The most easier way is to use a free web tools made especially for this aim. Spend a time once to install and completely forget about displaying images.

There are a lot of web tools and each of them has different set of functions. How to choose the best one?

•First, this tool should solve the main task – can show pictures from several gallery sections and change them periodically.

•The second main factor is an easy installation and tuning procedure. The more easier this process, the better the tool.

•The third, but not the last one, is a technical implementation. Unfortunately this factor is hardly determined by the end user.

Tools for gaining visitors attention to the image gallery

There was research of scripts presented in Internet. There are about ten versions. Some of them are too simple, others are too complex, and the last have a lot of features but require payment. Therefore a decision was made to create a FREE version of the script that has all required features, is easy to use and install, and implemented in high level object oriented architecture. The first version of the script:

•Shows randomly taken pictures from one or several sections.

•Rotate pictures once per day.

•Has unlimited number of sections, photos in the section, images per web page.

Script installation as simple as 1-2-3:

1.Unpack and copy script to the site.

2.Create one utility directory.

3.In configuration file, indicate the place where the image gallery stored with all required sections.

In the nearest time will be available the next version of the script.

In the next version:

•Additional rules of displaying images: in daily time intervals (for example: 10-12, 12-14, …), in crontab ways (in any possible order based on time)

•Additional rules of getting images: in strongly defined sequence, ordered or random.

•Securing images from stealing.

•In addition, script can be used as a simple banner rotator

•Administrative shell to customize options.

To use script:

•Go to script’s home page at

http://www.usefulclasses.com/index.php?prc=readArticle&aid=potd

•Bookmark the page to get fresh script version later

•Download script for free from:

http://usefulclasses.com/free_classes/pictod_1.0.tgz (TGZ-archive)

http://usefulclasses.com/free_classes/pictod_1.0.zip (ZIP-archive)

Summary.

To attract visitors to the image gallery you would have to follow a few simple steps:

1.On the first page, use nice looking pictures gaining visitor’s attention

2.Take pictures from the gallery’s sections

3.Rotate pictures periodically

4.Use simple and free script to implement this features on the site