Improving Galleries

Photo galleries are an excellent content element. Not only do they provide newspapers the chance to publish photos that for space reasons did not make it into the printed version, they are very well liked by the readers, as The Washington Post found out as one of the first online operations years ago (Day in Photos, registration required).

However, even in those time-tested applications there is always room for improvement. With the Post, the improvement can be checked in the feature “Hamas Leader Killed in Gaza” (in the “More Galleries” section). Here an audio comment runs independently from the pictures, i.e. readers can click through the photos at their own speed while listening to the comment of the Post’s correspondent.

The Sun-Sentinel gives each photo in its “The Day in Pictures;” a one-line title makes the photos directly accessible in a pulldown menu. That gives users the choice to either jump to pictures they might be interested in or to follow the surprise package offered by the site through the “next” button. User friendliness is achieved one little step at a time.

The commercial angle for photo galleries is of course that they are an excellent and easy sale to sponsors. Try it out.