My BigFolio Website Experience

In the past, I've had some strong words for Flash websites.  Mainly I didn't care for them.

Let's start with I felt like they all looked the same.  But that could be because so many people used the same company for their sites so they really were all the same.

They took forever to load.  Some do, at least.  Some still do.

Music!  Gah, I really really dislike automatically starting music on a website.  I dislike it even more on a blog.  If I want to hear music, I'll ask for it.  A music video is different because you are prepared for it.  And you can choose when to start it.  But when I'm surfing along while watching TV and I hit a site with music and I've forgotten to mute, I find myself frantically searching for the way to turn it off.  I actually usually just keep my computer muted so if you have music, I don't know anyway.  And if you are using unlicensed music (which I've noticed a lot of folks do), um, go get some licensed music.

One big site.  I know when I send my email newsletter out, I like to link to specific pages in my site.  And when I get an inquiry I like to be able to link directly to certain pages on my site...maybe the pricing page, or the scheduling page.  I noticed that so many sites are just one big site with no way to link to a certain section of the site.  Instead you'd have to send your client instructions "click here, click there".  No thanks.

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Now, I'll admit.  I, um, have been tempted by the pretty look.  The lovely slideshows.  The easy updating.

So when BigFolio ran a twitter contest a while back I competed hoping to win a free site.  And I did!  I won their new Arch Cape template.  I figured I would use it for a sub-brand I was in the process of creating for my seniors and engagement sessions. 

But the more I worked with it, the more I loved it.  And I realized, I really wanted to use it for my whole site.  So I made a few adjustments and got it up and running to replace my previous HTML website.

 

What did I like?  The interface for customizing the site was really easy.  They have design documentation to make it easier to fine tune the look of the site. 

Each "page" within the Flash template has a distinct URL, which means you can link to an interior page of your site.  A HUGE bonus for me!  And with my Google Analytics code installed (they have a box you paste it into during setup-EASY), I can actually see what parts of the site get the most traffic, or where visitors spend the most time.  I think more of the flash sites are starting to work this way, but I think BigFolio is doing a good job with the way they handle it.

I've heard other friends complain about the customer service with their website hosts or the company they buy their template from.  And in one company in particular I've heard LOTS of complaints about downtime, taking forever to get responses from customer service, taking a long time to get the site up, etc.  I've heard so many complaints I vowed never to buy a site from them (you probably know who I'm talking about but I since I've not used them personally I won't put the name here).  I can tell you I've had the opposite experience with BigFolio.  I submitted trouble tickets and always got responses right away.  I haven't experienced any trouble with downtime.  I did choose to keep management of my email separate since I already had that setup and they were fine with that too.

When I first launched my site, I will admit the HTML version of it was kinda, well, a mess.  I contacted BigFolio and they got their developer right on it to clean it up.  I'm guessing I was the first Arch Cape customer to choose the option for an HTML site in addition to the Flash version so the template for the HTML version just didn't have the bugs worked out (for example, the primary image wasn't even one of my pictures).  I will admit, I don't love the HTML version of the site but it works fine, provides a search engine friendly version of my site, and based on the traffic from my analytics, the majority of the visitors click on the Flash version of the site anyway so I'm not going to worry too much about it.

 

As an optional feature, I did go ahead and purchase their SmallFolio add-on which is a $49 add on to create a iphone version of your site.  It is so cool!  And the best part, because I have a site with them, I bought it-they set it up and magically I had an iPhone compatible version of my site. It was a really fast turn around.   Looking at my visitor stats, I can see that when I sent out my last email newsletter-I had a big bump in my iPhone visitors too...reminding me that so many people check their email on their phones!

I emailed Big Folio to let them know that I'd be blogging about my experience, and to find out if they have any current promotions I could share with you.  And it turns out..they do.  If you use the code "BFSAVE150" when you sign up for a PREMIUM site, you'll save $150!!  Good until the end of February so hurry!

BTW, I wanted to note that I've gotten very positive feedback from my clients regarding my new site.  I streamlined the content quite a bit so I think it is easier to find information AND they love the way it looks.

Edited to Add: I decided to take advantage of the discount code too and just purchased my second BigFolio site to use for revamping my photography classes for moms website.  I'm so excited to set it up.

Comments

[Emily Weiss]

THANK YOU for the discount! And thanks for your evaluation of their service. Love your new site, especially the iphone site!

[Heather]

Great post! And your new site looks really awesome!!
I have one of the flash sites that looks like everyone else's and it is also from the company that has all the bad reviews. Sad to say that my experience with them has been terrible too. But I am in the process of deciding what I want to do differently so this was a big help. I am trying to figure out website + blog VS. blogsite...as well as trying to decide on a new proofing/purchasing system. I would love to hear about how you do your proofing and if you have heard reviews of different sites. The one that bigfolio has looks really nice but I just don't like the thought of handing over 7% of all my sales. :(

[Trude]

Wow thanks for sharing this review! Totally agree on every point. :) It will be a while before I'm set to launch, but I'll be keeping this in mind!

[Tomme Hilton]

I had been contemplating using the service, and your review was helpful. Thanks. xo

[Ada]

Oh my gosh! Thanks so much for this post! I've been really trying to figure out if I should use them or not. This has made up my mind. I'm so excited! And your site is awesome!

[Jessica Grieves]

This is no longer my active email address. Email sent to the account is forwarded to my new address but I encourage you to update your address book. Im using a less spam friendly email address now as this provider tends to have problems with accounts getting hacked quite frequently and I get a lot of spam on this domain too.