A book launch site for 40-year-old photographs
Graeme Newman photographed the 1986–87 America’s Cup in Fremantle and kept the film for almost four decades. His book, The America’s Cup 1987: How it Changed Fremantle Forever, needed a home: somewhere to tell the story, show a selection of the photographs and sell the printed edition. Oria Digital designed and built it.
- Project
- Stage 5 Photographics
- Industry
- Photography · Publishing
- Role
- Design, build, checkout, SEO
- Live at
- stage5photographics.com
The challenge
A self-published book has one chance to make a first impression, and no publisher’s website to lean on. The site had to sell a $79.95 printed edition directly, explain why the photographs matter to people who weren’t there, and show enough of the work to persuade them, without making it easy to copy photographs that are the whole value of the book.
The goal
One page that tells the story of the book and the photographer, shows a selection of the photographs, and takes the order: no account, no cart, no shop platform to maintain.
Strategy
- Lead with the cover photograph, the title, the price and the buy button, all above the fold
- Tell the story in Graeme’s own words: the assignment, the 32 years in Fremantle, the film kept for 40 years
- Show a small gallery from the book, captioned with the boats and the moments
- Keep checkout simple: PayPal, which takes a PayPal account or any card
What was built
- A fast, single-page site: the book, the photographer, the gallery and the gear
- PayPal checkout for the printed edition, with a thank-you page after payment
- Gallery with captions and a larger view on tap
- Copying deterrents on the photographs, with clear copyright notices
- Copyright & image use, terms of sale and privacy pages
- Structured data for the book, the photographer and the photographs, plus a sitemap
Technology
- HTML and CSS
- JavaScript
- PayPal
- Schema.org
- WebP images
Key decisions
- A static site, not a shop platform: nothing to update, nothing to patch, very little to host
- PayPal over a full cart, because there is one product
- The photographs are protected by copyright notices and a written licence; the on-page deterrents slow casual copying but are not relied on
- Terms of sale written for a single printed edition, including orders from outside Australia
Result
Built and ready to launch alongside the book at stage5photographics.com. No sales or traffic figures are published here; they’ll be added once they’re measured and the client agrees.
Lessons and next steps
- For a single product, the simplest checkout is usually the right one
- The story sells the photographs; the photographs sell the book
- Next: launch on the domain, then Google Search Console and order tracking