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Dead End Pages

Many web sites, photographers' sites especially, suffer from what I describe as dead end syndrome.  That is when a visitor gets to a page without any easy way of leaving.

Huh?
Yes, I can hear you saying that there's always the back button or they can type an address in, or any other number of excuses.  But why should your visitor have to find the back button?  Why would you expect that they'll just type your address into the address box to go back?  You can make it much easier for them.

What to do
It's important to have your pages as consistant as possible, and one of these factors is the navigation you have. If you have the same navigation on each page your visitor will have an easier time getting around your site and will be more likely to stay around longer.  Look at this site - the navigation panel on the right is the same on every page.  As your browsing you know that if you look at the top right you'll see a menu.  I didn't set up the site to move the menu around so that you have to look around to find it.  That would confuse you and make you more likely to leave.

Browsing literally hundreds of photographers' web sites I've found a common theme to this happening.  It's the portfolio pages.  I would guess less than half of the sites I've seen have navigation links on the portfolio pages.  Imagine that your visitor is amazed at your portfolio and decides to hire you.  Don't you want to make it as easy as possible for them to contact you?

How to do it
The easiest way to have consistant navigation and avoid dead end pages is to use include files.  This allows you to have a consitant header and footer (or really, any part of your site) that's the same site-wide.  Plus, it makes it easier if you want to change later.