Lingerie advertising

I seem to have spent the whole day today messing around with the new photographs - trying to come up with attractive ways of using them on the website. I was hampered by my struggle with Paint Shop Pro - a programme I've never really used for anything other than resizing photos.

If we have a manual for it, I've no idea where it is, so it's just a case of trial and error (lots and lots of error, particularly). Anyway, I did come up with something in the end.

The brief was to create an image that I can use on the homepage of the lingerie website when I add new items. Usually, I just have a big sign saying 'New items...' and then four little pictures - which you can click on to take you to the individual product page. Tis rather boring and unimaginative though. You can see that not much effort goes into it (what you can't see is that I spend hours putting just a few new items on the website - it ain't up to much).

After going through the whole rigmarole of adding new items, I don't think I have the energy to create an exciting image for the homepage.

Anyway, what I really wanted to do is to create what I thiiiink is called an image map - where different parts of the picture link to different things. So I could have lots of different products incorporated into one image, and then if you clicked on the product, you would be taken to the individual product page.

I haven't got as far as investigating image maps though - the picture above was just an experiment in manipulating individual images into one.

I did a little bit of research into it, and a more popular idea seems to be to use just one picture - a big striking, dramatic picture, with just a little bit of suggestive text. However, the websites that did this were all big brand names, and it seems to me that if you're visiting the website of a big brand, you're not going to be put off if you don't like the advertising image on the homepage. You know from personal experience - or from their reputation - that they're going to have something you like.

By contrast, with a small, unknown business like mine, you need to find something that will catch the reader's attention immediately. I read somewhere that an incredibly high proportion of visitors to any website will not go any further than the first page, before they hit the back button.

Anyway, tomorrow I will see if I can find out how to create image maps - or whatever they're called.