Critique please? Professional Rescue fundraiser

Hi all. I have not posted here in a few years I think, judging from the old avatar I just replaced.

I am president of a rabbit rescue here and also have a professional pet photography business. Unfortunately I do not have much time for my business but that should be changing as the adoptions are low this year.

Originally, I found on this very forum the instructions for emulating the style of Helmi Flick, whom I greatly admire! I spent months working on achieving a similar look and not to my surprise, it boosted adoptions for the little fluffy models to 100% no kill!

Of course I had a few other marketing skills to help out the little furries, and I didn't mind getting totally taken in with saving their little lives.

But now I want to use the thousands of rabbit photos I've accumulated in this studio style to help raise money for the little fluffy ones who are stil awaiting adoption. Some of them will never be adopted either as they may have health conditions or behavioral problems which preclude adoptability. We can't have Bunnicula draining blood from some 8 year old LOL, or Barracuda teaching pugilism to toddlers.

Well anyway, I am building a Cafe Press site with these photos and am looking for comments from all of you on the store and any marketing suggestions you may have. I am working on it every day as Easter approaches as this is usually the time of year we get the most traffic - gee, for some reason ;-) having to do with eggs and bunnies.

So I'm hoping to enlist some help from anyone who might know just what I should do to really make this work and raise some money for the rabbits. I have always donate all of my photo income to them, and a major portion of our other household income, so we need it to be successful.

Thank you all so much in advance for your comments on our Cafe Press store, Bright Eyes Alive! http://rockstarrabbits.com

Patti Henningsen
Bright Eyes Pet Photo
http://brighteyespetphoto.com

Impressive sites!

Thanks Cathy.

I was hoping for some feedback though :-) I see I have a lot of people from here going to the link (through Sitemeter) but no one is commenting so either. I know I haven't posted much but I am a busy rescue person!

I appreciate any suggestions anyone has to offer. thanks so much.

OK. The user interface to your site is really neat with the shutter and all but I have a hard time seeing the individual thumbs to choose which one to click. You have done a good job of emulating Helmi's lighting. Trouble is your crop is so tight on the shutter/lens interface that you don't get to see the spread and falloff of the backlight.

The bunny images are great. The car image seems out of place.

Thank you Preston. Yes I know your work too as I have coveted your relationship with Helmi, LOL!

I am looking more for fundraising ideas. If you go to Rock Star Rabbits http://rockstarrabbits.com and see the traditionally cropped images there, perhaps you can critique those as being attempts at emulating Ms. Flick.

I just love the backlighting so much, she called it a wash right? The bunnies look especially beautiful with the hair light making their whiskers glow.

Actually I was looking for comments on this fundraising site, not my commercial site. I will be redoing my site at one point, but that's low priority. Fundraising and supporting the rabbits very expensive needs (horses in the house and they cost as much for their size). Marketing ideas? Your professional advice is even tax deductible if you send me time spent on this and your normal hourly freelance rate, I will send you a tax donation receipt. All ideas from fellow pro shooters is very much needed!

I have only so much time to allocate to marketing thinking in a clear way, I really need a marketing VP. Well again, all comments appreciated! On the products please, would you buy them? If you loved rabbits and couldn't take a photo to save your life, would you buy some of these of our cutest graduates?

Thank you all so much in advance for your comments on our Cafe Press store, Bright Eyes Alive! http://rockstarrabbits.com

The one thing I can say is to make it view better in firefox. It took me a couple of tries to figure out what it was about. If it doesn't grab the viewers attention easily and quickly, you will lose them

Thanks! Yes that's my favorite browser too but unfortunately, the CP template isn't FF compatible. And my statistical reports don't really justify doing anything about it since FF is rarely represented. But it would be the chosen browser for our profession as would having a Mac (not meaning to start anything here but will admit to being Mac snob).

Safari or IE will look fine. Haven't tested other browsers either. But maybe I could use a redirect just for FF to an alternate site?

Thanks for your response!

I would not bother with a redirect and I would not use IE to view it. If I hit a flash site that takes more than 20 seconds to show anything beyond the loading loading loading, I say forget it.

I'd personally get a different template mac snob or not. I have had to make changes to make things compatible for IE, which is not the most compliant browser out there. Enough people use it that I am not going to lose traffic over it.

Was it a free template? Why choose one that says it isn't compatible with a browser that 21% of people use? So, basically a quarter. While safari only has an 8% share. Though IE is still the leader with 66%

Just a thought. I have said here before that websites should be easy to use, load as fast as possible and if you are selling something, don't make it hard to buy!