A before and after gallery page

Context is what persuades

A visitor looking at a pair of photographs is asking whether their own situation is like this one. Without the problem described, they cannot tell, and an impressive image answers nothing.

Give each pair four lines. What was wrong, what was done, how long it took, and roughly what it cost. Those four turn a picture into evidence about a job like theirs.

Our page on before and after photos covers the rules on the images themselves. This page is about the gallery they sit in.

Say what was not done as well. A kitchen where the floor was replaced and the units were not is a more believable photograph once the scope is stated, and it prevents a quote conversation going sideways.

Group by problem, not by date

Nobody browses a gallery chronologically. They are looking for their own situation, so group by the problem or the property type rather than by when the work happened.

Label each group in the customer's words. Damp in a basement beats remediation projects, and the customer's phrasing is also what they searched for to arrive.

Where a group has enough material, give it its own page. A gallery hub linking to specific pages outperforms one long scroll for almost every trade.

Honest presentation

Shoot both images from the same position, in similar light, with the same equipment. A before photograph taken in poor light and an after taken on a bright day exaggerates the difference.

Do not retouch, straighten or color-correct one side only. Comparison images that have been altered to enhance the contrast are a deceptive practice regardless of whether the work was genuine.

Never use generated images here. Our page on generated images covers why these pages are the sharpest case of all. Nothing here is legal advice.

What each entry needs

The list below is what makes a gallery work as evidence rather than as decoration. Most galleries carry the first item and stop there.

• A pair shot from the same position in similar light
• What the problem actually was
• What was done, in plain terms
• How long it took
• Roughly what it cost, or what determined that
• The town or area, where permitted
• Alt text describing what each image shows, since an answer engine reads only that

Permission

Get written permission before publishing images of somebody's property, and be specific about where they will appear. Verbal agreement on site is not enough when the customer later objects.

Avoid anything identifying unless you have agreed it. House numbers, vehicle plates, documents on a worktop and people in the background all appear in photographs nobody checked.

Keep the permissions with the images. Our page on images and copyright covers the records, and a gallery is the page most likely to need them years later.

Offer to leave the address out entirely. Most customers agree to photographs readily once they know the street will not appear, and the town alone is enough detail for anybody assessing the work.

Performance

Galleries are the heaviest pages on most small business sites, and a page that takes eight seconds to load has lost the visitor before the work is visible.

Resize images to what is actually displayed, compress them, and load the ones below the fold only when needed. Our page on page speed covers the order.

Set width and height on every image so the layout does not jump as they arrive. That single habit fixes most of what our page on layout shift describes.

Keeping it fresh

Add work as it completes rather than in an annual batch. A gallery whose newest entry is three years old suggests a business that has slowed down, whatever the truth is.

Remove the weakest entries as better ones arrive. A gallery is judged by its average rather than by its best, and pruning improves it without any new photography.

Make photographing the finished job part of the routine. Ten minutes at the end of a job produces material no competitor can copy, and it accumulates into the most valuable page on the site.