Before-and-after galleries that bring in the work

A single photograph of finished work shows a condition. It does not show how much ground lay in between — and that ground is exactly what the business is paid for. In a representative survey of 1,008 people in Germany, 86.7 percent (Appinio) rate quality of workmanship as important or very important, followed closely by keeping to deadlines at 86 percent (Appinio) and transparency on cost at 83.3 percent (Appinio). All three criteria can be asserted. One of them can be shown with two photographs, and shown without a single sentence about one's own diligence.

The second reason is more sober. Anyone looking for a trade business compares several sites in quick succession, usually in the evening and usually on a phone. Almost one in three respondents searches for tradespeople online (YouGov 2021) — and in that sequence it is not the most thorough text that decides, but whatever can be grasped in a few seconds. A pair of images is read in one second. A paragraph about diligence needs four sentences and will not be read on the third website opened. The pair is therefore less a question of design than of order: it answers first what would otherwise come last.

The third reason concerns the kind of enquiries that arrive. A business that only shows showcase projects receives enquiries about showcase projects. Show the unglamorous repair instead — the damp cellar steps, the split joint, the worn door leaf — and the enquiries match that work. With 1,038,126 (ZDH) businesses entered in the craft registers and the register of trades similar to crafts, the question is rarely whether somebody offers the service, but who makes it recognisable what kind of job they are after. How that can be presented without invented case figures is shown on our page on references.

There are three common presentations, and they differ not in taste but in what they achieve. Placed side by side, both conditions are visible at once, but on a phone they shrink to half width. Stacked one above the other, each image stays large, but the two conditions are not in view at once. A slider shows both conditions perfectly aligned, but calls for an interaction not everyone expects and needs a script. Which form is right depends on the trade and on whether the difference lies in a detail or in the overall view.

The order is the same in all three forms: the starting condition on the left or on top, the result on the right or below. That matches reading direction and expectation. Reversing it to open with the attractive picture creates a brief moment of confusion at the second image, and that moment costs more than the first impression it wins. A slider additionally needs operation without a mouse: the handle must be reachable with the tab key and movable with the arrow keys, otherwise the comparison stays closed to a share of visitors. Where the script does not run, both images should sit one above the other rather than not appear at all.

A site photograph rarely shows only your own trade. It regularly includes somebody else's house, a car in front of it, a person in the frame, a doorbell plate at the entrance. Each of these points has its own basis, and none of them is disposed of with "but that is our work". The effort stays manageable as long as it is settled before the shot, and becomes tiresome when it surfaces two years later. The following section sorts the points; it does not replace legal advice in an individual case.

For buildings in public space, German law provides what is known as freedom of panorama. Section 59 paragraph 1 of the Copyright Act permits works permanently located on public ways, streets or squares to be reproduced, distributed and communicated to the public by photograph; for buildings, however, these powers extend only to the external appearance (UrhG). The shot has to be taken from a publicly accessible place — taken from scaffolding, from a neighbouring garden or from the air, the rule does not carry. It does not apply to interiors at all; there the owner's consent decides, and that belongs in writing with the job file.

For people in the frame, Section 22 of the Act on Copyright in Works of Fine Art and Photography applies: portraits may only be distributed or publicly displayed with the consent of the person depicted (KunstUrhG). Section 23 names exceptions, for instance people appearing incidentally beside a landscape, but withdraws them again where a legitimate interest of the person depicted is infringed (KunstUrhG). For day-to-day operations that means: staff sign a consent form once, which belongs in the personnel file; everybody else comes out of the crop. And consent may be withdrawn at any time under Article 7 paragraph 3 of the General Data Protection Regulation, with withdrawal having to be as easy as giving it (DSGVO) — so anyone pulling their picture need do no more than send a short message.

A gallery is not an end in itself. It sits at the end of a short chain: the visitor arrives from a search on a service page, sees two or three pairs for exactly that service, recognises their own case and writes. If the gallery instead exists as a separate page with sixty mixed images, it gets looked at and left again. The difference lies not in image quality but in placement: every pair belongs to a service, and every service needs a page it can sit on. Our services are divided up exactly that way.

Who owns the images and where the original files sit is the question that only surfaces when staff change or the site is relaunched. The shots are then on a phone that has left the business, or in an account whose password nobody knows. The same question arises for domain and hosting; the article on domain, hosting and access works through it. For the images the simplest principle applies: the full-resolution originals sit with the business and not only with the service provider, and the signed releases sit next to them.