Things to Have on Your Photography Website
Over the past week, I have looked at about a hundred photographers websites - everyone from brand new photographers to those who have been in the photography business for years and years… and I noticed a few things that I feel every photographer needs to have on their website. Please keep in mind that, like any of my suggestions, your website is the face of your business, not mine - so make it feel like you! If I suggest something here that sounds totally un-like anything you would ever do, don’t do it! Be authentic in your website along with everything else you do! So here are my 5 things that all photographers should be doing on their website!
Copy
By copy, I mean text - you need to have it! Yup, clean and minimalistic is in. You want your pictures to stand out and you don’t want to bore people with words. But you know what? Your clients want to be able to know a bit more about you, your process and what you can do for them beyond just looking at pictures.
The other reason for copy? SEO. If you ever want Google to find you, you need words telling it what you do. Google can’t see pictures. It can read descriptions and blog posts and words.
Galleries
Have a gallery or slideshow on your homepage, but make it your absolute favorite pictures ever. I’d say no more than 15 pictures (and even that seems like a lot). So pick your best!
If you say you take pictures of a certain type of photography, you should have a gallery to back it up. If you have a price for a certain type of portrait, have a gallery to back it up. I would suggest no more than 3-5 different types of galleries (even 5 seems like a lot), so you can probably merge a few together if you have more than that… If you photograph “children” and “families”, for instance, they can go in the same gallery - especially because someone looking for child-only photographs may be taken away by your family pictures and choose to schedule both with you.
Don’t just have one gallery with everything in it. That just gets confusing, and loses interest for those clients that are looking for a newborn photographer and are stuck scrolling through a ton of wedding and engagement portraits first.
Also don’t repeat pictures found in other places on your website - if you use a wedding picture on your home page gallery, do not use them in your wedding gallery. (This does not apply for pictures you have blogged - just for pictures on the non-blog pages)
Contact
Ok, this one should be obvious, but so often the contact area is so hidden it is hard to find. Your contact needs to have a menu option at the top (not hidden in a “see more” type of link), should probably have another menu option at the bottom, and thrown in a few other times around your website (“Want to know more? Send me a message”). Make it SUPER EASY for clients to contact you about a session! This is the entire point of your website - why would you make it hard on them to do?
You!
Unless you are a large, multi-photographer company, you are selling yourself as well as your pictures. Most people want to know who they will be working with, want to bond before they book, and want to make sure you are someone they will love. I can’t tell you the amount of clients that have told me they hired me because they already felt like they knew me from my website. Be yourself - don’t ever try to sound or be someone else because you think that must be how photographers should sound. Your ideal clients will love you for you.
What do you think? Did I miss any absolute must-haves? Leave a comment below!
Interested in a Free Website Review?
Send me a message and a link to your website! I’ll look it over and give you any suggestions I might have!
Please note - by signing up you also agree to receive my <very rare> newsletter, where I share tips and tricks and help. You can unsubscribe at any time.