Website tips for photographers

Some things I’d like to share with my fellow photographers. These are some tips I’ve either come up with myself or received from someone else. I decided to share this with you because of some of my findings while surfing the web today. Here they are in no particular order.
 

1. If your site does not have content on a particular page, do not include the page. Many times you go to a site and there will be a page where the owner has intentions on filling it with content but instead you see “under construction”, “coming soon”, “in works, bear with me”, etc. These are turn offs and the viewer will many times feel like you’re not doing anything. If you must include the page because of a template requires it for example, provide dates on the status of the content. Ie. Come back on April 30th to see the more on this topic. User’s want to know that you’re busy with updates and not feel like they’ve reached a dead end.  

2. Only use your best photos. If you need to just put photos up for general purposes and share with friends and family, use some of the free sites such as: Flickr, Pbase, MySpace, Facebook, Fotki, Opera, etc. You get the idea. Your business website is a site full of photographs serving as business cards and you want to know that they are saying the right things. A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, what are yours saying about you? Some things to pay attention to: Are my color balances correct? Are they cropped correctly? Is there any blurring in the photograph? Any of these things will disqualify the picture for entry on your bus. Site. Just because everyone like it, does not mean it should be included. Ask other photographers for their opinions about your photos you want to include, tell them be honest and give reasons. Most of all don’t be offended. The final decision is always yours.

3. I got this one from my friend David Jones….Get a blog. A blog allows you to make quick entries like this one you’re reading and include what you’re working on. If you’re not updating your site regularly with photos, the viewers will see that you’re site is fresh because you are commenting on the blog regularly. This lets them know your business is not dead.
Send out requests to have people view your site. This will drive traffic to your site and in return some possible business.

4. Use your site to promote others. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You can impact a lot of people by simply helping others.

5. Do not get too overly graphic with your site. I’ve seen plenty of sites that has a nice look to them but because of all the “stuff” going on, I just left without viewing the site. People want to get in, see where they’re going and enjoy their time there and leave. If they have to click on too many things to get to their pictures, you site now has a bad reputation. It’s not worth it. 

6. Avoid pop-ups if you can, unless they are for viewing the photos themselves. Advertising on your main site is not attractive to a client.

7. Make corrections quickly. Everyone will make a mistake in spelling or grammar when posting. Review your pages and correct your mistakes quickly. The quicker you do this the less chance you have of showing your errors to the world.

8. Allow users “one-stop-shopping”. If they are able to view, order, pay at your site, you will sell more photos. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve canceled an order online because I had to go through too many steps trying to pay. Remember, if you take pictures of a baby (for example), grandma, grandpa, and all the rest of the family from around the world are looking at those photos. They may not be web-savvy and need to be able to just get in, view, order, pay, and get out.

9. If you have music playing, please make sure you’re not playing “your favorite song” just because it’s your favorite. It should match the mood of your photos and almost be unnoticeable . The word I’m feeling here is “soothing”. It should make the user want to stay on your site and purchase, not start dancing and forget why they’re there in the first place. It should not be too ethnic either. I don’t think I need to explain that one too much. You want to attract everybody from everywhere and every background.

10. If you do not have several models to choose from or events, don’t have too many pictures of the same person. You’re son may make a great model and your girlfriends daughter may be beautiful, but too many pictures of the same person will cause the viewer to feel like you’re not doing a lot of work and not getting clients. That may be true, but don’t help it out. You’re basically trying to build trust in your abilities without getting the face-to-face interview. If you have a lot of skill and experience, your site should have some variety.

11. Try to avoid having too many photos in your public gallery. Yes, you can have too many. If you have a lot of pictures, try to show variety, not just quantity. Instead of loading the viewer down with just a sheer number of photos, rotate them regularly. For example (not real numbers, just an example). If you have 100 photos of a single model, but in different scenes, use 25 photos in the first month and change them the next month.

 

Enough for now. Thank you for viewing.