Your website is your storefront, and in today’s marketplace it’s increasingly difficult to stand out from the crowd in a virtual world. Consumers are bombarded with web-content on a daily basis, so keeping your audience’s attention is challenging.
As a professional photographer, you may be working harder and harder to drive traffic to your website. Perhaps Facebook, Pinterest, and SEO are guiding prospective clients to your work, but once they are on your website are you able to keep them there?
Making your website simple, easy to navigate, and user-friendly will increase your chances of converting visitors to fans, or (even better) paying clients.
Consider 5 areas of website navigation and design:
- Tell them who you are: Post your logo and location in a highly-visible area. There’s nothing worse than coming to a website and not knowing if you’re in the right place, who owns the content, or even where they are located in the world.
- Have a personality: Who you are goes above and beyond your logo. Tell visitors who you are in a short and sweet tagline, or a signature image. Be careful though; don’t over-designin for the sake of “style”. Make sure text is a big-enough font for grandparents to read.
- Keep navigation simple: If you have navigation menus that are two or more levels, consider consolidating them or removing some content. Save FAQ pages for when a client contacts you. Keep galleries short – attention spans are even shorter than you may think. Consider 5 pages of content maximum.
- Save the stories for your blog: If you have a blog, consider moving a lot of your content there. Stories about your clients, reviews, FAQs, outfit tips, etc can all be shared on your blog under easy-to-locate categories (have a list accessible).
- Make buying easy: Ensure that your “Contact” form is easy to find. Add your email address and phone number to your contact form. Reiterate “Get in touch!” links at the bottom of each blog post. The easier you make it for clients to take action and contact you, the more they will!
In today’s world, too many decisions lead to indecision. The simpler you can make your website, the more clients will stay. If you overwhelm visitors, they will leave. Infuse your personality throughout design and stories, but remember that navigation and ease-of-use will ultimately lead to converted website and blog visitors – which is the ultimate goal of an online storefront!
About Leeann Marie
Leeann is a Pittsburgh-based wedding, engagement, and boudoir photographer. An avid blogger, she loves connecting with her clients, friends, and other photographers around the world. She holds an engineering background from the University of Pittsburgh, which has led to a love of technology and teaching.
She loves Lady Gaga, champagne, and kettle-cooked chips. She has traveled the world to places such as Russia, South Korea, China, Vietnam, and Panama, and believes in living the life you have dreamed.