Professional Documents
Culture Documents
While weve included pointers for building an amazing site with Zenfolio,
the general guidelines apply to any photography website. As you go through
the process of building a new website or evaluating your existing site, use
this book as a guide to help you get the most effective presence online.
INTRO
You need a website for many reasons. If youre a professional
photographer, your website is your essential tool to promote
your business, acquire new clients, and provide your existing
clients with online proofing and ordering. If youre a student or
hobbyist, your website helps you present your work in the best
possible way, and can pave the way for turning your passion
into a business.
Typically a professional photography website
includes the following essential components:
Online Portfolio
Client Proofing
Shopping Cart
Management Backend
CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
7-8
9-14
Your Homepage
15-18
19-20
21-22
23-26
8
9
10
11
12
13
Shopping Cart
27-29
Marketing Tools
30-31
32-33
34-35
Using Video
36-37
38-44
1
Define Your
Photography Business
Soft
Humorous
Classic
Romantic
Edgy
Poignant
Grungy
Dark
Powerful
Urban
Sleek
Subtle
Quirky
Traditional
Modern
2
Your Branding Elements
GoDaddy www.godaddy.com
Yahoo www.smallbusiness.yahoo.com
1and1 www.1and1.com/domain-name
Network Solutions www.networksolutions.com
Register.com www.register.com
Once your domain name is registered, you can
point it to your homepage which can be hosted
with another company.
7
3
Your Websites
Look and Feel
Theme
Website themes are comprised of coordinating
colors, backgrounds, and design elements that
have been carefully picked to work together and
achieve a pleasing and professional presentation
for your photos. Some themes are simple, minimal,
and clean and can be appropriate for most
types of photography. The more decorative and
stylized themes can enhance your photographic
style, giving your website a bit more personality
for visitors to remember.
Your website needs to strike a chord with
your target customer. For example, a wedding
photographers website might reflect the colors
and graphics usually associated with the typical
wedding: the decorative fabric of the wedding
dress, beautiful flowers or the essence of the
surroundings where the vows are said. If you
primarily shoot fashion photography, chances
are you shoot hip, trendy clothing and models.
Have your portfolio theme reflect that.
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10
Color Palette
You know how the color in your photos can evoke a mood, emotion and sense
of wonder. Just like framing and matting a photo, your choices of color in your
website should complement your photography. Pick a color palette of 3-4 distinct
colors and use these colors (or their shades) consistently throughout your site.
Proper usage of color is a large element of your websites usability. Does your
text color have enough contrast with your background? Can your visitors clearly
distinguish links from text? Have you tried looking at your website on a variety
of monitors?
Using Background
Graphics and Decorations
Enhance your branding further by creating
and applying custom background graphics and
decorations. Use them strategically to give your
website a unique, handcrafted look that accents
your photography.
Using a custom background image, pattern
or texture can really give your website a new
personality and attitude. Let your creative
expression flow and experiment with different
images such as the textures of metal or wood,
a hand painted canvas or even a piece of soft
fabric. The possibilities are endless! Whatever
image you use, make sure it is not too busy so
you can read your text easily and it does not
compete with your photos for attention.
You can further embellish your design with
coordinating graphics and decorations for the
header and footer areas, uniquely stylized
folders, photo mat backgrounds and borders.
12
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Typography
Typefaces come in many different styles, with
each one having its own personality. Most
typefaces are classified as either a serif
(serifs being the little feet at the ends of the
letterforms), such as Times or Georgia, or a
sans-serif such as Arial, Lucida, or Tahoma.
Just like choosing the right colors, choose fonts
for your website that are easy to read and
capture the personality and emotion of your
photography. Like colors, fonts may look
different across different computers and mobile
devices, so remember to check your website
at a variety of places to make sure it looks
and functions as you intended.
Typography Tips
4
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15
Slideshow
Your portfolio should be clearly accessible to your visitors. Some people prefer to
enjoy a well-paced slideshow with a soundtrack, while others want to immediately
jump to a certain photo that has caught their attention. A good homepage
accommodates all kinds of visitors by providing a slideshow as well as links
to the sections of your portfolio.
Think about sequencing your
portfolio images in a strategic
order. If you place your strongest images at the beginning
and the end of the portfolio,
youll hit the viewer the
hardest. Grab their attention
right from the beginning and
leave them something to
remember at the end.
Logo
Your logo is usually the first thing a visitor sees
when your website opens in a web browser. It
should be clearly visible on your homepage so
that users can immediately identify who owns
the website.
Save your logo as a PNG file with transparency
(or alpha channel), which allows it to be
displayed nicely over different backgrounds.
Use it prominently on your home page and as
a header for your other website pages; it can
also be used as a watermark over your images.
17
Menu Navigation
Your menu navigation is the main tool for
viewers to easily find and view your pages.
Keep your wording short to give you flexibility
in the placement of the menu navigation on
your pages. Try to keep your menu items limited
for a cleaner design, and put any sub-pages in
a drop down menu.
Navigation Checklist
Call to Action
all pages
18
5
Organizing Photo Galleries
Organizing Strategies
Date
Topic
Category
Location
Event
Descriptions
Every photo and gallery should have a description including
title, caption, category, and keywords. This makes it easier for
viewers to search on your site. It also helps search engines to index
your site and to provide relevant and accurate search results.
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Search
Include a search field on every page of your website making
it easy for your visitors to explore your digital images library
simply by typing a keyword, a location, or a last name.
Client Access
You can provide each client with a special client access code.
When clients type their access code they will be immediately
taken to their gallery, without the need to search by name or
to browse through your entire archive.
20
Presentation Checklist
21
22
7
Your Other Website Pages
About Page
This page is all about you. Let people see the
face behind the website. Share your background,
where you came from, how many years youve
been in the business, etc. The more details you
give, the better your potential clients can form
a bond and build trust with you.
Use this opportunity to tell customers who
you are as a person, your passions and your
qualifications as a photographer. Your emphasis
should be why people want to work with you.
People looking to hire a photographer want
to know that you are the right person for the
job, rather than hear your life story. Keep your
wording down to 2 to 3 paragraphs. Make your
about page personal by writing your copy in the
1st person rather than the 3rd person.
Years of experience
24
Guestbook
Having a guestbook for comments and
customer testimonials can further increase
your photographic and professional credibility.
It also allows your customers to interact and
be a part of your website. Be sure to regulate
who is allowed to comment, as well as monitor
comments before publishing to weed out spam.
Custom Pages
Price Lists, Booking Instructions,
Calendar, Client Proofing, and PDFs
To further enhance the running of your photography business
online, consider adding custom pages such as price lists,
booking instructions, an online interactive calendar, tear sheets
for customers to download and print. You could even create
video pages with your own tutorials or live shoots.
25
Pricing Page
Blog
Blog Benefits
8
Shopping Cart
Order Fulfillment
Order Approval
28
29
9
Marketing Tools
Your online store cannot be fully successful without a clever marketing strategy.
Turn visitors into loyal customers with
common marketing tools like discounts,
product packages, expiring galleries, email
and social media marketing.
Discounts
Who doesnt like a good deal? People respond
well to value-based offerings. A good e-commerce
solution will give you the ability to find a key to
every customer by using coupons. In addition
to the simplest discount, coupons can discount
by a specified percentage, have an expiration
date, or be limited to a certain product or a
gallery. A discount can also be given in a form
of a gift certificate, or a print credit bundled
together with a session fee.
Product Packages
Bundling products into packages is common
practice in the photography business. Make
sure your online store supports putting together
packages, pricing them, and giving your clients
simple drag-and-drop package configuration
and purchasing experience.
Expiring Galleries
Most orders are placed within a short period of
time after the photos have been taken; adding
some time pressure could be a strong driver of
sales. Photographers can use time pressure by
limiting the amount of time an online gallery
is available for ordering, following up with a
notification email to clients, possibly with
a special offer.
30
Email Marketing
31
10
Protecting Your Work
Secure Storage
If youre shooting or recording regularly, its likely youre
accumulating many gigabytes of photographs and videos a
month. You need a solid backup strategy to be able to restore
your files in case a disaster strikes. Your web hosting service can
be a part of this by allowing you to store your originals online
and allowing you to download them back to your computer
if needed.
33
11
Writing your Text
The text
your an
website
is equally as
Needon
to write
intro paragraph
important as the design. Your content
should communicate your branding message,
speak directly to your target audience, be
professional with proper grammar and
spelling and be well crafted with keywords
for search engine optimization. If writing
is not your strong suite, consider enlisting
the help of a friend or colleague with strong
writing skills or hiring a professional writer.
Professional and
To the Point
34
Mobile Devices
Proofreading Checklist
12
Using Video
VideoNeed
is particularly
forparagraph
photographers,
to write useful
an intro
because their clients make purchases based
on emotion. Including video in your presentation enriches your clients experience and
engages them more than still images alone.
There are many ways for photographers to
use this medium to their advantage.
Educate
Educate your clients by showing them what
to expect when working with a photographer.
You can introduce common poses, offer tips on
lighting, tell about key moments in a wedding,
and even provide style tips. Teach clients how
the ordering process works, explain concepts
of cropping and paper selection, even album
design workflow.
36
Video Tips
37
13
Search Engine Optimization
38
39
Using Keywords
Keywords are just one of the parameters used
by search engines to determine the relevance
of the page to a search query. There are specific
recommendations on how to optimize the
placement of keywords.
Keywords Placement
40
41
Growing Popularity
By analyzing links between pages and how visitors follow these links, search
engines evaluate websites and rank their relevance and trustworthiness. When
a visitor clicks a link in search results, he or she votes for the page and search
engines record this vote for calculating page rankings.
Search engines also use the following factors to measure the rank of a website.
Global Popularity
Topic-Specific Popularity
Link Neighborhood
Proactive
Proactively seek for opportunities to generate
links to your site by emailing articles or news
releases to bloggers, submitting your site to
online directories, or paying for placement in
these directories.
Many websites offer visitors opportunities to
create links through guestbook signings, forum
signatures, blog comments, or user profiles.
Ask your clients to link to your site from Facebook,
a blog post, forums post, or an article and
reward them for doing so.
Create valuable content that your clients will
be compelled to distribute virally. Share funny
stories from your photo engagements, add
videos, review a product in your blog, help
beginning photographers with advice.
Paid
There are websites and blogs that will publish links to your
website for compensation. Take a look at directories of wedding
photographers, bloggers with pay-per-post program, and simply
paid search engine advertising.
43
Forums.digitalpoint.com
Wordpot.com
Webmasterworld.com
Websitegrader.com
Searchengineland.com
Browsershots.com
44
Effectively
communicate your
unique brand
Be
search-engine friendly
Facilitate
Be
THANKS
Zenfolio extends a deep appreciation to these wonderful photographers for
letting us show their images as inspiration and examples throughout this book.
http://lightmasters.zenfolio.com
http://9mphoto.com
http://www.sevenonephoto.com
http://store.jesskoehler.com
http://store.liznessstudio.com/photos
http://www.kevinpipher.ca
http://pieceofmephotography.com
http://photos.ericshemtovphotography.com
http://mikewendelphotography.com
http://www.davidsboray.com
http://www.rebeccadanzenbaker.com
http://catchlightonline.com
http://www.photosbyjulio.com
http://www.duncangrove.com
http://www.schochphoto.com
http://images.markarcegaphotography.com
http://www.pasqualis.com
http://kvincentphotography.ca
http://tinyglimpsephotography.com
http://www.ellishumphres.com
http://www.toddphilip.com
http://www.naturaphoto.com
http://www.brosepix.com
http://www.projectninefive.com
http://www.adogslifephoto.com
http://www.cwdalyphotography.com
http://fbiv.zenfolio.com
http://aprilelizabeth.net
http://eyeshuttertothink.com
http://danielludwigphotography.zenfolio.com
http://www.dhostphotography.com
http://www.squeakdogphoto.com
http://sabrinaeutonphotography.com
http://englishelectric.zenfolio.com
http://www.mcanphotography.com
http://robinchun.zenfolio.com
http://oscardean.com
http://www.karenengel.com
http://spotnphoto.com
http://www.theresahudson.com
http://www.rkphoto.org
http://natureslens.zenfolio.com
http://www.wirralpix.com
http://verlaat-fotografie.nl
http://www.martins-photography.com
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