What’s the purpose of your website?
If you said, “selling your photography”, think again.
While we ultimately hope people will buy from us and become clients, it’s not the first thing people do when they come to your site. In order to sell, you have to do a few extra things first.
1.Share
How are you contributing value to the community around you? When people head online, it’s to do research and find information. The more value a site contains, the more it will attract people in and give them a reason to find out more about you. Don’t just share information about you and your studio, share information about the service you provide.
As wedding photographers, one of the most popular pages on our site was a sunset timetable. It gave times throughout the year in different major cities for when the sun would set. Invaluable for a newly engaged couple thinking of planning an outdoor wedding.
2. Show
Showcase what you do, and make it say WOW to your prospects and customers. Unfortunately, most of the photography-specialized website design companies out there try and sell you on a Flash website with a simple gallery page where you can upload 10 of your greatest shots. Sorry, that doesn’t cut it.
Even during the late 90’s at the height of dial-up modems, we had over 20,000 images online. We put hundreds of images up for each wedding we shot. Our prospects loved it. And our clients loved it more. They were almost as excited at seeing their images on our website as they were about their final albums.
3. Sell
Okay, after you’ve pulled them in by WOWing them with content, showcasing your work in a big way, now its finally time to sell them.
If you do the first two steps correctly, they won’t be as concerned with pricing. They will only worry whether you are available.