Best Practices For Creating A Photography Website
Creating a professional website to showcase your photography skills is the stepping stone to a rewarding career as a photographer.
The best part? You don’t need to invest a fortune in website designers.
With DIY website builders, you can create your own website all by yourself.
Yes, choosing the right template and uploading your photographs is a breeze nowadays.
However, there are certain best practices that you must follow to build a photography website that is professional and worthy. These are:
Picking the right web hosting platform
When selecting a web hosting platform, you should go for a company that offers excellent performance and high security. It should also have a working customer service. To be on the safe side, you’d be wise to go for the most popular self-hosted web platform, WordPress. It is not only customizable but also supports SEO. Other companies also offer web hosting, portfolio templates, and various other tools in one package.
Go through all the options, understand their features, and find out which one would work according to your preference. If you choose WordPress, you will get access to thousands of predefined templates that are convenient and attractive. Once you choose the one you like, you will customize the site according to your preference.
It’s important to note that you can create WordPress websites without having to write a single line of code by using WordPress website builders. Platforms such as Elementor enable you to create photography websites that include an online store section in mere minutes.
Using an appropriate template
Your site should convey essential information regarding your photography, like the style and niche you specialize in. Drag and drop templates are great, but they do have their limitations. They cannot be customized as well.
You can use mosaic-style templates, which is a great option for showcasing your photographs. As soon as your clients look through your site, they will instantly understand your style of photography. However, with the template, you will not organize the images exactly in the way you want on the front page. The template selects random images, which is a bit of a letdown.
You can also go for the scroll style template, which will let your visitors see a large and attractive rendition of your photographs.
You can test how the images will be displayed on the screen and change them before publishing the page. You can do several trials and errors before actually launching it.
Writing blogs
Photographers might think that they are visual artists and thus writing long posts will do them no good.
This is definitely not the case. Having a blog on your photography website can come with several benefits. It would increase your SEO and improve your website ranking. You can update your content regularly and get favors from Google in terms of being at the top. Blogging is one of the most powerful marketing tools, and it will help you get connected with the audience.
Choosing a focused theme
A photographer’s website is considered to be his or her primary selling tool. It helps with their brand identity and is their de-facto as their online portfolio. Your clients will have the first impression of your work through your website.
A poorly designed site would raise questions on your work quality and professionalism. Choosing a focused theme for your site can help you in this situation.
Limiting the display
You might be excited to show all of your photos and galleries to your website visitors, but fight the temptation to go overboard. Always limit the number of images and galleries you display on a web page, so you don’t overwhelm your visitors. When you have too many galleries or images, it will dilute your message. So, demonstrate what you are good at using limited items for display.
You might choose to present a specific genre of photos (e.g. weddings) and stick to that to maintain a cohesive look for your targeted clients. Creating galleries based on individual niches works best in this respect.
Showcase only your best work
Within the themes and galleries of your website, you should always showcase your best work. Initially, it might be difficult to determine it, but you would need to focus on that. You would not have to update the galleries regularly but ensure that they contain a concise collection of images that shows your talent. It will tell your clients about the type of work you are willing to do, and it will also set their expectations right. If you are not sure which your best works are, consult a professional in your network. You can also pay for a portfolio consultation service.
