← Book More Photography Clients Podcast | Photography Business, Photography Leads, Marketing
Book More Photography Clients Podcast | Photography Business, Photography Leads, Marketing
Struggling With Your Photography Website? 6 Things To Refresh
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Brooke Jefferson
So I want y'all to stop being generic and get specific. Why do you want people on your email list? Why should they even give you their first name and their email address? What are you going to give them back? Welcome to the Book More Clients Photography Podcast. You can stop spending hours on Google and YouTube because you just found your number one resource for growing a profitable and sustainable photography business. Hi, I'm Brooke Jefferson. I'm a believer wife, mama to two and Oklahoma family photographer. I left the classroom in 2018 to pursue my photography career full time. Now I'm here to help you do the same. In this podcast we're covering the most asked about topics including pricing, marketing, client experience and all things systems and workflows. You won't find any fluff or BS here. Just tried and true strategy. Are you ready? Grab your kids some snacks and charge those camera batteries. It's time to jump in. Does your website need a rehaul? Today we are going to cover six things to refresh on your website to help you attract more leads and convert them into bookings. What's the point of a pretty website if it's not actually converting clients? You'll want to take notes, so grab something to write with and let's dive in. Did you know I have an email exclusively for photographers just like you? Every week I send out an email that is jam packed with strategy and resources for you to build your profitable photography business. Join the list by going to brookejefferson.comInsider One of my former coaching clients came to me for a website audit. This is where I do a complete review of their photography website and I make suggestions on on how to make it better, including some of the ways that I will actually be sharing in today's episode. My first impression of her website was that it didn't represent the professionalism that I knew this photographer had. It looked like it was pieced together by a second grader. And I know that sounds harsh and I've said this before. I say this to a lot of my photography coaching clients when we're looking at their website because we are not website pros. Most of us are our photographers like that's our specialty making websites and website design and SEO. That is not. And so this makes sense. The problem with having her website look this way is that it was not going to convert her dream clients to her website. So I knew that her website was probably doing more harm than it was good. I finished the website audit and she got to work within just a few weeks of overhauling her Website, she booked a dream client from it. Keep in mind she had never booked a client from her website before. This dream client found her through SEO and then was convinced through her website. So when I tell you that a website matters, what it looks like, how it's set up, the strategy behind it, and the SEO attached to it, when I tell you that it matters, it's because it does. So let's go over the six things that you can refresh on your website to start booking your dream clients. Number one, this one's the most obvious one, but that is to update the images on your website. This is something that I would recommend you doing at minimum once a year. But I really would love you guys to get into the habit of doing this twice a year. So you're going to update those images, swap them out with the images that you just got done, taking your best sessions, the sessions that you were like, man, I would love to get five more clients just like this. Go and pull some of those images and replace the older images on your website. You always want to keep this fresh and up to date, not just for you, but for your client as well. I also want to give you another tip here that goes with these images. Make sure that they are web size. Don't put your high resolution size on there because what's going to happen is your website is going to have a really slow loading time. And people, when they come to your website, they're either going to see missing things or it's going to take forever to load and they're not going to get to see any of your website website. So make sure that you guys are formatting your images and you are putting them on your website in web size. Number two. This is called above the fold design. And this is important because this acts as someone's first impression of you. So let me explain. Above the fold. So when you type in someone's website, you can practice with mine if you want. Brookejefferson.com Click enter. And then whatever you see before you start scrolling on your desktop computer, that is called above the fold. This could be slideshow form. This could be just like one static image. This could be a couple of different images. That looks like a little collage. Whatever you want to go with is fine, but you need to have some type of a headline. So for you, maybe it says something like personality filled Senior photography. And then it has a smaller line underneath it that says located in Atlanta, Georgia or serving Atlanta, Georgia and surrounding areas. Okay, so what you did there was you told your Website visitor, what you do, that's your niche and you told them where you are located. These are very two important things. Okay, this plays into the SEO that we're going to talk about next year. Above, the full design needs to act as a first impression. So almost picture it as like the back of your business card. This is all they get to see. You want to convince them to scroll your website and this is how you do it. What I don't want to see is I don't want to type in your website URL and then see like a menu and some random pop ups and like everything just looks again pieced together like it was built by a second grader. I don't want to see that. I want to see a beautiful first impressions that when I start scrolling your website, I know that I'm in the right place. All right, number three is SEO and your page titles. So SEO is search engine optimization. It's a really fancy way of saying, hey, you need to put keywords on your website that your ideal client is searching for. So when someone goes to Google or they go to Pinterest or they go to Facebook or they go anywhere, what are they typing in? What phrases are they using to find you? So an example of this is are they typing in family photographer or are they typing in family pictures? And then to go deeper, are they typing in Dallas family photographer or Dallas family pictures or family pictures in Dallas, Texas? Do you see what I'm saying? So there's a lot of different ways and phrases and things that people are saying and you need to incorporate those into your website. So each page will have a piece of SEO text on it and then also your page titles. So I'm going to try to walk you through this. I know this is an audio podcast, but if you will just follow my voice and do this along with me, if you can, then you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Or you can always come back and listen to it twice if you want to. But when you are on your website, so type in your website on your computer, press enter. I want you to roll your mouse over the tab, over the tab that your website is on and you will see this little box pop up and it will tell you what that tab title says. Right? So what you don't want it to say is you don't want it to say home page or about page or just your photography name or even if you bought a template, sometimes it says the template name on it. You don't want it to say any of these things, you want your page title text to have that SEO. So on the back end of your website, when you're working on it and you're editing that website, you there's a menu on there and that is what you're calling it artistically, right? Like that is the design page names. You don't mess with those. Those should say home, about investment, contact, whatever. Those are fine. But in you should have SEO settings somewhere on your website to where it'll say like what do you want the actual SEO page title to? That is where you're going to go update that and you are going to put in some SEO text. So I'm going to give you an example. I am in real time typing in my website and going to my photography page and I'm going to read you what it says in the page title. So mine says Altus Oklahoma Family photography. And then it has a divider line and then it says Brooke Janae Photography. Okay, so that's an example of what it should say because I know that people are typing in family photography in Altus, Oklahoma. Well, now that's going to pull up my page. Same thing with Altus, Oklahoma family photographer. That's also going to pull up my page. So that is an example of what this should look like. And this is crucial. This is how people find you. So make sure you really work on your page titles. And I teach this inside of my blueprint program which is coming brand new in January, completely done. It's like a brand new program. So get excited. Okay, number four, I want you to really work on and update the flow of your website. So does it make sense if I was to go look at your homepage right now and I was to scroll from top to bottom, does everything look clean, clear and concise? And does it make sense in the order that you're presenting it? Or do you feel like your homepage is a hot mess? And then the even the buttons on your page, when people click on them, do you feel like it just kind of like ping pongs them around your website? It needs to make sense. You need to know at what point you want your ideal client to be moving on to the next page. What is that next? Where do you want them to go after they read about your packages? What's the logical next step? Is that immediately going to your contact page and you know, giving you an inquiry? What is that? So you need to really look at do all of the pages in my website, do they connect to one another? Does it help them go from one step to the other. Think back to your client journey and mimic this on your website. So make sure it makes sense. Number five is testimonials. This is a good one. Okay, you have to have testimonials or reviews, whatever you want to call them. You need to have that third party social proof of people that have worked with you. Your testimonials and your reviews are really what will help sell your photography even more. This is very, very important. You want to make sure that you are showcasing these testimonials by using a short little sentence or two. We're not looking for novels. You do not need paragraphs. If your testimonials take somebody more than about 15 seconds to read, it's too long. So you can time yourself there. You just want to pull out the really important things and then you want to include a picture from their session and you want to include some kind of a name. Now you don't have to include the first and last name. One of my favorite things to do is to just say the Smith family, right? Or Smith family or the Smiths. So different ways that you can say that. You can have longer testimonials on your website if you have one line highlighted above and then you put the rest of what they said in a paragraph. So that way if people want to skim, they're going to read that bigger text first rather than the entire paragraph. So I am going to read you one of mine because I think it's going to help put this into perspective. Okay, so it says, Brooke has photographed each milestone for our family and the way she captures us expression explains why. So that's the big text. Okay? And then underneath it there is a paragraph and it says, after years of sessions with her, I'm still in awe when we receive our photos, she makes it quick, stress free, and always manages to get great shots with rowdy kids or uncooperative toddlers. At our first session, she was a stranger and now she is a lifelong friend that our family cherishes. We highly recommend her to everyone we know. So that is the whole review and testimonial right there. So that's a perfect example of what you could do. I also could have left that paragraph off and I could have just put the big text, the brook has photographed each milestone for our family and the way she captures us explains why. So I could have pulled that as well. I also. So let me give you one other tip here because this is going to help you guys really narrow down your testimonials. If I was reading this entire thing. The one thing that I would probably pull out from this one, if I wanted to write it differently is I would say Brooke makes it quick, stress free and always manages to get great shots with rowdy kids or uncooperative toddlers. Why? Because I know that my ideal client has a family and she most likely has young kids. And what that means for her is that she needs to know that she's going to A, feel comfortable with a photographer like this, and B, she needs to know that she's going to get great pictures because she's probably so stressed out wondering if, because she has toddlers and a baby, if it's even worth the money. Do you know what I'm saying? So use your testimonials to address objections. So I want to see testimonials on every single page of your website. Yes, I did say that my favorite way to display testimonials is by having them in like a little slideshow form. So I put about three to five different testimonials where people can click the arrow and they can go through each one one by one. And then I just like to take that same section and put it on every single page of my website. You can use the same five testimonials on every single page of your website. Or if you have a lot to choose from, maybe you do three testimonials on every page, but you change them for every single page on your website. I think that's a great idea there. So make sure that your testimonials are actually speaking to your ability, that they are helping address objections and that they look professional and that people are going to actually read it. All right, we are down to the sixth and final thing for you to refresh on your website. And this one is your email opt in forms. Let's just talk about this for a second. Okay. If you are using a website template or you are using some kind of a generic email opt in where if I'm on your website and this has happened to over 20 photography websites, I was going through this and doing some research and here's exactly what I saw. I'm on a photographer's website, I'm studying their homepage. I'm on it for maybe 10 to 20 seconds and then as I start to scroll down, I am hit with a popup that says, join my email list. Be an insider. But it's like, that's it. That's all it says. It's very generic and it like, there's no reason that I want to be on it? Do you know what I'm saying? Like, even if I was a potential client for you, you're not giving me any reason that I would even want to be on your email list because it's so generic. So I want y'all to stop being generic and get specific. Why do you want people on your email list? Why should they even give you their first name and their email address? What are you going to give them back? So my suggestion, if you want people to join your email list is to one, either do it in exchange for them to download your investment guide. That's a great way to do it. This is a good way to do it if you want to see who your leads are, and I have done this now for a couple of years and it works fantastic. However, I do watch my email list and so I'm just going to highly encourage you, please do not. If you are a photographer, please do not go download my investment guide because you are not an ideal client for me in my photography business because you most likely don't even live in Oklahoma. Okay? Now if you do, you can, but if you don't, I'm just going to ask you kindly not to, because I do track my leads. So I do go in there and if I see that a photographer has joined, I do clean my list because it's really important for me to separate my photography clients from my photographer clients. So I hope that makes sense. Okay, so all you have to do is let's say that you have a little email opt in area or they're on your investment guide page where you're just kind of talking about an overview of what you offer. Maybe you don't show pricing, but you kind of explain like, hey, I offer three packages. Here's kind of an idea of what you're going to get inside. If you want all of the details, then go ahead and you can download that by entering your name and email below. And then you can have a cute little flow desk email opt in that you can add right there to your website. And then all they have to do is put their name and their email and then click download or View or I'm in or whatever, you know what I'm saying? Then they can open it. And then that way as soon as they enter their name, you can go ahead and redirect them to your investment guide or to a private website page with your prices, just whatever you're wanting to direct them to. And then that way you can see when you're getting leads so that's my first. That's like the first option. I would say if you want to be more strategic with your email, opt in. If you don't want to do that and you would rather just make it more fun or just make it more appealing. You could also ask people to get on your email list and you could do this by making something like a lead magnet. So you could create something that goes in line with your process or something that's going to help with the decision making process and you could give that in exchange. So if you're a newborn photographer, maybe you could give, you know, five tips to ensure your newborn sleeps at her newborn session or something like that. And they can download the guide because they're obviously showing interest, they want to hear what you have to say and then they become a lead for you and so you could follow up with them and you could say like, hey, are you looking for newborn photography? Thank you so much for downloading my guide. And then that's going to be another way that you can start getting people on your email list. So my biggest point here though is get more specific. I want to see your personality and your brand on these email often stop using the generic ones. If you have a pop up that pops up the first 30 seconds somebody is on your website, go turn that off and go put it at the bottom of your homepage. Move these things around pop ups. Most of you, if you think about it, you probably don't do anything other than try to hurry up and close out of pop ups when you're on a website, right? So if you're not, if you're not engaging with a pop up, neither are your ideal clients. Oh, okay, let's recap six things to refresh on your website. This is your perfect opportunity to do it as you are experiencing a little bit of a slower season. Again, doesn't mean you're not having any bookings, you don't that you don't have to settle for that. It just means things naturally kind of slow down a little bit in these winter months. So six things. One, go update your images on your website to make sure that you're above the fold. Make sure that looks really, really good and you're happy with that being your first impression to your potential client. Number three, go implement SEO and change your page titles. Number four, make sure your website pages flow, your website needs to flow. Number five, update those testimonials and reviews and make sure you are following the format that I told you. And number six, go refresh your email, opt ins and don't make them boring and generic. All right. If you're clueless about what needs to change on your website, come grab a strategy coaching call with me. We will dive through all of this. I will get on your website. You will get real time feedback. We can go through everything. We can talk about the SEO strategy. We can talk about the flow. I can help you redo some of that copy as well. That way you have a website that is actually converting those clients and you are getting two steps closer to a fully booked photography calendar. All right, I will see you next Thursday for a new episode.