It’s time to clean up your photography website! Don’t give up until you’ve finally finished the new piece of work you intend to shoot. There are a few things you can do with your website to refresh it without taking a new photo first.
If you are a photographer, I assume you have a website. But if not, read this article and go buy a domain as soon as possible. Start collating your best images and get portfolio website templates from providers like Squarespace or Wix. A quick word about domains: get firstnamelastname.com if possible unless you’re using a different brand name for your business.
Design and layout changes
I use Squarespace because I find it easy to update and change the layout whenever I feel the need to refresh. I’m happy with the template chosen, but I recently added an icon and changed the font and color. I also use Canva to design things like PDF portfolios to send to clients, so I want to make sure my fonts and color scheme match. Another thing I’ve updated is the little browser icon you get in the search results. It’s a nice touch and will make my site stand out from the competition.
I hear people love to browse, which might explain why vertical feeds are so popular with photography sites. I’ve been using this layout for the past few years and I’m currently experimenting with how many images I should put side by side horizontally.
Whichever layout you use, be sure to test how it looks on mobile devices. A large percentage of my visitors come from mobile phones, so how the landing page looks is very important.
Think about colors that suit your genre of photography and experiment with them with a draft. Most photographers use neutral background colors and let their images speak for themselves. Using color can be one way to stand out, but make sure you stand out in a good way. The use of colors and the way they make people feel is highly personal, so anything too out of the ordinary can make people feel uncomfortable. The same applies to fonts; Certain fonts can make your website look premium and others are cheap. Maybe you should avoid Comic Sans and Papyrus?
Organize your website content and titles
How many categories do you have? Chances are too many. I talked about photography genres in my previous post Thisand you can use this idea to create website portfolios based on different aspects of your photography. Just remember: Creating more is easy, but editing is much harder.
Some photographers may profit from selling their services instead of focusing on image galleries, especially if they serve the public or very small businesses. In this type of website, the site title will say less about the different types of image galleries and more about the service and process for the client. I’ve browsed through a lot of photographers’ websites and most seem to be a mix of gallery and catering styles.
Image selection
Go through your selection of images and decide what can be removed, added or edited and brought back. Usually, the hard part is editing down instead of editing up, so you have to be a little rough here. After you know which images are kept, it’s time to look at their order. Effective strategies are sorting by color or darkness: going from light to dark, or grouping all yellows and then all blues together. The most important thing is to show the best work first.
It can be difficult to make a complete decision about the choice of images. Ask friends in your industry for a look. Another, possibly more important, option is to get paid portfolio advice.
Edit existing images
Do you have an older job that seems outdated but still showcases your skills well? You can fix them with some tweaks. I used to take a lot of square photos, and now, cropping portraits is much more common. So an easy fix is to crop and re-crop the old-feeling images according to their aspect ratio. Trends change in composition and color, so going back to editing software can make the image more relevant again. Some images are too out of place and in this case you should remove them as they will do you more harm than good.
Improve your SEO
I admit that I used to upload screenshots to my website without naming my images. It’s a shame for me and it’s no surprise that I don’t show up in the search results. You have to name your images with keywords in mind. It is possible that you will need to re-upload all your images with the new image names, as I did.
I’m not an SEO (search engine optimization) expert, but you can update your site’s SEO title and longer SEO description. Please note that this is not an instant process and it will take some time for Google to update how you appear in search results.
Here’s a secret you might not have realized: a lot of photographers have a blog on their website, but it’s not called a blog. A blog is simply a section on your website where you publish posts with text and images. Alternative names for blogs could be “News”, “Case Study” or “Recent Work”. Whichever approach you choose, blogging is a great way to add keywords to your site for SEO purposes.
You should aim to add text to several places on your website. I used to love having a traditional gallery site, and I still like it basically. I have added text to several pages, including the “About Me” page and landing pages and blog posts. Make sure your text has a clickable action prompt, such as “Contact Me” or “View Testimonial”. Adding text to your website not only helps your audience find you, but it also helps them understand you better.
Here is the checklist for a refreshed portfolio website:
