Your website is your catalogue for the entire world. While many businesses have chosen to stick to social media to promote their services, they could be doing so much more with their own website.
This series will show how easy it is to create your own website tailored to your business, whether you’re a hairdresser, a restaurant, a consulting firm, a photographer, or anything. With our recommendations, you can have your own website up and running quickly, easily, and ready to get customers in.
Today, we’re focusing on photographers. Whether it’s for weddings, events, or selling prints of your work, a great website can show off the wonderful work you do.
Getting Started
Before you start to build your website, think about what you want to put on it. Do you want to let your customers download their photos from the site? Do you want them to contact you by phone, email, or contact form? Are you selling prints online as well as booking for events?
Your website can be all of these things, and once you know exactly how you want your website to work, it’s easy to set it up and get it running.
Because this is for a single site, we recommend buying a good basic package, either our Essential hosting package or our Basic Managed WordPress package. Both of which will give you the space and performance you need without costing too much. If you choose Essential, you’ll need to install WordPress on your package, and if you choose Basic, WordPress will be installed automatically.
Making Your Site Look Good
Your photos are going to be the main selling point on your website, but what’s a good photo without an equally beautiful frame? These tailor-made themes will help display your art while also making it easy for your clients to navigate your site.
WEN Travel Photography
Perfect for anyone who wants to show off big and striking images, WEN Travel Photography is a child theme of WEN Travel, giving you the bright and bold displays of a travel blog with the call-to-actions and easy theming of a photographer’s site. Responsive across browsers, integrating with WooCommerce, and built for ease, WEN Travel Photography is available for free, with more features and support available if you purchase the Pro version, which is $59 for one year.
Bold Photography
As its name suggests, Bold Photography is just that — a bold and striking WordPress theme that’ll show off your photos in an elegant minimalist layout. Responsive and easy to use, the free version gives you a few options, but the Pro version, which is $59 for one year, gives you more colour schemes, more layout options, and WooCommerce integration.
Elemento Photography
If you want a theme that shows off your work right off the bat, Elemento Photography is a great choice, focusing on large images and really making your photos shine. Responsive and built in a Parallax template, your site will be up and running in no time with this free theme.
Showing Off Your Work
Social media is a great way to show off your photography, but there’s always something to be said about large beautiful photos on your website. Here are some plugins that will create great galleries.
Envira Gallery
Easy to set up and use, Envira not only gives you a lovely gallery on your website, but includes social media buttons, video embeds, and watermarking, as well as search engine optimisation for even better results. The basic version is only $26 for the year and gives you a convenient gallery at a low price.
Album
If you have multiple galleries but want to have them in one convenient block on your home page, Album is a free plugin that gives you an elegant solution that loads quickly and is easy to work with. The free version comes with four different styles, but for $24.99 a year, you can upgrade to the Pro version, which has eight more styles as well as a custom tag filter, making it easy to add variety to your album.
WordPress Carousel Pro
This plugin not only gives you great-looking gallery carousels, but you can also create text block carousels as well — great for special offers, blog posts, latest testimonials, and more. It’s easy to customise, including how fast the carousel rotates, what’s shown, and how it looks. It’s $39 per year for one site or $139 for a lifetime purchase.
Getting In Touch
If you’re looking to book weddings, engagements, baby pictures, or other events, your clients will need a way to get in touch with you. While you can put your phone number and email address up on the site, a good contact form makes it even easier for potential clients to become regulars.
Forminator
With Forminator, you can create contact forms, calculators, add Stripe to your site for easy payment processing, and even more. The free version gives you the ability to create forms, whereas the paid version adds in payment processing and more features, and starts at $7.50 a month.
Contact Form 7
Built for simplicity, Contact Form 7 is a free form builder that’ll give you an easy-to-use contact form in a matter of minutes. Plus, its basic form doesn’t write any user data to the database, use cookies, or send data to any servers. To use it, you’ll need to be willing to work with code, but only a bit, and there’s a detailed FAQ to help you.
WPForms
WPForms is a drag-and-drop form builder with a huge range of features built in. Create contact forms, payment forms, surveys, booking forms, and more with this powerhouse of a plugin. The Basic version is $79 for a year, and includes all the form templates and unlimited messages. You can then upgrade as needed for more features, such as newsletter integration, multiple websites, and more.
Releasing Images To Customers
Once you’ve taken the photos, you need to get them to your clients. If you’ve thought about releasing them digitally or having prints available to purchase on your site, you’ll need a plugin that can make it easy for you to sell and release your work to your clients.
Picu
With Picu, you can create galleries quickly and easily in your WordPress admin area, and then send your clients the link so they can review them and pick the best ones for printing. And it keeps your clients’ photos separate from your standard WordPress Media library, meaning there won’t be any accidental public releases. You can also purchase the Pro version for $149 a year, which lets you customise your galleries to fit your branding, mark and comment on photos, add watermarking, and more.
WooCommerce Photography
An add-on for WooCommerce, WooCommerce Photography makes selling your photos online an absolute breeze. Mass upload images quickly and easily, and then make it easy for your customers to purchase individual photos or bulk purchases. It’s $79 a year for this add-on, and you’ll need WooCommerce plus the payment processor of your choice.
Sunshine Photo Cart
Build galleries, set passwords, sell individual photos, watermark images, show proofs, and a lot more with this all-in-one plugin. Giving you a range of options for your photography business, Sunshine Photo Cart has plenty of features to make your website shine. The Basic version is $99 a year, and gives you display options, a price list, and a minimum order level, with higher tiers providing even more features and options.
So there are some options for your website. No matter how you take photos or where, having a well-built website is a fantastic way to gain new customers, show off your art, and get your name out there.
If you ever have any questions about how a website can help your business, get in touch with us! We’re happy to help!.
