9 Steps To A Great Photography Website

To be remarkable in an industry where almost anyone can excel, you have to really put your cards straight and have a clear strategy. Like in every business, the way you present your work is one of the most important things, so having a great photography website is a must, this is your showroom. If you truly want to be seen as a serious, remarkable professional make sure your online business card, aka your website, states that.
Note: sharing your work, no matter how brilliant it is only on social media will not cut it. 

9 Steps To A Great Photography Website

To help, we’ve prepared a list of touch points about what makes a great photography website:

1.  Content is King!

No matter how polished and beautifully designed your website looks, double check if you’ve covered the basics. High resolution images, no broken links or malfunctioning buttons/menu items, and obviously no typos or poorly written content. Users will always come back to a website that looks and works well, thus double checking everything, maybe even having a friend test your site can save you loads of traffic and leads.

2.  Full Width or Full Screen Sliders

It is recommended to have a large viewing area where you can fully showcase your best and favorite images. Using a large slider on your homepage allows you to impress your site visitors right away and leave a memorable and lasting mark. For example, see how Miro and Chalk captivate and hold your attention from the very first second you open the website? That’s the wow effect you’re after when designing your website. Seduce your visitors and don’t let them leave your site.

3.  Curate Your Portfolio

No need to include 50 images in your top slider, or have 200 photo-galleries from the same shooting, from different angles.  Limit what you show. Display only your strongest, best shots - the type of work you want to do more in the next season. This will help you keep a clean, strong impression on your site visitors, as well as attract more of the type of clients you want to work with in the future.    

4.  Optimize Your Images

If your site is slow it can get really frustrating for the user, and chances are that they will leave your site seconds after landing on it. Heavy, unoptimized images are one of the main reasons for slow loading pages. To fix this, we recommend using various tools and software that help reduce image size, without harming the quality. For example -  JPEGmini for your jpeg files and Tinypng for your png files. If you prefer not to spend extra cash on tools, export all your photos from Photoshop via the “save for web” feature at a 80-70% quality. This will not only improve your website speed, but also save you loads of hard drive space in the long run. 

5.  Navigation and User Experience

Even if your website is more complex, has an intricate design and a lot of content and pages, you should still focus on simplicity and ease of navigation. Your site visitors do not have the time nor the will to explore on which page they can find your info, area of work, contact details or social media links. Keep it as user friendly and intuitive as possible.

6.  Strive for Simplicity

Do not use tons of colors, fonts, crazy design and never-ending pages. As standard, your website should incorporate no more than 3 colors and 2 types of fonts.

7.   Free vs. Paid Design

Of course, at the beginning of our journey the budgets are small or close to none, therefore many photographers and creatives start out with a free “cut-and-dried” template or platform for their website. However, once the business starts to grow and becomes more profitable, it is crucial to have a fine, presentable site to display your work and brand. There is only one like you in the market, right? Why would your website state the opposite?

8.   Be Consistent

Like with any other online platform, you have to be active and consistent on your site. Redesigning it will surely bring more attention and leads your way, but leaving it without updates and fresh work, forgetting to interact with your community will surely bring you back to where you’ve started. Followers follow you when they have what to follow :)

9.  Be Passionate

Keep it professional but fun. Show that you adore what you do, that this is what gets you up in the morning. People like and follow individuals that pour out their soul, are not afraid to be vulnerable and share the way they feel about things and the world, their peculiarities and secret hobbies. Show yourself though your work and through your website design.   


We hope this got you inspired and excited about your own website. For most of you, it’s still a few months till your busy season starts, so plenty of time to analyze your current “showroom” and work on some changes and improvements before the sleepless creative nights kick in again.  

Squaremuse Team