Time to Clean Up Your Website?

Your website is the center of your digital eco-system,
like a brick and mortar location, the experience matters once a customer enters,
just as much as the perception they have of you before they walk through the door.
Leland Dieno

by Skip Cohen

The whole idea behind this Friday series of cleanup suggestions is to give you things to think about and consider working on to build a stronger business.

Recently I was on a well-respected photographer's website. It was slow to load, and there was no logic in the content he was sharing. Plus, I had to mine for some of the most important information.
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• Load Times and Navigation: To start, check the various sections of your website several times a week just to make sure things are loading properly. Also, check them on at least one other browser. Here's how they all stack up against each o​ther for 2023 based on information from Oberlo.com. Click the chart to check out the complete article.​

• Your First Tab: While there's a variety of opinions out there regarding your tabs, my opinion is that your galleries should be first. Your images are the hook to get your clients interested in finding out more about you. But remember, mediocre images that anybody's Uncle Harry could capture won't help you land more clients!
• Your Other Tabs: Your next tabs should be your "About" page, followed by support features you might want to share, and finishing with your contact info. Support features are things you want to share to be helpful - for example, a link to your blog or a family portrait artist might share ideas on what to wear. Stay away from policies like refunds - some of you have policies on your websites that would scare an IRS auditor. They belong in the contract/agreement discussion, not the first visit to your site.
• Mixing Specialties: "I don't know what I want to be when I grow up!" If you have several different specialties you're working to develop, pay attention to the target audience for each. If they're different, you might be in trouble. For example, if you're a wedding photographer and also love doing tabletop commercial work - the targets are two completely different audiences. An account exec at an ad agency looking for somebody to do product photography will be completely turned off if hitting wedding images before product work.
• Separate Websites or Split Landing Pages: Suppose you're showing different specialties as part of your business, like commercial and wedding work. In that case, I suggest having another website or a landing page that allows the viewer to go in either direction.
• The "Old" Three Click Rule: This is an old rule, and while, for the most part, outdated, it's still worth thinking about. The rule was simply never put your audience in the position of repeatedly clicking to get to what's most important on your site. The point is that after three clicks, they're done and will lose interest.
• Your Contact Page: How easy is it to contact you? I already addressed this in a previous post, but there's no such thing as giving your target audience too much information. You don't have to list your home address if you don't have an office or studio, but provide a phone number, email address and if using a template email form, make sure you answer emails as quickly as possible.
• Vendor and Associate Links: I'm a big fan of reciprocal relationships. For example, a wedding photographer should have the link of a florist; in turn, the florist should have the link back to the photographer. This can be even more effective if you're actually doing a cross-promotion with a special discount or additional service when a client uses both companies.​

There are over 300 million Internet active households in the US. As of 2022, that was 92.0% of the population. And globally, Internet active households are over 5 billion! Your website is your most important piece of real estate, but you have to keep it fresh and make a visit to your site a great experience.

“Great web design without functionality is like a sports car with no engine.”
Paul Cookson