Website Critique: 4 Changes You Can Make To Your Photography Homepage Today

Feb 5

We launched a new video series called “Small Business Website Critiques” where our CEO & Creative Director, Promise Tangeman, will do a live video giving feedback and suggestions to improve for a small business owner who has submitted their website for critique.

In this video, we are looking at the website of Abby Kennan, a San Antonio-based family and newborn photographer with amazing images! She’s doing two great things right off the bat: she tells us where she’s located and what she does, and she’s niched down to specialize in a specific type of photography! (PS - We’ve got a great resource on how to find your own niche here.)

Watch the video below to hear Promise’s live-action feedback, and keep reading our post below the video player to see our biggest takeaways that you can apply to your own blog.

4 Quick & Strategic Changes You Can Make To Your Photography Homepage Today

1. Get rid of your landing or welcome page.

Landing pages were in vogue for websites as a cool and unique way to welcome your website visitors to your site and give a brief snapshot of your business. They were viewed as a “front door” to your website a couple of years ago, but have since actually become a hindrance to your website viewers - both for the user experience and for SEO.

From a user experience perspective, a landing or welcome page requires the visitor to make an extra click. Believe it or not, asking someone to click a button now on the web is actually a big ask. The page is simply creating a barrier, rather than a unique welcome.

Additionally, from an SEO (search engine optimization) perspective, it also gives Google and other search engines less to work with and know about your brand! When your homepage is your true homepage, Google can see your main navigation, read your brand copywriting on the page and in the footer, and can utilize all that to index your site for search-ability. With a Cover Page as your homepage, Google is seeing that the most important page on your site only has a few items on it: your brand name and maybe a few brand details.

So ultimately, to up the SEO juice on your site and to enhance the user experience, we’d cut the welcome page completely!

2. Cut out the fluff and extra words in your copywriting.

We love the two strong statements Abby uses in her copywriting near the top of her homepage, but in the middle of them, she has some fluff in her copywriting that “welcomes” the viewer to the website. However, we scanned right past it, and because the stronger statement was at the end of her paragraph, we likely would have missed what made her business unique and different.

We’ve got a ton of tips on how we’d cut out clutter from your homepage with our blog post here.

PRO TIP: If there’s something you really don’t want your viewers to miss, use that sentence as a header or as the first sentence in a paragraph.

3. Be strategic about the order in which you showcase your calls to action on your homepage.

Think about what your clients or customers would “be ready for” while they are perusing or scrolling your site, as Promise says in the video. For example, when we’re looking for a photographer, we want to first see strong examples of your work before we get into the nitty gritty of your About story or your FAQs.

Think about the customer journey from the moment they land on your website to the point that they click ‘submit’ on that contact page. What order do you want them to read or go in while they go from Point A to Point B? Map that out on your homepage and give them the information in the order you want them to receive it in.

For this site, we recommended showcasing galleries first, then about, then pricing information, then FAQs and a link to the contact page.

4. Beef up or add an incentive to your email opt-in or newsletter sign up.

Now that so many small businesses are leveraging email marketing, people are less likely to give up their email address in exchange for “news and updates.” Adding some sort of value or incentive for when someone signs up for your mailing list increases the likelihood that they’ll sign up!

An email opt-in could be a free PDF, resources, checklist, giant list, exclusive video, giveaway, or even a free product. More more ideas on how to beef up your email opt-in, check out our 5 Ways To Add Value To Your Email Opt-In.

The Wrap Up

Abby Kennan has BEAUTIFUL images and a great start to her website, but these 4 quick and strategic changes to her photography homepage can help her book more clients faster, and help communicate with her ideal client in a more clear and concise way. Congrats, Abby! Keep up the great work!