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Website And Portfolio Critiques

Lesson 29 from: Building Your Family Portrait Business

Tamara Lackey

Website And Portfolio Critiques

Lesson 29 from: Building Your Family Portrait Business

Tamara Lackey

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Lesson Info

29. Website And Portfolio Critiques

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

I LOVE Photography and I Want to Make Money

11:34
2

From Photographer to Business Owner

21:15
3

Building Your Business To Fit The Life You Want

07:01
4

Business Is Business

08:03
5

Creating a Simple Business Plan - What To Know And What To Skip

14:29
6

Branding And Identity

11:24
7

Significance Of Constantly Marketing

11:37
8

Social Media Marketing

08:05

Lesson Info

Website And Portfolio Critiques

So let's do some website review, shall we? Let's start here. This is so common, people see it a lot, and sometimes it's wonky. While we were looking through website and portfolio critiques with some of your websites that you guys shared, one of the sites I clicked through, I saw this. I actually saw the whole thing with the domain name provider, with a generic thing that came up and said no website exists here. This website's parked or whatever the case might be. Even thought that person had an existing website, and oddly, when we tried to navigate a different way to find it, we found it. This still popped up and it would pop up for a lot of people. Why? Maintaining your site, making sure that not only can people find you, but when they try a bunch of different ways to find you, they can still find you. I own the domain name tamaralackey.com, T-A-M-A-R-A, but a lot of people spell my name T-A-M-E-R-A or they'll go to Tamara Lackey Photography or they'll go to Tamara Lackey Photo or the...

y go to Tamara L-A-C-K-Y, instead of L-A-C-K-E-Y. I own all those domains. They all redirect to tamaralackey.com. If you are constantly going to a site that's not mine, but you're finding mine every time, it doesn't matter to me, 'cause I was who you were looking for. If you go to Google Analytics, which, by the way, if you all haven't done, I would suggest you do a little tutorial on Google Analytics 'cause it's very helpful to see who's linking back to you. If you go to Google Analytics, you'll see how they find you, what search terms are they using to find you, what other sites are linking back to you, and when it's what other sites are linking back to you, sometimes they're yours. If your name is Ed Sheeran and you have edsheeranmusic.com, and people are constantly going to edsheeran, my entry point for Google Analytics is gonna be seeing his name, edsheeranmusic.com, link back to edsheeran.com. That's the entry point. So I'll get to see how often people are finding my site by putting in the wrong names and then I can also use that to try to correct. Maybe I'll put a blog post out about how gosh, people always spell my name wrong. I try to remind them Tamara rhymes with camera, and it's all As, because it's always working with me. No, I don't do that. (audience laughs) But something, something like that. I may address it, 'cause I see such brand confusion out there. You'll see that on websites a lot of times. Someone will put their name up, something something photography, and their name is really complicated. It doesn't seem to spell like it's supposed to spell, and the actual link is like 55 characters. Let's look for a different name for you. On my show, my web series, reDefine Show, I just did an interview with Matt Kloskowski. Do you guys know Matt? He's a educator, really kind of drills down a lot on Lightroom, On1, other programs like that. He was saying about a few years ago, more than that now, his name is Matt Kloskowski. Everyone spells it wrong and transposes it. He's a really good friend of mine, and I still can't spell it. Sorry, Matt. So he bought the domain name Matt K. That's his website. To do that, he had to negotiate with the guy who owned it. At the time it was like, I think he said $800. He had to really think. He's like, "That's a lot of money to buy that, "but this is where I'm going with my career. "This is how many people I think I'm gonna lose "because they can't find me, "because it's hard to do every iteration of that last name. "I think it's a worthy investment and I'm gonna try." It really paid off for him and will continue to. So if you have a name that you'd love to have and it's not yours, don't just dismiss it because you'd have to buy it from somebody. Look at what that would be, from a negotiation perspective. Maybe it's worth it to you, especially for your longer-term plan where you want people to find you again and again, and you're gonna have a thriving website. That might be very worth it to you. Thinking about all the ways people can find you and maintaining your site. Again, I've talked about them a few times, but it's because it's been some helpful to me. We work with Imagely and they maintain our site. They make sure our WordPress is updated. They make sure that plugins are updated. The amount of times I get something that'd say you need to update your WordPress. I'm like, "What does that mean?" Then it would say, "Make sure your website's "entirely backed up before you click this." I'm like, "Is it? "I don't know. "Anybody else backed up our website?" I'm not the website expert, and I don't ever wanna be. I'm going to consciously not be the website expert. I'm gonna know enough that I need to know on the backend to update and make little changes. When it comes to bigger changes or bigger maintenance items or things that put my website at risk when I click, I'm not gonna be the one that does that. It's not my job, I'm not good at it, it's not my job. So make sure your site's maintained and if it's not you, find someone who can do it consistently, reliably, and hopefully affordably, over time, too, because you're gonna wanna do it a lot. Let's do website and portfolio critiques. Sarah Jane, where are you? We're talking about you. We're talking about you. I'm gonna click on your website, and I'm gonna go in fresh, first time. What do I see? Let me ask you a question, right away I went to this photo, which I think is Iceland, if I recognize it. It is. Okay, I've been there, exact spot. I think I have that photo, I love it. When you're here and you go to the website, does that slide option, is that random or is it going in a certain order when people first go in? I think that is the initial picture. The initial picture when you go in is the Iceland photo? Yeah, I think if you go in, every time it'll be that image first. I'm just gonna try it fresh. Which doesn't make sense. Yes. (laughs) Yes. Why? Why is that the first image? Probably because I didn't think about it and I don't even think it makes sense in the home gallery either. Right, good, good. I mean, it's a beautiful picture. It probably was a really cool moment. Yes. But you have to think about when people hit you for the first time, what do they see? Right away, the second they get to your website, bounce, bounce, bounce. I'm looking for a child and family photographer, but this person's a travel photographer, I must be on the wrong site. Yeah, absolutely. This slider's going through. Let's just look at it a second. One, two, three, four, five, six, okay. So you're thinking about how long that hangs. Yeah, and I think if you click, it pauses. Like on the-- I'm clicking. Yeah, and it'll stop. Like on the left or the right arrows. It should stay. Okay, it's staying. This is helpful, because I didn't know where to click. Okay. When I went to this I can see these sliders. Do you guys see where to click here? No, so that's really important. Is there way, because again, a lot of themes have this, where you can literally click a pause button that's recognizable to the average person? We all know what pause and play looks like. Yeah, so I guess this changing theme, on this theme it goes in the middle of the image, and it stays there. So I'm like No, forget that. No, you don't want that. So it's changing themes, and changing themes is relatively easy to do. Right away we're gonna take that first image off, I know that that's four of 12 images right here. Is that what that's telling me? Yes. That's a lot, that's a lot right when you go in. Let me caveat this. I'm giving advice from the prospective of what I have seen work really well for me and what I've seen work really well for a lot of people who I've taught. That doesn't mean this works for everybody, all the time, everywhere, and you won't hear something completely opposite by another photographer, who uses a system that works really well for them. From my perspective, 12 images is a lot to cycle through, they're gonna probably go away pretty briefly and I'm seeing a lot of different looks and feels here. What kind of consolidated style do you wanna represent? Because I see you photograph newborns, travel, kids, candid, very cute. You have these composites of family portraits, which I think, again, the images are adorable. We have black and white things. We've got, you know what I mean? There's weddings again. I have a snow shot. Do you know what I mean? Your style and your photographs are really lovely. What are you gonna show right away, and how do I want people to know who you are? Some of these are a little dark and misty and others are really bright and shiny and close up. I want a consistent theme. More consistent style? You can do whatever you want, but make sure when people come in they can recognize you right away. So that's it, let's go next. We've got a Home. Let me just make sure I'm not missing anything, I would, again, bring that down a little bit. We have here, kind of your keywords, your SEO, right? Identifiers, you have your Galleries, your Info and your Blog. Let's look at your Galleries. You start with Commercial. Yeah, that's tough. (laughs) Well think about it. This is why we do this, because that you guys and everybody watching have similar things that they're wrestling with. Are you, right away, showing people who you are, what you do, and what you want to be known for? Right, well, I think the majority of people who come to my website are for my family work, not my commercial. Right, so you wanna start with Families. Yes. Yep, and then it doesn't mean you can't show commercial work, but I wouldn't lead with that. Let's look at Families. We go right in and we have images, you get really good zest and fun and I like it. You've got it watermarked. Tell me why? In different sizes. It's different sized and spots, yeah. That's, laziness? I don't watermark anything now. This one's not watermarked at all. It's actually going into me making my website more current and taking off either the images with the watermark or changing them for the same image without the watermark. What's the C word you heard me say a lot? The C word? Consistency! (audience laughs) What were you guys thinking? God, people these days. Consistency, so I want that to look very, very consistent. I, wait, what just happened? I think you clicked Home. Did I? I don't know. Maybe I clicked on, yeah. What I don't want is, I don't know why you would need a, for my opinion, I don't know why you'd need a watermark on the gallery showing on your website. If the possibility of someone taking, like lifting, those images is your concern, anytime you put anything on the Internet, it's gonna happen, and you're gonna stress yourself out trying not to have that happen. Here, there's no watermark on anything, so you already have it out there. It's 'cause I went through my home gallery and made sure they were all more current images. This literally is procrastination and being like, "Okay, I need to go in and switch those out." My friend did my watermark. She's a graphic designer, she's great. But I don't like it on the images, anyways. So I find it really distracting. Also, what I'm noticing is I'm clicking the Option key and Command and Control to see if I can lift these and there's not an easy way to do that and that's great. Yeah, you can't right-click. You could only screenshot, I guess. So you have these. You have them in the order. We're gonna do Families first. What's the second thing you most want to be known for? You don't have to tell me right now, but when you have these galleries put them in the order of how you want people to find you. If you have these dysphoric activities like, I also love birds and sparkly things and I love photographing flooring, fine, put your Things I Love. Bundle that into one gallery. Don't have it be like, I click on Galleries and there's 26 ways to go. That's too confusing, I don't know who you are. Info. We start with info you're gonna have Testimonials, Clients, Behind the Lens, Contact, Investments. When you go to a website, what's the first thing you wanna see when you're looking for information about that photographer and what they do? What's the first thing that you'd mostly wanna know? Me? About how much it costs. If I like their images I'd probably wanna know what I'm gonna pay. But wouldn't you want to know who the person is? You hate people? (audience laughs) I hate people. I think that I can probably get along with anyone in general, so if I liked their work I think I probably would want to know prices as opposed to... You really like them. You don't care what they look like and what their mentality is. I don't care what they look like. What I mean by look like is do I feel right away they're friendly, they're approachable, this is not gonna be, we're talking about children and family. Children and family, I know what my kids are like. They're gonna respond to somebody who looks welcoming and fun. If I saw the images and then I clicked the About Me and someone's like this, that's not gonna connect with what my kids will respond to. Yeah, fair enough. How about you guys? When you go to an info site, you wanna find the information about the photographer, what do you usually find yourself going to first? Just generally speaking, the About? Who the person is? The About page and where they're located. Okay, where they're located, who they are. That's where I go first, so it might be different for everyone, but I think Testimonials is great, but I don't know that I'd lead with that. I'd have it be somewhere where they could go to and see you. On your Testimonials site, since we're here, beautiful testimonials, I love that. Who are these people, can I see their pictures? (laughs) No. I'd like to. I'd like to see what they look like when she says they're truly exquisite. I wanna know what they look like. So just inserting one or two into the... Just one, or if you want a little sort of composite, but just let me see who they are when I'm looking at what they say. Again, if you can have a little video there, which is a small-sized video, that's even better, that's cool. You can have several pull-up quotes. I'd like to see that. Okay, so this, Clients. This is terrible. (laughs) This, this confused me when I looked at it. what am I looking at? This is the people you've worked with? Yeah, yeah, it's kind of pointless, I think. It's pointless. The other thing I'm noticing is that visually, it's so dry, right? I think what would be great is for you to select a few of the clients you're most proud of working with and you think have the best kind of brand value and put that in your About Me, your Investment, whatever you want. Put a couple lines, have worked with clients such as blah, blah, blah, done. Okay. But otherwise, eliminate this altogether. It certainly shouldn't go above who you are 'cause I wanna see who you are. Okay, so you've got a fun thing. Yeah, so you talk about who you are, your little bit of background, what you do and what you love. Great. Is this, ah, good, this is linkable. Call or email to book your shoot today. Great, I would by the way, have this be something that kinda stands out a little bit more. I didn't know it was linkable 'cause it looks the same. You've got a really friendly, approachable kind of image. I like this one a little more than this one, 'cause I like the action. You like the bottom one or the top one? The top one, which is professional. Yeah 'cause it's a little more like you in the mode, right? And the bottom one is not? It's fun, but I don't think you need both unless the other one's you in action on a shoot. Then the Investment. It's up to you guys what you wanna do from an investment, if you wanna show pricing, what a fun image there, I like that. They're so cute. It's up to you whether or not you want to show pricing. I personally do not have pricing on my website, but I think it's completely up to the individual if they wanna put that out there. And then a Blog. We'll do one more before we jump into our next one. Then you've got your blog. I lead off with Iceland. You lead off with Iceland! And that's terrible 'cause if you look at the date, I think I went, let's see, it's almost six months. Yeah, six months. You wanna refresh that. Tonight you can say, "I'm gonna create it live right now." Take a click while we're talking. Say "It was great doing this," and that's it. Even if you only add a few words that weren't SEO friendly, but at least shows you're active and fresh content. That's brilliant. Okay, good, thank you! Good job overall. (audience claps) Just make those little shifts. It'd be a big impact. Okay, when you type in Teri it goes to Teriyaki. This is what I said! Oh, is that me? That's what happened to me yesterday. We were trying to figure it out 'cause it happened 10% of the time. So I'm writing in Teri, teriyaki near me, teriyaki sauce recipe, keep giving me more. Yeah, no, you know what? So right away get that fixed. I was getting those little emails from them, but I thought I have paid for five years of domain. I don't understand why they're bothering me. Fix that ASAP. If people cannot find you, or they find it frustrating to get to you, or they have to type in an http or a www. I should be able to just type your name in and go. So that is major, major, major, major, 'cause you want people to find you. Well, and I was on hiatus so, I have to say I haven't-- Maybe you didn't it, but I'm back. Yes I'm trying to be back. Alright, so let's go in. We're looking at that. Right away, great fun image, great fun image. Eye contact, it's bright, it's vibrant. Is that the kind of work you wanna be known for? Yes, I'm vibrant. Yes, I love that, good! I love vibrant photos. So I'm gonna start again because I think it's helpful to step through them one at a time. I'm gonna start here, and this is what I see. This is who you are. That's the kind of feel of your work. Here are the things at the top. It's gonna keep moving. Can I pause this? Pause, right here, good, a nice evident pause. Okay, this is really cute. Not into it, kinda into it, right? So, an image like this, I think is I've already learned something about what you're looking for, which is quirky and kinda fun character. Great, you're not gonna take yourself super seriously. Never. Well, 'cause that does tell me something about you. Tell me about this image as my third image that I'll see about you. Well, I was on my anniversary trip to Canada and these newlyweds were there and they were just so cute and I said, "Can I take pictures of you?" Why is it here though? I don't know, 'cause I love it, 'cause it's colorful, and it's spontaneous. So would you say an image like this where they're wearing active wear and they're really cute but it's kind of a softer more subdued image, would you say this is your style, and would you say that this looks a lot like this? Yes, that looks more like that. You think this looks like... Well, in color. But does that look like that style? No, you know what? I wanna get into traveling, to take portraits of people or when people travel to destinations to take portraits of them at places, so that was the whole point of traveling. I love that, and I the emotion and the fact that these people resonated with you and you're showing that, that's great. This image does not convey the same style as this image. I am confused about who you are and what you do. I don't wanna be 'cause you're vibrant and fun, and you can do it, and you can show it and you can show quirky character, and this needs to kinda be the same thing. Not the same picture, not the same location, not the same people, the style, these words that connect all the work you do and help me really quickly resonate with who you are, and I'd quickly recognize that it's your work, 'cause it's all coming together in a way that's very consistent and easy for me to pick you out from the crowd. So, let's do next. You saw when I showed you my website, I want you to think about things like toning. The toning of this image and this image is really different. It's not that you can't do these things, but think about how they align together when I'm coming in and trying to get an impression of who you are and what you do. Good, let's go next. Client Galleries is the second thing on my website, If I'm you. What am I looking at? You know, those are actual client galleries. Those are meant for the clients to go in and then get their... Why is it here though? Why is it the second thing I see when I wanna find out about who you are and what you do? I can't even get in. I had to put it somewhere, right? I'm saying this like I'm trying to think, this is where I'm coming from, I'm trying to be your person who heard about you, knows you're awesome, and I'm really quickly checking you out. Probably at a mobile device, to see if it make sense to book with you 'cause I really want great holiday portraits. and they're coming up soon. I'm gonna really jump in here and right away I'm gonna say, okay, I'm not exactly sure what she does. Client Galleries, I can't even. What am I looking at? I'm a client, right, you know what I mean? It's just confusing. I've seen client galleries on sites again and again and again. If you're going to have it, make it a hidden link that you send just to your clients. Okay, yeah, I can do that. Or have it somewhere at the very end, or For Clients right at the end. I guess I just didn't know how to do that without, I didn't know how to work the website to make it do that. Yeah, so that would be a really good way to do that 'cause I come in here, I'm blocked, I'm blocked, I'm blocked. There's nothing inviting me to book you here, like right away. Right and I send links to people, so it's not like they didn't have that. Yeah, you don't need that living here at all. I'm going left to right. That's just how we do it right here in Western culture, we go left to right. That's the very first thing that I see about you. Then I go under Scouts, are you known as a Scouts shooter? What do you wanna be known as? Families, so I should put Families over there. Yeah, flip that over there, you over here, and Scouts, it's like Boy Scouts, Eagle Scouts, yeah? So you do a lot of Scouts photography? Mm-hmm. So that's your niche, your genre. I said niche right. Yeah it was one of 'em that I had down there because we were really involved in our troop. Awesome, and you're gonna keep doing it? I don't know. Do you want to keep doing it? If there's a need for that up here, I'd certainly, it's certainly a way to get in and meet families which is what my emphasis is, in family. So if I can get in and be introduced to families by going and taking pictures of Eagle Scouts and stuff then that's a good way of doing that. So what I'd love is this to not be the main one. We're gonna start with Families. Is it Family, Seniors, but you're bundling Children in with Families? Okay, so maybe when I click here you can even expand on this just a little bit, like Families and Clubs, or whatever, if that's a main thing you wanna do, but I wouldn't start with Scouts if that's not the first thing you want people to hit. Okay. What else? Seniors, so this is like high school seniors and such, right? Yeah. I worked at a workshop once, and the woman says, "I love photographing seniors." I'm like, "Okay, so teen shots?" She goes, "No, no, like retired, "confident, elegant people." I'm like, "Oh, let's work on the definition "of seniors in the photography market." Exactly. So we click here for seniors and the first thing they're gonna see. What do you think the first thing a senior wants to see when they look at senior work? Pictures of them and their friends, right? Yeah, I thought I had a gallery in there for that. I don't know why. So is it Senior Portfolio maybe? Yeah, probably. Okay, right at the top. This is now a theme you heard over and over again. Quick, I wanna jump in, I wanna see what I wanna see and I wanna get to it quickly. So put right up front your seniors, great. This is what I'm gonna see right away, seniors. Next is a Senior Questionnaire. Okay, I just left your, no it's popped up as a new one. Okay, Senior Questionnaire is for you. That means that's your inquiry page, right? When somebody wants to have a session, they need to sign the contract and fill out a questionnaire so I have all that information. That doesn't need to live right there 'cause that's not marketing you. That's backend stuff that you do, you know? If you want people to inquire about you, you could put something up here. What's Next, How to Book Me. That's where that lives. Same thing, session contract does not need to be on your website. You can send that out electronically. That's not marketing you, that's just housekeeping. Important housekeeping, I'm glad you're thinking about it, not many people do. That's great, but its housekeeping. Let's do a couple more, and then we gotta jump on to the next site. Great, a photo of you, it's friendly, it's approachable, you look really nice. When was the last time that was taken? That's about three years old. Three years old, which is really normal. I literally, like I've gotta update my avatar now. I would do some in your market, and do some more fill light 'cause you look bright and shiny and vibrant and that looks friendly and approachable, but I wanna see your eyes pop, like I see right now, and I can't see that in image, and I care about that 'cause I wanna see the life in you that is clearly there. Good, you've got that, Contact, and then we go to the Blog. The blog, I'm horrible at blogging. Great to know 'cause your last one was July of 2016. Again, just post that you're here, pick a backup for SEO. I tried to get back into my blog 'cause I have, I can't even remember, I don't know what it is, blog something. Yeah, right there. Whatever is that, WordPress? Yeah, put that on the same page. I can't get in, it locked me out. Then scrap it, work with a great person who can transition it over to your site, and copy the links and be done with it. You don't do that. Hire a consultant, look at the sites we talked about, like Fiverr or something like that, Brickwork, anybody who works in the backend of websites. See if there's contracting options with major theme developers. Last thing, and then we gotta jump on to the next one. When I hover over what am I seeing in terms of this image? What did I see, did you guys see that pop up? What I saw pop up was the title of the image which was something like. Their names. Yeah, it was their names, and then it was like underscore edit chosen. That's obviously probably the way, there it is, that's the way you named it, and their full name, right? Yeah, that's not good. Right so I would put instead, (laughs) I would say instead, you know, whatever, familyportraits_yourname, number two, number three, number four, 'cause then you get the SEO boost, but you also keep the kind of elegant naming style for the people who see it. So if somebody were to google her name that would come up? It might, yeah. Cool. And you can put that in all the hidden part, but you don't wanna name the file that, that could be the hidden part, but will still help find you but you don't necessarily want it to be what they hover and see. Wow. Okay, thank you, thank you for sharing. (audience applauds) Awesome, awesome, awesome. Alright so Joy, no wait. You can go to joy.pics, that's the easy... Joy.pics? Yeah, I have several domain, but that is easy. Joy.pics, interesting. I didn't even know that dot pics was a thing, but that sure is easy. Is that something you could do, I wonder if that's something you can put over, Joy McCallister Photo is fine, but I was wondering if that's something you could work in here too. Like in terms of having just a really simple joypics.com. Yeah. Something like that? That would be interesting. And they all route back to the same place, clearly. Smart, I like that. It's my husband. Good, good job. Again, find the people who could do that for you, especially if they're good at it and like it. So we're here, we're coming in right into the main site, and one of the first things I see, 'cause I see an idea of your style and the feel of it, which is great. It's just small. It's not supposed to be like that. I don't know why it's doing that. Something I say a lot about my website. Why is it doing that? I say it sometimes about my body too, like, Why is that happening? This. I don't know why this is happening, but I suspect that potentially it's because I have a different screen size than maybe yours and that the website is not optimizing for various screen sizes and display options, which happens a lot with various site. It should but, yeah, I don't know. Okay, I know, you're like why did it have to happen here? So I wanna go to the next image. It looks like this arrow is forming as I click over is that right? If I go here it goes left, and if I go here it goes right. Do you think the average person would know that? [Woman In The Audience] Yes. Yes? [Woman In The Audience] I think so. What if this is a dark background image, and it's just suddenly appearing but it doesn't live there as a consistent theme? I think that might be something that's a little confusing. What do you think? [Man In The Audience] Your web browser is on not 100% right now so if you go to the dot, dot, dot, beneath that person symbol on the top right, even more so, all the way. That's my passwords. (audience laughs) [Man In The Audience] And then just the minus symbol with the... This one? [Man In The Audience] Yes. Zoom, I'm at 90%. [Man In The Audience] Okay, that's 90%. That's not that bad. Okay, that doesn't make sense then. It was a good maybe. So it goes like this and it goes out here, I see. Yeah, it's just maybe I haven't seen that before. Maybe it's just me. I wonder if the average user and browser would notice that. So I go here and I'm clicking through. They're small, though. Are they not normally this small? No, I don't know why it's doing this. Hey, if somebody's here, maybe look on your screen and see if for some reason it's different. Obviously they're normally larger, and that would be one of the first things that I would say, is make sure they're larger. So you photograph children, family, portraits, weddings, and school portraits. Yes. Do you do all those actively? Do you love doing all those? I mostly like photographing children. I love photographing children first, and then families and portraits. What was the question? (audience laughs) Do you do all these things actively? Do you love to do them? I know you're trying to invite people to hire you for all these things. No, I do mainly family and children. Portraits is a variety of things, head shots and just portraits. Weddings, if I get an inquiry, I want to be able to send them there, but I don't really do a lot of weddings. Okay, so if you were you and you're looking at this person's website and you just quickly know who she is, what she does and go right to who you wanna see, is that really straightforward to you? 'Cause you don't know you, you don't know what's happening in your inner workings of your brain, nor do I. What do you think? Yeah, you're probably right. I should probably get rid of weddings and school portraits. Yeah or bundle them in somewhere to find out more, so you can have a link to send, but when I come right in, I see where it is. Only if you want to, you know, if you're like, "No, I wanna do more weddings, "and I'm obsessed with school portraits." Well, let's figure out a way to make it something that people click to pretty quickly and see, but it still doesn't confuse the necessary person. I'm not saying you can't shoot family portraits and weddings, but maybe you're consolidated. Maybe it's children and family, one link. Right there. Maybe it's individual portraits. Maybe it's weddings, and then underneath that is additional, additional work. You know? Yeah. 'Cause you could still pad tons of SEO into this full portraits and then market for that, and send it back to that link, but it's not necessarily where the clientele you're going for is gonna find you. So something to consider. The other part of that is, 'cause for me I actually, I do have children and family in one gallery because we used to have children and family, and I felt like it was just too many sub points. That is something you may wanna strongly consider. So if I'm here and I wanna go and I come over here to the, the left and find it, okay. It must be so frustrating to you when you're like, "They're not that size. "Why now?" Is there a way to see more of what's in your gallery down here, that maybe I'm missing? 'Cause I would live to see thumbnails of all the additional work, 'cause I don't know if this is gonna be over in five seconds, if there's a ton more to look at, if the thumbnail gives me a hint to what's next and I can click through. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it gives me a good idea of where that lives here or where it lives there, that's cool. So let's go into your About page. Okay, I love the feel of these photos. That's great. Are these your kids? 'Cause you're really are sweet with your clients. (audience laughs) They are adorable and loving and so cute. This shows me approachability, friendliness, softness, love, sweetness. This looks like somebody I'd wanna do a photo shoot with. I mean, those are great. Don't change those or if you update them keep them like that-ish. Hi there, I love people. I think we are all so beautiful. Aww, I love that. You gave them an idea of how you're gonna interact with them. You wrote that. You talked about who you are and how you are like them. That is something that people like to know. And you've given them a descriptor. Right underneath that, I'd love a link to book a shoot. Yeah, I need to figure that out. Just right there, just say book a shoot here and then click, that'll go-- How to do it on this sort of theme. I have to figure out. Oh no. (laughs) Oh no. Take, just, you know what? You can say, right now, while you're doing it, just delete this sentence. They don't need to know that. That's not helpful. It looks like you're just figuring out how to be in business. You've already got great photographs. You don't wanna do that, right? You're already good. When you look at your images are you really happy with everything that's being shown? Are there any images that come up when we're looking through it, and this is for everybody to ask, are there any images that come up, when you're looking at it you're like, I don't necessarily love that one, but it fits here, or do you love every image that's being shown? I go back and look often because I think it is important to show what you love. I think I love all, I don't know if they fit cohesively together, but I think I love all the images that are shown. I think they're pretty strong. Good, so then I would do that and the cohesiveness thing together. Look at it through that frame, which again, I'm doing myself all the time. I'll go look at my gallery and I'll click a couple links back. I'm like (gasps) that image is still in there? Oh my God, all the time, so that's helpful. Take that line out. Let them know to contact you and at the very least if you don't have a Contact Me form or an inquiry form, which again is pretty easy, pretty standard with these themes nowadays. Like that's an easy thing. You don't have to figure it out, just have a plug-in for it or have a theme that has that set up. Just at the very least say contact me to book your session. So here, underneath you, it'll be in these two places right, and then here, just your galleries. But that's good. I hope that later when I pull that up, it'll be bigger, and we'll be like what happened, and everyone will know that it doesn't normally look like that. That you very much. (audience applauds) Okay, I hope that part was helpful. That was a lot about websites. That kind of theme of marketing obviously touches into every single thing we're doing.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Tamara Lackey Posing Book Discount
Nations Photo Lab Discount

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

This course was fantastic. I learned more on what I need to improve and change in my business. I especially liked learning how she balances all the things in her life. She is a fantastic teacher who keeps you engaged throughout the course. Thank you creativelive and Tamara for producing such a great course!

user-5731db
 

I thoroughly enjoyed this class, Tamara Lackey is an amazing individual and trainer! I loved what she said about not letting ourselves be diminished by someone else's narrow view... This class touches on many business related topics, I had many "aha" moments and feel excited and committed to tackle various aspects of my business in small steps!! Thanks for sharing so much of you!!!

a Creativelive Student
 

This was a fantastic class. Tamara is a fantastic teacher and really cares about conveying all the information that she is so passionate about. I found myself hanging off her every word and being so inspired to put her lessons into action. Buy this course - it will pay dividends in your business.

Student Work

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