Creating a Photography Website that Works for You
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We are Zenfolio. We have been powering the websites of tens-of-thousands of professional photographers since 2006. Photography websites and photo hosting are what we live and breathe. We’ve accumulated a wealth of knowledge in this field and we’d like to share our expertise with you. With must-haves, best practices, and do’s and don’ts, this book will guide you through the process of creating a photography website that really works.
While we’ve included pointers for building an amazing site with Zenfolio, the general guidelines apply to any photography website. As you go through the process of building a new website or evaluating your existing site, use this book as a guide to help you get the most effective presence online.
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INTRO You need a website for many reasons. If you’re a professional photographer, your website is your essential tool to promote your business, acquire new clients, and provide your existing clients with online proofing and ordering. If you’re a student or hobbyist, your website helps you present your work in the best possible way, and can pave the way for turning your passion into a business. Typically a professional photography website includes the following essential components: ■
Online Portfolio
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Client Proofing
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Shopping Cart
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Management Backend
Your main portfolio website is like your online window display, artfully highlighting your work as well as elements such as your blog, online scheduling, social media, and client ordering. It also has a backend component for running your business: post-processing, file backup, sales and reports, and marketing. There are many ways to build your website. Your options include everything from buying a pre-made Flash or HTML template, do-it-yourself web hosting solutions for running your own web server, software packages for exporting pre-made websites, consulting companies that can build a complete website for you, and hosting services that take on the burden of setting up and running your entire photography business. 3
Zenfolio as a web-based service has been powering professional photography websites since 2006. The service provides you with a website that can do it all: secure unlimited photo and video storage, flexible access control, a stunning professional portfolio, and powerful selling platform. With simple point-and-click tools you can design a unique website without any coding involved. The idea is to allow you to focus on what you do best – take great photos.
Zenfolio Account Features Fully-featured portfolio website with unlimited storage, professional layouts, intuitive organization tools, and flexible image protection Order fulfillment by professional labs with more than 500 products and mounting solutions, backed by a quality guarantee you can count on Shopping cart and online proofing tools for selling your work online Marketing tools to promote your business At Zenfolio we believe that a beautiful photograph deserves an equally impressive viewing experience. Creating a photo that captures the essence of its subject is what makes you thrive. We feel the same way. And because every photo tells a story, we’ve made it our business to display them with the same precision and attention to detail that went into making them.
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CONTENTS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Define your Photography Business
Your Branding Elements
Your Website’s Look and Feel
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7-8
9-14
Your Homepage
15-18
Organizing Photo Galleries
19-20
Presenting Photo Galleries
21-22
Your Other Website Pages
23-26
8 9 10 11 12 13
Shopping Cart
27-29
Marketing Tools
30-31
Protecting your Work
32-33
Writing your text
34-35
Using Video
36-37
Search Engine Optimization
38-44
1 Define Your Photography Business
A personal portfolio website is all about promoting you and your photography style. You are a brand, and your name is a brand name. No one is going to know about your brand unless you get it out there; and if you’re serious about photography, it is essential that you have a good portfolio website.
Your Photography Style Is You Your unique photography style sets you apart from other photographers. It shows your personality and it is why customers want to hire you and buy your work. Identifying your style in words is a helpful first step in determining the creative direction of your website design. Look over your portfolio and see if you can identify common aesthetics. You could also ask your family and friends to give you feedback.
What’s your Style? ■
Soft
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Humorous
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Classic
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Romantic
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Edgy
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Poignant
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Grungy
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Dark
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Powerful
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Urban
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Sleek
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Subtle
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Quirky
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Traditional
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Modern
Once you have a good sense for the style of your photography, it’s time to develop a brand around it.
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2 Your Branding Elements
A brand identifies and distinguishes you and your business from the rest. Branding includes your business name, logo, and website address as well as all details of your style such as colors, fonts, design treatments, writing tone, etc. Your brand should be in sync with your photography style. It is also very important to keep all elements of your brand present and consistent throughout everything that pertains to your photography. This isn’t limited to your website and business cards; everthing from your marketing materials and social media pages down to the tone of your emails to customers should reflect and represent your brand.
Choose Your Domain Name Your website address is an integral component of your brand. Hosting companies often let you use your name as a prefix, such as “hummingbirdphotos.myhost.com�. However, using your own domain name helps you appear much more professional and gives you your own unique address on the Web, like www.hummingbirdphotos.com.
In addition to setting up and managing domain names, domain registration companies may also provide hosting services and email. Here are a few popular registrars:
GoDaddy www.godaddy.com Yahoo www.smallbusiness.yahoo.com 1and1 www.1and1.com/domain-name Network Solutions www.networksolutions.com Register.com www.register.com Once your domain name is registered, you can point it to your homepage which can be hosted with another company. 7
Create Your Logo Having a well-designed custom logo graphic is essential to establishing your brand as a professional photography business. To a potential client, a logo tells in an instant the essence of who you are, that you are serious about your business and can help you stand out from your competition. It also can increase your business’ recognition and develop repeat customers. Designing a professional logo is an art unto itself. A successful logo is made up of a carefully thought out graphic and color scheme, has a skillful use of typography and is professionally executed. Be sure that your logo is sending the right message about your business and your level of professionalism. While you may have the software tools to create a logo graphic, you should consider if you have the necessary skills and talent to create a successful logo for yourself. If you feel you are a better photographer than graphic designer, hire a pro to brainstorm with and design the perfect logo for you. You can upload your logo in several sizes and it will appear throughout your Zenfolio website for consistent branding. You can also upload your logo or any other watermark as a PNG image with transparency, apply it as a default to all your uploaded photos, as well as show the watermark on the images you export to social networks.
Your logo can and usually should be applied to your photos as a watermark. A logo used as a watermark is also a great opportunity to further promote your brand. Some photographers also include their website URL in their watermark to increase the chances of a return visit from a viewer. One thing to consider about applying a watermark is making it visible, but subtle. If a watermark is too big or too strong it may take away from the photo presentation. 8
3 Your Website’s Look and Feel
Like a gallery, your professional website should be a beautiful showcase for your photography. The design, colors, typography and any graphical elements should complement your photographic style and specialty. Most photography web hosting services will have a selection of design themes that will be a good start to find the best match for your type of photography.
Theme Website themes are comprised of coordinating colors, backgrounds, and design elements that have been carefully picked to work together and achieve a pleasing and professional presentation for your photos. Some themes are simple, minimal, and clean and can be appropriate for most types of photography. The more decorative and stylized themes can enhance your photographic style, giving your website a bit more personality for visitors to remember. Your website needs to strike a chord with your target customer. For example, a wedding photographer’s website might reflect the colors and graphics usually associated with the typical wedding: the decorative fabric of the wedding dress, beautiful flowers or the essence of the surroundings where the vows are said. If you primarily shoot fashion photography, chances are you shoot hip, trendy clothing and models. Have your portfolio theme reflect that.
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Every Zenfolio account comes with a selection of professionally designed themes that you can freely apply to your website pages. Zenfolio Theme Designer is a powerful tool for customizing all elements of your website without any CSS or HTML coding. You can automatically generate a color palette, change colors, upload background images and other decorations, adjust fonts and sizes, and more. Create as many themes as you want, apply them to your pages, as well as export and import them to share with other photographers.
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Color Palette You know how the color in your photos can evoke a mood, emotion and sense of wonder. Just like framing and matting a photo, your choices of color in your website should complement your photography. Pick a color palette of 3-4 distinct colors and use these colors (or their shades) consistently throughout your site. Proper usage of color is a large element of your website’s usability. Does your text color have enough contrast with your background? Can your visitors clearly distinguish links from text? Have you tried looking at your website on a variety of monitors?
A cool color palette taken from the train photo emphasises the bright colors of the machinery.
Zenfolio’s Theme Designer suggests colors that are aesthetically designed to work together based on a professional color model for a more attractive presentation. This allows you to customize your site theme while being certain that the color palette of your pages only enhances the viewers’ experience.
An earthy color palette taken from the grape photo provides a warm, calming scheme for the Home Page. 11
Using Background Graphics and Decorations Enhance your branding further by creating and applying custom background graphics and decorations. Use them strategically to give your website a unique, handcrafted look that accents your photography. Using a custom background image, pattern or texture can really give your website a new personality and attitude. Let your creative expression flow and experiment with different images such as the textures of metal or wood, a hand painted canvas or even a piece of soft fabric. The possibilities are endless! Whatever image you use, make sure it is not too busy so you can read your text easily and it does not compete with your photos for attention. You can further embellish your design with coordinating graphics and decorations for the header and footer areas, uniquely stylized folders, photo mat backgrounds and borders.
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Layout and Navigation
There are many ways to plan your layouts; some people write and sketch their ideas on paper, use index cards, write on post-it notes, or go right to the computer using their favorite software program.
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With Zenfolio you can easily design a consistent site menu with drop-down selections. You can link menu items to your galleries, external web pages, PDF documents, or other pages. The menu will consistently appear on your site to ensure the easiest possible navigation for your visitors.
Think about the high-level organization of your website. Put together a plan for all the content you want to include and then assign that content to the appropriate main pages and subpages. Doing this first will help you figure out the flow of your website and will define what else you need to do, such as determining and categorizing photos and videos, writing your text, creating graphics for a logo, watermark, and decorative elements for backgrounds and other areas. When thinking about layout, keep website usability in mind. It is easy get so caught up in making a website unique and different that you forget the basics – how easy is it to navigate and understand. While you do want your website to appear unique, there are some fundamental things that visitors have gotten accustomed to by browsing other websites. Navigation should be simple and easy to use. Visitors should always be able to find the link back to your home page. At any point, it should be clear where they came from, and how to find what they are looking for. Looking at your real website or a website prototype, spend time asking yourself some simple questions. Is it easy to find my recent work? Is it easy to find my pricing? Is it easy to find a way to contact me? As you go through this exercise, promote the most important elements of your site using placement, size, or color, to make sure that simple oversights do not put off potential clients. 13
Typography Typefaces come in many different styles, with each one having it’s own personality. Most typefaces are classified as either a “serif” (serifs being the little feet at the ends of the letterforms), such as Times or Georgia, or a “sans-serif” such as Arial, Lucida, or Tahoma. Just like choosing the right colors, choose fonts for your website that are easy to read and capture the personality and emotion of your photography. Like colors, fonts may look different across different computers and mobile devices, so remember to check your website at a variety of places to make sure it looks and functions as you intended.
This Is Your Header This is your paragraph text that is wonderfully written and easy to read. Contact me for more information.
Typography Tips
Limit the variety of fonts used on your website.
Pick 1-2 fonts and use them consistently throughout your pages. Make sure you use the same typefaces in your headers and paragraphs on all your webpages for consistency.
Use larger font sizes with ample line spacing for easy reading.
Headers should clearly stand out from the
paragraphs to help visitors scan your content and find the section they are interested in.
Text color should have good contrast with the
background color to be easily readable on all displays under varying lighting conditions.
The color for links should be different from
the text color, so that your visitors can clearly identify links and use them for navigation.
This Is Your Header
This is your paragraph text that is wonderfully written and easy to read. Contact me for more information.
Consider Using a Professional Designer A lot of websites can benefit from the help of a professional designer. With the large variety of options and short attention spans on the web, you often have only one chance to win over a potential customer. A professional designer can help you deliver a lasting impression by putting together key elements of your design – branding, layout, and color – into a winning combination. 14
4 Your Homepage
Your homepage is your best opportunity to create a great impression and “capture” your visitor. Visitors will decide within seconds whether to stay on your site based on the quality of your work and the design. Your homepage is the primary place to introduce your portfolio. People will want to see your previous work to decide if you’re the photographer they’re looking for.
Select Your Best Images for Your Portfolio Your homepage should include a careful selection of your best images. Although you may have a large collection of images you want to show in your portfolio, limiting your selection to the stronger pieces is beneficial. Too many images in your portfolio can increase load times and provide the viewer with too many options. It can make your portfolio feel like it is dragging on and on. If you limit your selection to a curated sample of your very best work, the viewer will get a better sense of your style and what you’re capable of. It will make your portfolio feel more defined and structured, and visitors will be more likely to contact you if they like what they see.
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Slideshow Your portfolio should be clearly accessible to your visitors. Some people prefer to enjoy a well-paced slideshow with a soundtrack, while others want to immediately jump to a certain photo that has caught their attention. A good homepage accommodates all kinds of visitors by providing a slideshow as well as links to the sections of your portfolio. Think about sequencing your portfolio images in a strategic order. If you place your strongest images at the beginning and the end of the portfolio, you’ll hit the viewer the hardest. Grab their attention right from the beginning and leave them something to remember at the end.
When using Zenfolio you can select from professionally designed homepage layouts and configure them to your needs. You can easily put together a professional slideshow with music and transitions to include on your homepage. Zenfolio accounts also come with 50 free professional soundtracks from Triple Scoop Music for use in your slideshows. 16
Logo Your logo is usually the first thing a visitor sees when your website opens in a web browser. It should be clearly visible on your homepage so that users can immediately identify who owns the website. Save your logo as a PNG file with transparency (or alpha channel), which allows it to be displayed nicely over different backgrounds. Use it prominently on your home page and as a header for your other website pages; it can also be used as a watermark over your images.
Tagline or Welcome Message Once the visitor sees who owns the website, they’ll want to know what kind of photography you do. In part, it will be immediately apparent by the images you present on your homepage. However, it never hurts to explicitly tell your visitors about what you do in words. The tagline can be a part of your logo, or you can write a longer description of the photography services that you provide. Ask yourself: What kind of photographer am I? A nature photographer?
A commercial photographer? A fine art photographer? A photojournalist? Are you a freelancer or do you work for a studio? Are you looking for commissioned work? The text that appears on your homepage is very important for search engines to index and categorize your website properly. It’s worth spending time on crafting the perfect message that will speak to your visitors and help make your site discoverable.
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Menu Navigation Your menu navigation is the main tool for viewers to easily find and view your pages. Keep your wording short to give you flexibility in the placement of the menu navigation on your pages. Try to keep your menu items limited for a cleaner design, and put any sub-pages in a drop down menu.
Navigation Checklist
Make the labels for navigation
straightforward and predictable
Use menu titles to clearly describe linked content
Limit the number of top-level menu items to no more than 5 or 6 items Make menu titles and ordering consistent on
Zenfolio allows you to quickly design your navigation menu with drop-downs, link menu items to site or external pages, or to your galleries, and customize the look and feel of the menu by changing colors and fonts.
Link to Contact Information
Link all menu items to corresponding webpages Make the menu location consistent on all pages,
Be sure to include your contact information on your site, phone number, email address, and a mailing address. This can be on a contact page, or in the header or footer area of every page.
For text, use a large enough font size and
Call to Action
Always provide an easy way to get back
What you want to get out of your website? Do you want to be hired? Attract more visitors? The homepage should have a call to action, a “Next step.” Put a “call to action” link in the menu or a button on a page that is clear and stands out from the rest of the page.
all pages
either at the top, left or right hand side a contrasting color for easy reading to the home page
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5 Organizing Photo Galleries
Organizing Strategies ■ Date ■ Topic ■ Category ■ Location ■ Event
Select a method that works best for you. A wedding photographer, for example, you can organize your photos by events for each client. A nature photographer could present their work by location.
One of the biggest challenges for any photographer is setting up well-organized photo galleries. The goal is to create categories that are easy to understand and make it easy for your visitors to find the images they are looking for. You can accomplish this by providing multiple ways for navigating your library of photos.
Cover Photo Thumbnail Select a cover photo thumbnail that visually represents the rest of the photos within a particular gallery. When showing multiple galleries on a page, using cover photos with the same aspect ratio makes for a cleaner design. 19
Descriptions Every photo and gallery should have a description including title, caption, category, and keywords. This makes it easier for viewers to search on your site. It also helps search engines to index your site and to provide relevant and accurate search results.
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Search Include a search field on every page of your website making it easy for your visitors to explore your digital images library simply by typing a keyword, a location, or a last name.
Client Access You can provide each client with a special client access code. When clients type their access code they will be immediately taken to their gallery, without the need to search by name or to browse through your entire archive.
When you upload your photos to your Zenfolio account, titles, descriptions, and keywords are automatically imported. You can also edit them as a batch. Your Zenfolio account comes with a Client Access page. Use it from your Zenfolio website, or linked from an external website. It will prompt your clients for a code and take them directly to the appropriate gallery.
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Presenting Photo Galleries
Photographers put enormous amount of effort into getting that perfect shot lined up, spend endless hours retouching and perfecting their work, and make a significant investment into researching and buying the right equipment. Unfortunately, poor online presentation ruins all of these efforts. We’ve all seen photos surrounded by tasteless ads, displayed on cramped pages, resized and compressed resulting in images that are far from the beautiful originals that came from your incredibly advanced digital camera.
Preparing Your Photos The online presentation of your photos deserves the same careful attention that was put into taking them. Your photos should be sharp, true in color, take center stage, and be displayed as large as possible, maximizing the available viewing area. Loading speed and the convenience of navigation are also two very important factors in delivering a delightful viewing experience to your visitors.
Presentation Checklist
Show large images that take advantage of large monitors, but also fit on smaller screens, such as tablet and mobile devices.
Do not compress your photos too much.
While strong compression reduces file sizes and allows faster uploading, it often results in serious degradation of image quality.
Use the JPEG format, the best for presenting
your photos online – it is supported by all web browsers, supports color profiles, and the file size is much smaller than when using the TIFF format, which does not provide any advantages in quality.
Calibrate your monitor to soft-proof your photos before uploading to the web to achieve the best color reproduction across most display devices.
Protect your photos with watermarks to
prevent unauthorized usage of your images.
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Zenfolio delivers the best possible presentation of photos online. Your uploaded originals are automatically resized and prepared for optimized display presentation. Your photos utilize all available screen space on clean professional layouts with rapid loading and simple keyboard navigation. See how the low-resolution noncalibrated photo presents a jagged and non-impressive image.
Now that same photo really shines when displayed in high-resolution and color calibrated.
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7 Your Other Website Pages
There’s more to a professional website than elegant pages of beautiful images. We’ve already discussed the importance of a contact page, but in the age of the Internet your visitors will want to get all their questions answered right away. So you’ll need to provide them with easy access to pertinent information. Details about your background, awards and accolades, pricing and packages, schedule availability and general information should all be easy to find, read and understand. These pages are also a further opportunity to promote your brand and allow your potential customers to identify with you more personally.
About Page This page is all about you. Let people see the face behind the website. Share your background, where you came from, how many years you’ve been in the business, etc. The more details you give, the better your potential clients can form a bond and build trust with you. Use this opportunity to tell customers who you are as a person, your passions and your qualifications as a photographer. Your emphasis should be “why people want to work with you.” People looking to hire a photographer want to know that you are the right person for the job, rather than hear your life story. Keep your wording down to 2 to 3 paragraphs. Make your about page personal by writing your copy in the 1st person rather than the 3rd person.
Talking Points to Interest Customers ■
The creative vision you bring to your photography
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Any relevant personal information that makes you “unique” as a photographer
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Specialty, area of focus, niche
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Where you live and work
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Years of experience
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Education, work experience and expertise
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Awards, special accomplishments, professional recognitions
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Contact information and a link to your blog and social media pages such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter 23
Show Your Photo Create a trusting impression with a welcoming photo or video of yourself. Customers want to see and connect with you as a person and as someone they are considering having a professional relationship with. Your photo could be more than just a headshot. Show yourself in a wonderful setting, on a shoot in your studio, or at a customer location. This is a creative way to show off your personality!
Zenfolio allows you to create any number of your own Custom Pages and link to them from the Site Menu. Create any content you want as well as embed objects such as buttons, banners, photos, slideshows and videos. Each page gets its own URL and you can edit the Title and META description fields for better search engine indexing.
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Guestbook Having a guestbook for comments and customer testimonials can further increase your photographic and professional credibility. It also allows your customers to interact and be a part of your website. Be sure to regulate who is allowed to comment, as well as monitor comments before publishing to weed out spam.
Custom Pages Price Lists, Booking Instructions, Calendar, Client Proofing, and PDFs To further enhance the running of your photography business online, consider adding custom pages such as price lists, booking instructions, an online interactive calendar, tear sheets for customers to download and print. You could even create video pages with your own tutorials or live shoots.
With Zenfolio you can create any number of free-form pages or upload PDF documents. You can link to these pages from your main menu, drop-down menu, or from other pages on your website.
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Pricing Page
Blog
Displaying pricing information is a good practice when you are working in the area of consumer photography, such as wedding or events and portraits. “How much?” is the most common follow-up question after visiting a website, and being straightforward about pricing will help you funnel the right clients.
Having a blog linked to your website is a great enhancement for your business and gives you an additional opportunity for exposure. A blog is always a good idea. Write about your area of expertise and show you know what you’re talking about.
You don’t have to show a very detailed breakdown of all the services you offer. Something as simple as your range, or your starting price will provide instant gratification and remove the element of sales pressure on your website visitors. If you have been in the business for some time, you know the minimum price point for your services and feel comfortable with that price. You can show the pricing information on its own page, linked from the main site menu, making it easy for potential clients to find.
Blog Benefits ■
Lets you easily showcase current projects or techniques
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Builds a following of visitors, who might become clients
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Helps establish your photographic expertise
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Gives you free publicity through search engine results
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Brings more web traffic to your website
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Makes your website more lively and friendly
Of course displaying pricing is not appropriate for all types of photography. Most commercial photographers quote each project individually based on the clients’ needs. Stock photographers may set the price based on the planned usage of the purchased images. Keep in mind, commercial photographers deal with educated buyers who aren’t necessarily shopping based on price.
Let people follow you by subscribing to an RSS feed, and show off your most popular blog posts to new readers. Be sure to enable comments and make it easy for visitors to leave feedback. 26
8 Shopping Cart
As a professional photographer you will likely want to go beyond just beautifully displaying your photography online. Visitors find your site, love your work, maybe even contact you for a booking. Now what? An online store that allows your visitors to make purchases should be a fully integrated part of your site. The second your visitors have an impulse to own an image, a “Buy” or “Purchase” button should be just a mouse move away. The smoother and easier the flow for a purchase the more your sales you will make. Make your shopping cart and checkout process seamless and easy to use for your customers.
Essential E-commerce Functionality 1. Online proofing process to help clients review and select photos 2. A customizable list of products offered for sale with prices, options, detailed descriptions, and categorization 3. A secure and easy-to-understand checkout process with the ability to accept all major credit cards or PayPal payments from your customers, capture shipping information, issue refunds, and keep detailed records of every transaction 4. Customer service tools that allow your clients to communicate with you about order status and any issues
Zenfolio has partnered with the best vendors in the industry, including One Vision Imaging. One Vision Imaging carries an award winning Finished Product range - the most comprehensive to be found anywhere in the UK. Using the finest materials crafted into works of visual art, each and every product is finished to perfection. All you do is take great photos, select products, and set your pricing structure. Zenfolio will take care of the rest: taking orders, forwarding them to labs for fulfillment, payment processing, and customer support. 27
Order Fulfillment
Order Approval
Products and prices are the first items to decide on when setting up an online store. You can have orders routed to you and fulfill them yourself, working with a local lab of your choice. You describe the products you sell, enter them into your online store catalog, and take care of delivering these orders to your clients. This option is often referred to as “self-fulfillment�. Fulfilling your own orders may give you more control and an opportunity to provide a personalized service for every customer. However, this option does not scale well with the growth of your business and the number of customers.
In order to deliver exceptional customer experience, it is a good practice to review every order before it is sent to the lab. For example, poor cropping choices made by customers is a frequent reason for reprints, or a simple typo in the address form can result in delayed orders and aggravation. Such unpleasant surprises can be easily avoided if your website facilitates the order approval process, giving you full control to upload retouched photos, change cropping, update shipping options or addresses, and add promotional items.
Another option is to have your orders be automatically fulfilled by a professional lab, fully integrated with your website. The lab takes care of order fulfillment, including delivery and customer service, freeing up your time and allowing you to spend more time shooting. Choosing a high quality reputable lab to work with and knowing their products is an important aspect of your business. After all, it is their products and craftsmanship that is going to your clients with your photos, and that reflects on your business.
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Client Proofing and Favorites Selection The online client proofing process starts with a professional presentation of photographs online. When customers like what they see, they buy more. After initially browsing through photos, clients need to select which photos to purchase. Often times, a buying decision involves several people looking through photos together and deciding which ones need to be ordered. Product selection is another step where clients can spend some time going back and forth between the options. A good online store will simplify this process by offering the ability for clients to share their favorites and collaborate with the photographer on putting together an order that will fully match the client’s expectations.
Managing Your Online Store Your online store should allow you to put together price lists and assign them to galleries offered for sale. Most likely you will need more than one price list, and in some cases, you may even need to provide prices in more than one currency. Managing long price lists with many paper types, color options, framing and mounting can get cumbersome, so look for a system with modern and powerful tools such as batch price editing, formula-based pricing, and convenient tools for reassigning your price lists any time you want.
Online Store Must-Haves ■
Collecting sales tax or VAT, which may be required by your local tax authorities
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Providing detailed reports that you can use for record keeping, sales analysis, and exporting your transactions to accounting software
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Facilitating client communications and support throughout the entire shopping experience
Selling Digital Downloads Don’t be surprised if your clients request digital images in addition to traditional printed products. From low-resolution Facebook images to highly valued original files, if you decide to sell digital downloads use a system that can automatically generate them to save you time. A sale of a digital file is accompanied by a licensing agreement that specifies the acceptable usage terms. Upon accepting the terms a client can download all purchased files.
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9 Marketing Tools
Your online store cannot be fully successful without a clever marketing strategy. Turn visitors into loyal customers with common marketing tools like discounts, product packages, expiring galleries, email and social media marketing.
Discounts Who doesn’t like a good deal? People respond well to value-based offerings. A good e-commerce solution will give you the ability to find a key to every customer by using coupons. In addition to the simplest discount, coupons can discount by a specified percentage, have an expiration date, or be limited to a certain product or a gallery. A discount can also be given in a form of a gift certificate, or a print credit bundled together with a session fee.
Product Packages Bundling products into packages is common practice in the photography business. Make sure your online store supports putting together packages, pricing them, and giving your clients simple drag-and-drop package configuration and purchasing experience.
Expiring Galleries Most orders are placed within a short period of time after the photos have been taken; adding some time pressure could be a strong driver of sales. Photographers can use time pressure by limiting the amount of time an online gallery is available for ordering, following up with a notification email to clients, possibly with a special offer. 30
Email Marketing
Social Media Marketing
Your website and your online store can help you grow a list of clients that you make into repeat buyers and an excellent source of referrals. Ongoing communication with your clients is key to maximizing your profits.
Social media platforms allow photographers to authentically and emotionally connect to a worldwide audience in ways that just a few years ago were both unimaginable and impossible. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, blogs and cell phones all regularly and repeatedly connecting photographers with their targeted audiences. Your website should support this growing trend by making it easy to engage your customers right from the photo viewing experience.
Basic Email Marketing Requirements ■
Ability to capture customer email addresses
■
Scheduled periodic email campaigns to your clients list with promotions, specials, news, and so on
■
Separated customer lists by events or galleries
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View of client’s activities and tracking results of your marketing efforts
There are many robust customer relationship management and e-mail marketing systems available online, such as MailChimp, iContact, ConstantContact, Bronto, and others. You should be able to export your list of customer emails into these systems if you want to get into more sophisticated online marketing.
Social Media Marketing Tips
Give your clients have the ability to share
photos on Facebook, Like or Tweet about them, making your name spread virally through clients’ social circles
Make your website linked with your business pages on Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+, which brings more visitors to your portfolio
Keep your Facebook audience engaged by
publishing your best photos, up-coming project announcements, posting polls and even notes (much like posting a story in a personal blog)
Add fans to your business page by displaying the Like or +1 button on your homepage
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10 Protecting Your Work
Watermark Your Photos It is good practice to use a watermark on each photo you post online. A watermark is a faint image or text that is superimposed on top of your photo and shows that you are the creator and owner of that image. In other words, you are telling the world “do not steal my work”. You can create your own watermark using graphics software, such as Adobe Photoshop. Watermarks are shown in different percentages of transparency over the photo located at the top, middle or bottom of the image.
Putting your photography portfolio online is essential to gaining exposure and customers. But this additional exposure comes with certain risks and you should take the security of your photos very seriously. Anyone who is somewhat computer savvy can copy your photos and use those images for their own purposes without your permission or payment. That’s why it is extremely important to protect your images.
Most people believe that right-click protection is sufficient to detract potential theft of online images. However, with the modern operating systems and large monitors, it is very easy for someone to take a screenshot of a large photo and obtain decent prints, or use your photo online without your permission.
You want to show ownership with your watermark, but don’t overpower the beauty of your photos. 32
Copyright Your Photos From the minute you shoot a photo, you are the creator and owner of that image. You own the “copyright” giving you full legal rights to publish, license or sell that image whether for commercial purposes or for a private client. For your own legal protection you should present and copyright your work properly, register your work and know your rights. When writing your copyright notice include the copyright symbol ©, the year of your photo’s publication, and your name or business name. Register your photos with the U.S. Copyright Office. This is particularly important in case you find out that your work has been stolen or infringed and you need to pursue legal action in court. You can learn more about your rights and how to register your work at: http://www.copyright.gov
© 2011 Lightmasters Studio Include your copyright notice with each photo as text or within an overlaid watermark on your photo.
Control Access to Specific Photos You may have client photos that you want to keep private and are only for them to view, such as, wedding, maternity, children’s portraits or boudoir photos. Features like password protection, restricted the access to original files, and making your images completely private are a must for a secure website.
Secure Storage If you’re shooting or recording regularly, it’s likely you’re accumulating many gigabytes of photographs and videos a month. You need a solid backup strategy to be able to restore your files in case a disaster strikes. Your web hosting service can be a part of this by allowing you to store your originals online and allowing you to download them back to your computer if needed.
Zenfolio has powerful access control features that allow you to fine tune the security of your galleries down to the individual photo level. You can make your albums public, private, protected with password, or open only to a list of clients. You can restrict access to original files, as well as limit the largest size that can be displayed on the screen. A Zenfolio account provides you with unlimited storage for your photos and videos. These are stored in state-of-the-art secure geo-distributed data centers. You can rest assured you have a back up of full-size original photos for download available any time.
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11 Writing your Text
The text your an website is equally as Needon to write intro paragraph important as the design. Your content should communicate your branding message, speak directly to your target audience, be professional with proper grammar and spelling and be well crafted with keywords for search engine optimization. If writing is not your strong suite, consider enlisting the help of a friend or colleague with strong writing skills or hiring a professional writer.
Find Your “Tone of Voice” How do you want to be perceived by your potential customers? Your written “tone of voice” is the personality of you and your business. Communicating your message with the right tone will give your audience the confidence to believe that you are sincere, honest and passionate about your photography business as well as strengthening your branding message. If you sell or license your photos to businesses, you might have a more straightforward “to the point” approach. For wedding, portraits or pet photography your tone might be more friendly and personable. Take into consideration how you talk to a potential customer in person and translate your personality into your writing. Once you decide on the right tone for you, be consistent in all your writing throughout your website.
Which of These Tones Best Describe Your Personality? ■
Formal and Serious
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Professional and “To the Point”
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Chatty and Fun
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Warm and Passionate
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Humorous and Wacky
■
Laid Back and Conversational
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Keep Your Text Short
Mobile Devices
When people visit a website, they want to quickly decide whether to stay or leave. Grab a visitor’s attention by keeping your writing short and succinct. Make your communications professional by leaving out any “fluff” sentences that don’t add information or value.
Many of your visitors will open your website from a mobile device and will expect it to function properly. A great website will provide users with an excellent viewing experience on any device.
Make Your Text Easy to Scan
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Website layout is automatically optimized for small screens
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Pages support touch navigation and gestures such as swiping for navigation and pinching for zooming
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Images load fast and scale dynamically for a variety of screen sizes
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Slideshows can play without Flash.
Online visitors tend to scan your text rather than read every word. When you have a lot of content, such as booking instructions or price lists, present your text in digestible chunks. Use bold fonts to emphasize important points or keywords, headers, sub-headers and lists where appropriate.
Mobile Browsing Requirements
Grammar, Spelling and Proofreading Your writing should be as flawless as your photography. It is a good idea to first write your text in a word processing program to catch any obvious errors. Enlist the help of your family and friends to review your website. A fresh pair of eyes can catch mistakes or offer new suggestions.
Proofreading Checklist
Consistency in wording and design theme Working links and forms Proper functionality in common browsers, such as Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer
No grammatical or spelling errors 35
12 Using Video
VideoNeed is particularly forparagraph photographers, to write useful an intro because their clients make purchases based on emotion. Including video in your presentation enriches your clients’ experience and engages them more than still images alone. There are many ways for photographers to use this medium to their advantage.
Connect with Your Clients Using videos can help develop an instant bond with your potential clients. With video you could post a short introduction to your photography style, tell a story, or show how you interact with clients on your about page. The goal of these videos is to highlight the sides of your personality that are impossible to showcase with photography or text.
Deliver New Product Combining photo and video coverage of events is known as photo fusion. This concept is meant to enhance and augment still imagery, and not replace a professional videography. Most fusion photographers deliver their final product as a multimedia slideshow that can be burned to a DVD and sold as an add-on or as a part of a package. This is a great product to add an extra dimension to your work.
Educate Educate your clients by showing them what to expect when working with a photographer. You can introduce common poses, offer tips on lighting, tell about key moments in a wedding, and even provide style tips. Teach clients how the ordering process works, explain concepts of cropping and paper selection, even album design workflow.
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Video Tips ■
Apply the same rules of composition and lighting as in photography
■
Try moving the camera by panning and zooming to emphasize tension or create intense focus on a subject
■
■
Capture different angles, for example, a wide shot to introduce a setting, or a tight close-up for visual variety
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Consider drawing out a storyboard to figure out which shots you’ll need, and how to accomplish them
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Consider keeping your camera on a tripod (or monopod), or a full steadicam rig that will enable you to make smooth and controlled camera movements
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Use a music overlay or a voice-over to accompany your video (Triple Scoop Music is a great resource of royalty-free music for photographers)
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Record around 5 seconds of video before and after each scene to give you enough time to fade in and out
■
Always shoot more angles than you think you’ll need
■
Keep it short when you are telling a story and not just recording events of the day (like a wedding)
Tell a story in your video to engage the viewer for a longer period of time
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13 Search Engine Optimization
If visitors don’t know your URL, they will open their favorite search engine and type in some keywords or a phrase. The search results may show the link to your website. Search engines crawl the web trying to reach every page through following links. As they do, they parse, index, and store information about every page they encounter. When a person searches for something online, search engines use sophisticated algorithms to present relevant results and present them in the order of importance. Obviously, if your website does not come up on top of the search results, you are missing out on great opportunities to show your website to potential clients.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) While search engines are constantly optimizing their algorithms to better understand the content of pages to return better search results, there is always a limit to how search engines can operate. That’s why in order for your website to be visible to search engines, you need to get familiar with Search Engine Optimization(SEO). SEO is a proactive practice of optimizing a website for increased traffic from search engines. The optimization includes internal factors, such as website content and its positioning, as well as external ones, such as the number of sites linking to the website.
Currently there are two major search engines: Google and Bing (Yahoo’s search is powered by Bing). To avoid being cheated by spammers, search engines are not very forthcoming with how they determine relevance and that’s why they constantly tweak their search algorithms to make sure that “spammy” pages do not overtake search results.
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Search Engine Friendly Websites Search engine friendly sites are easy to use and navigate. They provide actionable information and are accessible on current browsers.
Tips for a Search Engine Friendly Site ■
Write pages for users, not for search engines
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Don’t present different content to search engines than to users
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Make sure that your website has a clear logical hierarchy and text links
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Create a useful site; write copy that clearly and accurately describes your content
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Include words that visitors might use to find the information on your site (keywords)
HTML format allows the content of your website to be indexable. Images, Flash, Java applets are invisible to search engines. A beautifully designed Flash website will look like a blank page and will not be indexed or ranked. Search engines will never find pages that can’t be accessed by following links from your home page. Be sure to link together all pages of your website.
All Zenfolio websites are HTML-based making sure that everything from your captions and keywords to the site menu is indexable and crawlable by search engines. You will not miss completing an important field because on Zenfolio editing dashboard highlights these fields with a special green SEO icon.
Carefully craft the text on your pages with keywords that describe your website content. Search engines know which pages to retrieve based on the words entered into the search box. Their interpretation of the text used on your site helps determine its relevance. One of the best ways to optimize rankings is to ensure that keywords are prominently used in titles, text, and metadata.
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Using Keywords Keywords are just one of the parameters used by search engines to determine the relevance of the page to a search query. There are specific recommendations on how to optimize the placement of keywords.
Keywords Placement ■
As close as possible to the beginning of the title tag of your page
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In the body of your page at least 3 times
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In bold, at least 3 times, for your most important keywords
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In titles and descriptions of images
Using Title Tag
■
In the link (URL) at least once
The title element of a page is what appears in the web browser’s title bar. It is essential for search engine optimization and is meant to be an accurate, concise description of a page’s content.
Know which Keywords to Use Useful online tools, like Google Adwords, can help you discover and fine-tune the keywords that will work for you. The primary purpose of Adwords is for advertising on Google’s network by bidding on keywords of phrases. However the Keyword Tool under Google Adwords can also be used to research keywords. There are numerous and exhaustive online guides and videos available to help you learn how to take the most from the Keyword Tool. Invest time into learning how to use it and you will develop a much better understanding of which keywords will increase the exposure of your website.
Search result pages will display about 70 characters per result, so keep your title tag short and place important keywords in front. Start every title tag with a name of your business to leverage your branding. Create a compelling message to generate more visits to your site, since the title tag appears in search results.
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Using the Meta Description Tag The meta description tag is not visible on the page itself. It lives in the page code as a short description of a page’s content. Meta descriptions are the primary source for the snippet of text displayed beneath a listing in the search results. Crafting a readable, compelling description using important keywords can be used to draw readers to your site from the results. It is a general practice to keep meta descriptions text under 160 characters long. This is where your meta descrption tag shows on a search result page.
Using Friendly URL’s A friendly URL makes it easy for readers to predict the content of the page by the text that is displayed in the browser bar.
Shorter is better. Shorter URL’s are easier to copy/paste and share and are fully visible in search results. If your page is targeting a specific term or phrase, make sure to include it in the URL. It is also recommended to use hyphens to separate words.
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Growing Popularity By analyzing links between pages and how visitors follow these links, search engines evaluate websites and rank their relevance and trustworthiness. When a visitor clicks a link in search results, he or she “votes” for the page and search engines record this vote for calculating page rankings.
Search engines also use the following factors to measure the rank of a website.
Global Popularity
Topic-Specific Popularity
Link Neighborhood
Having your site linked from prominent and popular websites will be very helpful for moving your site up in search results.
Links from sites that have narrow focus are also a factor. They provide pages that are the best match to what a person is trying to find.
Be selective about the sites with which you share links. If a site in your “link neighborhood” appears spammy to search engines, your site ranking may suffer. 42
Link Building Strategies Natural As you grow your business, other sites and pages will notice it and will want to reference your pages. You can monitor these by using free webmaster tools. http://www.google.com/webmasters http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster
Proactive Proactively seek for opportunities to generate links to your site by emailing articles or news releases to bloggers, submitting your site to online directories, or paying for placement in these directories. Many websites offer visitors opportunities to create links through guestbook signings, forum signatures, blog comments, or user profiles. Ask your clients to link to your site from Facebook, a blog post, forums post, or an article and reward them for doing so. Create valuable content that your clients will be compelled to distribute virally. Share funny stories from your photo engagements, add videos, review a product in your blog, help beginning photographers with advice.
Paid There are websites and blogs that will publish links to your website for compensation. Take a look at directories of wedding photographers, bloggers with pay-per-post program, and simply paid search engine advertising. 43
Hiding from Search Engines While it is important for your website to be discovered by search engines, there are times when you want some photos to stay invisible. There are special attributes you can insert into your pages to make them invisible to search engines.
Zenfolio gives you all the tools for SEO of your website. All Zenfolio gives you all the tools for pages of Zenfolio websites SEO of your website. All pages of are built with HTML, so they Zenfolio websites are built with are easily indexed by search HTML, so they are easily indexed engines. by search engines. Zenfolio allows you to build a Zenfolio allows you to build a site navigation menu, which is site navigation menu, which is very effective in helping search very effective in helping search engines to move through your engines to move through your website to find and rank website to find and rank your your pages. pages. You are always in control of You are always in control of your your website with Zenfolio, website with Zenfolio, because because your site is integrated your site is integrated with webwith webmaster tools from master tools from leading search leading search engines. You engines. You can get detailed can get detailed reports on reports on how search engines how search engines see your see your site and make necessary site and make necessary tweaks. Zenfolio also offers intweaks. Zenfolio also offers tegration with Google Analytics, integration with Google which gives you insight to your Analytics, which gives you website’s traffic, showing you insight to your website’s traffic, reports on the number of visitors, showing you reports on the where they are coming from, how number of visitors, where they long they spend on your site, and are coming from, how long much more. they spend on your site, and much more.
Resources for SEO Strategy Use these online resources to help you with your search engine optimization strategy: Google Analytics
Forums.digitalpoint.com
Google Webmaster tools
Wordpot.com
Google Adwords tool
Webmasterworld.com
Websitegrader.com
Searchengineland.com
Browsershots.com 44
Whether you are an established photographer or an enthusiast, your photography website is more than just a place for displaying your photos online. It is a reflection of your brand, a key marketing tool, an engagement point with your clients, and could also serve as a foundation for your entire photography business. A website that works well must: ■ Be well-designed and provide fresh and relevant content ■ Allow
your visitors to enjoy your photos in a clean and elegant viewing experience
■ Effectively
communicate your unique brand
■ Be
search-engine friendly
■ Facilitate
your business workflows, such as ordering and client favorites
■ Be
easy to update and modify
We welcome you to try Zenfolio, the ultimate website solution for photographers like you, and we guarantee that you will immediately start receiving compliments on your work. A Zenfolio website is easy to setup, a breeze to customize and configure, and is very cost effective.
THANKS Zenfolio extends a deep appreciation to these wonderful photographers for letting us show their images as inspiration and examples throughout this book. http://lightmasters.zenfolio.com http://9mphoto.com http://www.sevenonephoto.com http://store.jesskoehler.com http://store.liznessstudio.com/photos http://www.kevinpipher.ca http://pieceofmephotography.com http://photos.ericshemtovphotography.com http://mikewendelphotography.com http://www.davidsboray.com http://www.rebeccadanzenbaker.com http://catchlightonline.com http://www.photosbyjulio.com http://www.duncangrove.com http://www.schochphoto.com http://images.markarcegaphotography.com http://www.pasqualis.com http://kvincentphotography.ca http://tinyglimpsephotography.com http://www.ellishumphres.com http://www.toddphilip.com http://www.naturaphoto.com http://www.brosepix.com
http://www.projectninefive.com http://www.adogslifephoto.com http://www.cwdalyphotography.com http://fbiv.zenfolio.com http://aprilelizabeth.net http://eyeshuttertothink.com http://danielludwigphotography.zenfolio.com http://www.dhostphotography.com http://www.squeakdogphoto.com http://sabrinaeutonphotography.com http://englishelectric.zenfolio.com http://www.mcanphotography.com http://robinchun.zenfolio.com http://oscardean.com http://www.karenengel.com http://spotnphoto.com http://www.theresahudson.com http://www.rkphoto.org http://natureslens.zenfolio.com http://www.wirralpix.com http://verlaat-fotografie.nl http://www.martins-photography.com
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