I’m officially deeming it a real thing — Nesting in Business. You see, for the last few weeks, my house has been pretty much clean, Reese’s nursery is finished, Morgan caught up on the laundry yesterday, and I’m over here just waiting on chica to decide she wants to make her appearance into the world. To say I’m going a little stir-crazy might be a bit of an understatement.
Apparently when you’re pregnant, no one likes to tell you that the last month is actually 845 years long. (I feel like Rose Titanic!)
So side note: mamas-to-be, don’t say I didn’t warn you! I hit an impatient threshold officially almost a week ago and there are no signs of it going away! Read: Reese’s eviction notice is fully in place!
Anyway, to distract myself, I’ve been a busy bee working behind the scenes over here. Because I’ve finished as much of my “nesting” in our home as I’m going to, my brain has apparently decided that it’s time to do the same thing in business. Aka, I spent the last few days working on a mini website revamp!
It’s funny because when I was leading our local TuesdaysTogether group (a monthly meet-up for creative entrepreneurs discussing business topics!), one of the things I would recommend to people was keeping a pulse on their website and web presentation. After all, it’s the first thing that new clients see when they enter your site, and is a pretty important thing to keep updated.
Well wouldn’t you know that I am the pot calling the kettle black and I didn’t even realize it! When I was scrolling through my website images a few weeks ago, I realized it had been almost 2 years since I had updated the images and portfolio! Whoops!
Thank goodness for my website provider, Showit! They make it so easy to make changes and my little redesign efforts could actually get accomplished before our little girl arrives. You pretty much just drag, drop, click, and go! (PS. this is isn’t sponsored in any way, I just am obsessed with Showit and all of its features, capabilities, customer service, and more!! If you need a new website, you need them!)
To wrap this post up, I figured I would share two sets of things — one for people just wanting to explore the new changes, and two for any other photographers looking for quick tips to update their site!
For my little explorers —
Some new pages for you to look through are the about me section, the portfolio section, the blog sidebar, and the home page! Each got a facelift in terms of design and even in some of the wording. There’s a section on the about page that shares a few things you should know about me, and there’s something about it that just makes me laugh. Hopefully it’ll make you laugh too! Most importantly though, there are lots of pretty new images highlighted on the site that you won’t want to miss!
For my fellow photographers —
Here are three tips for giving your website a little face-lift:
1. Go through and read the copy you have in place. Then read it out loud!
Does it flow and make sense? Is it a little jumble-y? If it feels awkward to read and you’re the one that wrote it, it needs to be reworked. You naturally fill in gaps, because you knew what you meant, but other people won’t do the same thing! Another thing to check for when reading out loud is: does this sound like something you would actually say? If not, try putting it in your own voice! This is your first impression, and if it sounds nothing like you, it could be potentially jarring to a client when they meet you for the first time. I don’t know for sure, but that doesn’t sound like an equation for trust, does it?
2. Update your headshot!
This one wasn’t as simple for me since I’m currently nine months pregnant, so I’ll be re-updating this when I’m, well, not! But this makes a big impact on making things feel updated without having to even do any redesign!
My recommendations:
- Make the background clean
- Make sure your editing matches the other work on your site!
- A close-up of your face, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel, is better than having a super zoomed-out, full body shot. You want potential clients to know what you look like!
3.Weed out old portfolio images, but not all of them!
You want to make sure that even though your portfolio is updated, it still showcases a variety and some range within it! Featuring the same couple’s wedding over and over again makes you appear to be less experienced than you actually are. If you need to, go back and re-edit some of your older images if they aren’t consistent with the work you do now!
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