livebooks blog

If you are trying to grow a profitable photography business, chances are you already know how important a strong website is for long-term success. And while you may have a great eye for composing and editing beautiful images, you may not have the right level of expertise to know what does and doesn’t make a great website.

As you work on your new website’s design, be sure to avoid these common mistakes made by photographers on the web today.

Too Little Content

Even if you have some of the most stunning photographs and would prefer to let them do most of the selling for you online, it doesn’t mean you should rely too heavily on only letting them do the talking. Content is still a vitally important piece to your website’s user experience!

Not only do people who visit your website want to know what you offer, but they ideally want to have enough information to connect with you personally before even reaching out to you through your contact form. You’ll also reap the benefits of higher search engine rankings with a strategic content strategy as well.

Too Many Images

As the artist, you probably have a similar challenge to most other artists out there: you have a personal love for all of your work. Although that is completely understandable, it doesn’t mean every image you’ve ever taken deserves to be front-and-center on your website.

Whether you ask friends and family (or other experienced photographers) to help you, or you practice being a little more critical of your own work, it’s extremely beneficial to narrow down to the best of the best before putting them online.

Why? For a couple of great reasons. First, you should make sure that the work you publish online depicts your best and most relevant work that speaks to your brand and ideal clients. Secondly, too many images (especially with large file sizes that aren’t optimized) can slow down your site load speed, preventing users from enjoying your site while also harming your SEO.

Lack of Contact Information

You also want to make sure your contact information is easily accessible across your website. Far too many photographers make the mistake of linking to social media handles and a contact page, but forget to list a phone number or email address. Be sure that anyone who comes across your website and is interested in hiring you for your photography skills can actually contact you.

Start Your New Website Design Today

With a liveBooks website, you’ll be able to use our stunning, customizable website templates that look great on any mobile device!

We’ve also got a top-notch support team who’s here to help you every step of the way. Start for free today!

Not all websites are made the same, and certainly shouldn’t be! Every company will have a unique set of ideal audiences, branding style choices, and industry standards for web design. And wedding cinematographers are no exception.

If you are a wedding videographer looking to build a brand new site or redesign one you’ve already launched in the past, be sure you follow these simple steps to ensuring your website is engaging and effective in connecting you with engaged couples out there today.

Spotlight Your Favorite Video on Your Homepage

If you have one (or two) wedding highlight films you’ve created within the last year that really speaks to your brand and style, showcase it by placing it within your homepage’s design!

Like many others within the wedding industry, you’ll want to promote your best work up-front, especially the one that most closely aligns with the types of weddings you want to book more of.

Add a Gallery Page for Samples of Work

Instead of placing all of your videos on your homepage, create a gallery page on your website solely dedicated to showcasing your previous work.

Why? First, this is better for search engine optimization (SEO). When potential couples visit your website and explore multiple pages (such as arriving on your homepage and then clicking on the menu to visit your gallery page), this increases your average page per visit (the number of pages website visitors click through on average within one session). A high pageview rating on your website will tell Google that the information on this website is valuable and that visitors are interested in multiple pages you are providing.

It also is a sign to Google that people are staying longer on your website, since they won’t be “bouncing” or leaving right away. And this, too, helps your overall search engine rankings.

And lastly, it makes for a great user experience! Having your top videos in one place makes it easy for website visitors to find and watch (or binge) through.

Embed Videos

It’s important that you focus on embedding videos on your website rather than trying to upload them as normal files, which would otherwise slow your site speed down. Instead, upload your films to a service like Youtube or Vimeo, and then embed the code they provide in order to show it on your own website. If you’re on liveBooks, head on over to this article to learn how to embed videos onto your website!

Include Text Areas to Describe Your Work & Process

Don’t just let the videos do all the selling; be sure you are providing descriptions about your company, your experience and your work process, too!

Add text areas on your Home and About pages to allow potential couples to learn more about who you are, how you started in this line of work, and why they should consider hiring you instead of another videographer out there.

Start Your New Website Design Today

With a liveBooks website, you’ll be able to use our stunning, customizable website templates that look great on any mobile device!

We’ve also got a top-notch support team who’s here to help you every step of the way. Start for free today!

Your homepage, or start page, is the entryway to your entire website. It’s what your visitors see when they first access your website. It’s the best opportunity to catch their interest – it’s where their focus is at its finest. So why not use this to your advantage?

One of the many liveBooks features allows you to set any page on your website to be the homepage. Here are just a few ideas on how this great tool can work in your favor:

Set a Campaign page as homepage – online campaigns can help you gain more visibility. When running a campaign on your site, instead of editing your homepage, you can use another one specifically designed for your marketing purposes.

Set your Shop page as homepage – when you’re running sales, or have new merchandise you want to bring the attention to, this is the way to do it.

Set your Events page as homepage – any shows, fairs or other events you want to invite a large number of guests to are better shared the instant your visitors set their eyes on your website.

Set your Contact page as homepage – when you’re updating your contact information, email, phone number or physical address, you can opt to direct your clients directly to the Contact page for a set period of time.

To give any of your pages the homepage attribute, you need to follow these seven easy steps:

1. Log into your account.
2. Go to your Content editor.
3. Choose the page you want to use as homepage and click the Settings gear associated with the page.
4. Select Use as homepage.
5. When prompted on your decision, choose Yes. 
6. Your new homepage will have a small house icon next to the Settings gear. 
7. Publish your changes.

Unless you hide your original homepage, it will still appear on your website and function as any other page, leaving all your initial info intact. The only thing that will be different now is the first bit of information your visitors see when they enter your website.

As all businesses differ, so do the services and products they offer, and there are tons of ways to design your homepage with the liveBooks platform, whether it is a temporary one or the one you wish to settle on for a longer period of time.

To gain access to all the wonderful tools liveBooks has to offer, sign up for a free 14 days trial today!

On your journey as a small business owner, there will be a few tools that come up that make your life a whole lot easier. One of these tools is Google Analytics.

Google Analytics allows you to track traffic and data coming into your website. This information can make a world of difference in how you market your business and build your online presence. You can use the data Analytics collects to help you determine your next steps when it comes to revising your website and marketing to your customers online.

If you don’t have time to do an in-depth study on all that Google Analytics entails, then here are a few quick tips for navigating the analytical side of your business.

Audience demographics

As a business owner, you’re well aware that knowing your audience is key to building your audience and gearing your products or services towards them.

Google Analytics is an extremely helpful tool you can use to understand your audience. Under the ‘Audience’ tab, you can find a general overview that includes the percentage of users divided by country, city and language.

You can also enable the Demographics which can give you more details on the gender and age of your users. Knowing this information can help you determine who exactly is visiting your website and how you can cater your website to them.

Page traffic

While you can see how much traffic your overall website is getting by day, week, or even month, you can also determine which sections of your website are seeing the most traffic. By segmenting your analytics by page or post, you can see where your visitors are navigating to or spending the most time on. This is helpful knowledge as it allows you to see what your visitors are most interested in on your website.

If you received a significant amount of traffic to a specific blog post, for example, you might consider writing a similar blog post on that topic because it’s clear that it’s something your visitors are interested in. Similarly, if your About Page is receiving a lot of traffic, that tells you that your audience is interested in the story and people behind your business and you can build upon that.

Traffic acquisition

In addition to knowing who your audience is and learning where they navigate to on your website, a key piece of helpful information is knowing where your audience is coming from. Under the Acquisition tab, you’ll find ‘Channels.’ It’s here that you’ll be able to see which sources your traffic is coming from. The main channels include Direct, Organic Search, Referral, Social, Paid Search, and Email.

This information can give you a lot of insight into how people are finding your business online. If you’ve put a lot of effort into your SEO marketing, then you’ll likely see significant traffic coming from Organic Search. If you’ve been focused on social media marketing, then you’ll probably see a good amount of traffic from Social.

Bounce rates

Bounce rates can be tricky to understand. Put simply, they are the percentage of visits in which a person leaves your website from any page on your website without browsing further or clicking on any other pages.

Most businesses will likely want their website visitors to navigate to more than one page or blog post. A higher bounce rate (such as anything above 50%) means that many of your visitors aren’t exploring more than one page or blog post before leaving. This is seen as a negative “score” in Google’s eyes, because it assumes that those who leave that quickly didn’t find the information engaging and/or useful.

Focus on improving user experience on pages or posts with high bounce rates, and encourage them to click on other pages through buttons and links.

Optimize Your Website’s Design Today

If the data you see in Google Analytics isn’t what you’d hoped it would be, then it may be time to change up your design and content.

With a liveBooks website, you’ll be able to use our stunning, customizable website templates that look great on any mobile device!

We’ve also got a top-notch support team who’s here to help you every step of the way. Start for free today!