livebooks blog

Craig van der Lende has been a photographer since the early 70’s. He graduated with a business degree and got a camera from his parents for graduation. It took a year for him to realize he wouldn’t be happy working for someone else. In that year, he got valuable training in the computer industry and that started a life long interest in computers and tech.

His first photographic work was in journalism followed by studio product and people, followed by large format large set studio contract furniture followed by table top and food for national ads. The national ad work slowed down at the same time 9-11 happened and, for a time, Craig considered living off my investments.

That changed after he spent a couple weeks in Africa for an NGO documenting clean water projects and micro finance recipients. That trip made him realized that’s what made him the happiest – being a photographer. Craig decided to rebuild and rethink his career. Craig got back to his journalism days, added video and began choosing projects and clients based on the experience he would have and where the final project would take me next.

Today, he shoots a bit of everything – stills and video location and studio.

Q1: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?

A1: Clean, functional and diverse.

Q2: How often do you typically update your website?

A2: I try to update at least once a month, sooner if I have a project I am excited to show.

Q3: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?

A3: I show what I am most interested in shooting at the time. I have been showing a video on my home page that shows high tech manufacturing.

Q4: What is your favorite feature of liveBooks8?

A4: Video integration.

Q5: What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

A5: Show what you want to shoot and what sets you apart from everyone else.

I appreciate the liveBooks SEO. I get most of my clients from web search and don’t reach out to people for new work often. My liveBooks site has brought in most of my new clients.

See more of Craig van der Lende’s work here: http://vanderlende.com

We know that with the beginning of a fresh new year, many people get wrapped up in new projects and goals. Why not make one of them cleaning up your website?

Here are a few tips that will help get your website ready for a new year with a fresh start.

1. Update your image gallery: Sometimes you get caught up with work, whether it’s at photoshoots, editing images, creating editorials, and forget to update your website with the new images you’ve created. Updating your images is an important part of showcasing your work. This is especially important for your homepage. Now is a great time to look at your recent jobs and see which images would be best to showcase.
2. Check your links: It’s important to check your external and internal links continuously throughout the year. Links that don’t lead your audience anywhere create a poor user experience. They are less likely to go back to your website once this happens. It is especially important to check external links as other websites may change page names, website URLs, etc. Internal links are equally as important but are under your control. Check these every time you change a page name within your website.
3. Optimize your SEO: SEO is one of the most important aspects of your website! The liveBooks8 platform allows you to control SEO on a page/photo level as well as as on a site-wide level. It’s important that all of your SEO tags, descriptions and titles be up-to-date. Now is a great moment to look over these parts of your website. Still need some help understanding what SEO is and how you can optimize it on your website? Read here.
4. Remove any outdated information from your pages: As a new year begins, it brings the opportunity to showcase new works and events that you would like your clients to see and attend. Potential clients interested in attending your events and conferences could be lost if they see that you have not updated information for the 2018 year.
5. Update your website’s copyright footer: Your website’s copyright year will not automatically update. Make sure that if you have a copyright on your website and change the year from 2017 to 2018. This is especially important in the footer – the place where most people forget to look through.

These simple tips will make your website look both cleaner and more professional. As the new year begins, make sure to set aside some time to complete these tasks. They will make your website look both more professional and will help attract the right clients in 2018.

Rusty Bradford is a native Texan born and raised in west Texas. He moved to Santa Barbara, California to attend Brooks Institute of Photography where he acquired degrees in Advertising Photography & Industrial/Scientific Photography. Both gave him the knowledge to venture out into the world of advertising photography.

Rusty is an established Dallas photographer whose low-stress professional demeanor vividly contrasts to his edgy and explosive photographic style. Informed by his prolific experience with hundreds of photographers on countless locations around the country, Rusty has been able to cultivate a visual style that is uniquely his own. He specializes in product, food & drink photography.

2. How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?
Clean, Simple, Functional.

3. How often do you typically update your website?
Typically twice a month I sit down and update photos or edit content to help maximize SEO capabilities.

4. How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?
I try to pick images that will capture the viewers attention fast. Know who your potential clients are and pick images that you feel with grab there attention and showcase your talents in those clients eyes.

5. What is your favorite new feature of liveBooks8?
Being able to maximize my SEO capabilities through the new admin interface is my favorite new feature. It has allowed my to greatly increase my index rankings thru google. This was crucial for me since more and more creatives seem to be finding talent this way.

6. What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?
My one piece of advice for someone designing their website would be to start the process as soon as possible. There is always a learning curve and it takes a lot of trial and error to tweak the design to the exact way you want it. Be patient and try to have learn and absorb as much knowledge as you can from other people. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes at this point you will learn from them.

Check out more from Rusty’s website here.

Spring is officially here – the time of year where we can start putting away our winter coats and boots and get excited for warm weather, sunshine, and being outside. Spring is also the time of year that allows us to take inventory of the old, polish it up, sweep it out, and dust it off. This same concept of “spring cleaning”  should apply to your business as well – and most importantly your website. When was the last time you really did an overhaul of your site? If it’s been awhile, now is the perfect time and we’ve compiled a list of things to focus on first to get you started!

Content Clean-Up

Make a conscious effort to do a truly comprehensive content clean up. This can range from something as simple as going through your portfolios and galleries and deleting older photos, adding new work, or moving images around, to actually digging in to your analytics and seeing which pages get the least amount of traffic and editing from there. Website design trends are moving toward cleaner, simplistic, and clutter-free – so really evaluate whether each page of your website is absolutely necessary and providing value to your audience.

Update Your Events Page

One of the things we see all too often is event pages that are far outdated – even by a few years. Take the opportunity to make sure your website is updated with your upcoming workshops, speaking engagements, photo expeditions, or any other important events you’re partaking in. Nothing looks more unprofessional than inaccurate information on your website – plus, this will be a great way to promote the events you care about and hopefully garner more attendees.

Calls to Action

One thing we’ve often noticed that’s missing from photography websites are clear calls to action. While most of the focus should be on your imagery, you also want to make sure you’re telling your audience what you want them to do. Whether that’s booking you for a job, project, ad campaign, or even buying prints, tell them what you’d like them to do and make it easy for them to do it. Having a button on your pages can be an ideal way to lead customers to your end-goal: contacting you!

Update Your Contact Information

If you’ve recently moved your studio or changed your contact phone number, it may be time to look over your contact page. Is your new contact information up-to-date? It can become easy to overlook this simple step, but doing so may cause you to lose a great deal of clients!

Also, try to have your contact information readily available in multiple locations on your website. Customers don’t want to search through countless pages to find your phone number or address. Remember – adding a map to your pages can be an ideal way to attract new customers!

 SEO Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should be something you focus on all year ’round, but if it’s not your strong suit definitely take the opportunity now to pay extra attention. If your goal is to increase traffic to your website (which we think it should be!) then make sure your keywords, tags, descriptions, titles, and content on your pages are working for your business. If you’re not ranking as high with search engines as you’d like, it might be time to overhaul your old SEO tactics and start fresh with these tips!

Experiment With New Website Designs

We know that completely changing your website design is a huge undertaking – but small, subtle changes can be made to create a fresh new look without all the stress of a total re-design. Switch up the images on your homepage. Change the names/titles of your portfolios. Add a new page – such as a blog – to your website. All of these changes will keep your website up to date, as well as give returning clients new things to look at and explore.

Want to explore other design templates? Take a look at all of our responsive templates now to begin!

What “spring cleaning” are you conducting on your website? Email us!