OT – Please pull my website apart and generally criticise my work.

I would love to hire a professional web developer with a specialist interest in the creative arts to advise me on my website, but I can’t.

So in the interests of being a total cheapskate, and in full expectation of pics of MTBers farting rainbows, I’d be very grateful for all and any opinions on my tired old website. It’s here;

North east wedding photographer

Whilst most of you are not necessarily my target market, I appreciate your skillz when it comes to picking up on grammatical errors, web-type stuff and so on. So go on, rip it to shreds and I promise not to sulk for too long.

Why do I ask? Bookings are down (way down). Lots of new competition with (sometimes) crap photos but cheap prices seems to be the main issue. I’m doing something wrong, but not sure what. This is my seventh year in ‘proper’ business and it’s looking dire.

Seems OK to me.

Missed a space at the bottom “Why choose Emerson Photography?page”.

Some speeling mistakes, sit with a proof reader.
I like the slideshow on the front page, I normally get quite bored looking a photos that the photographer thinks are good, but aren’t. For me the product is good/interesting enough to look further.
Not too sure about having testimonials.
Link of “weddings” takes you to quite a busy page of “weddings and portraits” and doesn’t really lead you anywhere.
Photos look good.
Good luck.

Site looks OK to me (I haven’t looked for any errors though) – I think the problem you have is search engine optimization. I googled a few phrases like north east wedding photographer etc and didn’t see you anywhere on page 1 of google. If people can’t find you they can’t book you.

That’s where i’d be putting my money, organic SEO. Try and get that testimonials page as full as you can, and look at the way the site works with SEO. Installing your blog on the site directly will help, as will making sure keywords, text etc is all search engine relevant. Keep the front page often updated with relevant content, a good way of doing this is by putting your last blog entry on there. If you can afford it, doing things professionally will probably cost you several hundred pounds a month but looking at what you are charging you are well placed to recoup that investment fairly easily.

The following packages are both designed to be very flexible.

and three are listed… 🙂

I dunno. There’s nothing about the site that enthuses me, nor puts me off, but then I’m not currently looking for a wedding photographer.

I do hate slideshows on the landing page though. If I’m bandwidth constrained (say I’m mobile) then it just takes too long to load. I’d stick that on another page (gallery?) and keep the front page simple.

‘Free embossing’ after having paid £1100 is probably a line I’d take out.

Site looks slick though. Might be the problem. Ever considered setting up a more ‘budget’ looking site as a sideline?

Why do I ask? Bookings are down (way down). Lots of new competition with (sometimes) crap photos but cheap prices seems to be the main issue. I’m doing something wrong, but not sure what. This is my seventh year in ‘proper’ business and it’s looking dire.

I think there are a lot of pro wedding photographers in the same boat, too many weekend amateurs prepared to do weddings for pocket money.

A mate of mine in the trade, had his trade drop from 80 weddings down to 20 pa, because of amateurs offering cheap £200 weddings!

He switched from digital and now offers quality modern, large/medium format film based weddings pictures, hand printed, not so much work, but the work he does get, pays far better.

[edit] sorry forgot to say, the website looks good to me, some nice work too 😉

Grand, thanks! Scuzz – can’t find that missing space – can you point me at it please?

DonSimon – off for a proof read and you’re quite right – the ‘Wedding’ page should ideally take clients to a page of wedding stuff minus the portrait stuff. I’ll get on it.

nickdavies – I’m constantly trying to get up the SEO ladder and it’s one of the few areas I actually do know a little about, but the competition is ridiculous, especially with new-start, redundancy-cheque photographers dropping thousands on SEO consultancies. That’s really going to have to continue being a slow-burner.

druidh – ‘both’ now gone, thanks! First thing I did when I got a smartphone was to check the slideshow for speed and it loads instantly over phone network, so I’ll leave it unless others report problems, ta!

billy – fair point – maybe I could reword it – the embossing costs me £30… Not sure why I’d want a budget site though – can you expand please?

Thanks for all this – very much appreciated!

A few things come to mind,what about civil partnership ceremonies, they do happen,pink pound and all that.

Prices seem a bit high for a cd disc, you need added value,how i dont know.

You dont give a registered address incase of complaint or somebody wanting to visit.

But otherwise a nice site.

You’ve disabled right click, this displeases me! If I want a picture I can just use whatever tools menu and view source anyway. Why do you have 2 news links, one at the top and one at the bottom? The bottom one seems a bit redundant.

The whole little rss feeds/news/links bit looks a bit like an afterthought to me and looks like it’s just been slung in as it won’t fit elsewhere. Personally I’d just add the rss icon in the relevant pages next to the title or something, anyone who uses rss feeds will recognise the icon anyway.

I really like the site to be honest, it would have everything I would have been looking for, lots of information, clear examples of your work etc. You will probably find that as said above, a lot of people are getting friends or cheap photographers who are very basic in their approach to do it (same as we did).

‘Weddings’ just aren’t affordable any more and photography is probably one of the things I see on forums that people are willing to forgo against numbers of people invited….. in retrospect, I wish I’d pay more but there is such a big jump, it’s either a few hundred quid or £1000 which is ridiculous. That said, you offer a much better package than 10 of the people I looked at when we were looking into it!

Edit: take out the bit about not being contactable until 2nd Feb! Out of date info instantly makes a site seem out of date….funny that :/ besides which, I really, really wouldn’t do that on a website. It’s your business, if you are out of circulation, get someone else answering for you. Brides need attention the very second the thought pops into their head. Seriously, could mean the difference between a full day booking and no day booking.

Not sure why I’d want a budget site though – can you expand please?

Maybe just to cover two different markets. Some will open your site and be put off because it does look plush. If a second website looked a bit more basic, with maybe the cheapest option being a couple of hundred less (I don’t know your overheads and what you need to charge) you may just pick up the bargain hunters out there.

I googled a few phrases like north east wedding photographer etc and didn’t see you anywhere on page 1 of google. If people can’t find you they can’t book you.

If it is a new site it may not be indexed yet?

OP – you HAVE submitted it to Google for indexing haven’t you?

My opinion – a professional could do better (especially making the site responsive – very important nowadays given that mobile access to websites will soon overtake desktop usage) but given you don’t have a budget to do that it is fine – it does a job.

If I was looking at that site as a potential customer I would be thinking ‘they won’t be the cheapest out there, but they will be bottom to mid-range, certainly not the most expensive option’. Is that where you sit? If so then you are on the right track.

To me the site looks nice enough and I like your photos (which aren’t too wedding-typical – no pictures of bloody cufflinks, for a start) but seeing as you asked for criticism: 😈

– if you go to your blog right now, what appears immediately underneath the words “Re@lly, re@lly b@d wedding photography…”? 😆

– can you not integrate the blog into your main site? can the blog design not have the same look and feel of the site? don’t have a blog if you’re not going to keep posting something (you have been and it looks good, tho).

– do you really need a blog and a news page?

– rewrite the “about” page to make it flow – we get one para about you then suddenly we’re interrupted by some links (why?), then some more about you, then a photo of some cameras then “dusty old cameras” (which is in the same type as the article text but is in fact a caption), then some more about you, at which point you mention you went to art school and have a degree in photography. That’s called burying the lede in journalistic circles. In an industry where there are so many amateurs, don’t you want that to be more clear? Namedrop the institutions.

– you might want to stick a photo of you in a suit, at a wedding, taking photos. there are going to be plenty of unimaginative Mrs Bucket types who are going to think “what’s he going to do, show up in a furry hat to the church?”. The punters are spending thousands on making stuff look pretty – make them feel comfortable that you’re not going to look like some kind of STWer. 😉

– On the blog page of the site: blog shouldn’t be followed by an exclamation point. Should “north east” be capitalised? I can never remember – either way, do it consistently across the whole site. Don’t use elipses…ever…

– I’d remove the RSS stuff from the bottom right hand corner – realistically are many people going to keep reading your website after they use you? Ditto the copyright stuff in the bottom left hand corner – it’s not promoting your business.

– don’t welcome me or thank me for coming to your website. Don’t ask me to friend you – have a Facebook button if you must.

– the same page is described as “Why Us?”, “Why Choose Us?”, “Why choose E—— Photography?”

– I would have the “contact” page as the very last (i.e. top right hand corner) and the “about us” page as penultimate.

– is anyone else unable to right click on links (e.g. to open in a new tab)?

– your contact page says you’ll be unresponsive until February 2012. Don’t put brackets around 0191. Put your email address on the contact page.

– there’s a stray character a couple of lines above the South Causey Inn bit on the venues page (which, by the way, is a good touch). You need to make the titles consistent – it is wedding photographs, photography, photographer…?

– remove half of the exclamation marks!

– On the pricing page, remove everything between “I’m” and “help!”. Put the three packages into three columns so it’s easier for me to see what I am getting. Show more images of the albums – this is the takeaway that I’m going to be showing off to Auntie Mary for the next twenty years.

I’m just a punter so feel free to ignore some or all of this as uninformed ramblings. I wouldn’t say that any of this would jump out at me if I didn’t spend a lot of time at work writing and editing documents where precision is a big deal.

as above re: contact page dates.

some of the offers are out of date on portraits too.

You need to keep the site up to date or people will go elsewhere.

Try and get the homepage to all be above the ‘fold’ so people don’t need to scroll down just to find the footer. Other pages it’s not necessary on as they have more content.

Great stuff – thanks again. Just having lunch but will come back for a closer look in a wee bit…

A few things come to mind,what about civil partnership ceremonies, they do happen,pink pound and all that.

Good point.

The “Wedding Photography Gallery” needs me to click again to get to the gallery. From the front page, I need to click three times just to get to see some wedding photos.

The photos with the geezers in the kilt, the guy at Sunderland FC and the bride in the black dress need to be much more prominent. You don’t want to look novelty, and they may not be typical necessarily of the weddings you photograph, but they are eye-catching photos that (if I were a bride sitting surfing wedding websites) I’d want to nudge someone and say “hey, check it out, look at this one”. I can’t remember whether it’s Kelvin McKenzie or not but someone at the Sun in the 80s called this the “‘ere, Doris” factor – writing stories that would make the readers turn to the person sitting next to them and say “‘ere, Doris, have you heard this MP wants to ban page 3/that Freddie Starr ate a hamster/that they’ve banned conkers in schools now?”.

I can’t comment on the website, since I know naff all about this sort of stuff.

However…a friend of mine, someone I went to law school with runs a website full time which is hugely popular (Bridesupnorth). It’s doing so well that she’s ditched her career as a lawyer to focus entirely on that business. I can put you in touch with her if you like? She looks to link up with people providing wedding services.

nice site, my only concern would be the lighting seems a little odd/dark in some of the sample images. I guessing its a deliberate look your aiming for, but to my untrained eye they’re not really pulling it off. You may want to look into improving your “photoshop” curves and levels skills. But the real arbiter is the customer and if they’re happy that’s all that matters.

I clicked through to the blog, where I saw your company name with “Really, really bad wedding photography” written beneath it 🙂

That made me Google for “Really, really bad wedding photography”, for which you’re the top result.

Right….

billysugger – my prices are as low as they possibly can be – I promise they’re not just plucked out of the air, but based on a survival budget. Also, there’s no way I’m going back to the early days of loitering around horrible working mans’ clubs after a ceremony at the Civic Centre, all for £300 🙂

Mastiles – I’ve had the site for years. Every page has metatags, titles and keywords. All recent pictures are tagged before leaving Lightroom. And yes, it has been submitted to all the search engines.

You did raise a crucial point though (and it struck a nerve tbh) about my place within the market. I really, badly want to be in the upper eschelon of North East photographers. My work is consistently as good as any in the region IMHO but I fear I’m still in that lower / middle bracket in my clients’ eyes at least, and they’re the ones who matter. Perhaps I just need to spend some cash and get a properly designed site – this one’s a template job from Photium.

That said, I know photographers who have achieved this by simply doubling their prices 🙂 (really!).

Konabunny – thanks for all the feedback. Yes it probably is time for a new blog post – that ‘Really, really bad photography’ post has got more hits on my blog than pretty much any other though 🙂

I absolutely will have another look at the ‘about’ page and get the pertinent info to the top. I just don’t like to sound as if I’m bragging (not a good trait in this industry). Similarly, I do take your point about the eye-catching, ‘ere Doris photos. I’m always a little worried about alienating any of my older clients with anything too over the top or different, and that would also include gay weddings. The North East really is still very conservative in its outlook if not its politics, at least round these ‘ere parts – less so in Newcastle, which isn’t far away…

Lots and lots to think about – thanks again. RSS feed icon will go, will have a think about News and Blog pages and integration. The Portrait page is already now under reconstruction so please ignore the holding page…

peterfile – I have worked with Julia and am on her site – search for Don’t tell the bride or just Emerson Photography on her site!

peterfile – I have worked with Julia and am on her site – search for Don’t tell the bride or just Emerson Photography on her site!

Ha ha, that’s awesome! Small world eh? 🙂

nice, a few spelling mistakes and I would maybe center the menu at the top, other than that, very nice.

I like your photos too, very professional. I had a look at someones photos supposedly done by a pro photographer for their wedding the other day……..bloody awful, a group photo taken at a dreadful angle. Lots of B&W photos but the bouquet was in colour, made the bride look ill, but my favourite was the bride and bridesmaids had their pic taken on a chez long (spelling) but the focal point seemed to be a gas radiator and lots of rubbish and strange things just lying around like dress bags and coat hangers.

Klunk – I do specialise in dramatically lit wedding portraiture – perhaps that’s what you’re seeing? Not to everyone’s taste, I admit, but it’s one of the few things I can do easily and quickly during the crazy rush of a wedding which sets me apart from the weekend warriors.

EDIT; peterfile – aye, it is indeed! here’s a link to the stuff on bridesupnorth…

http://bridesupnorth.com/?s=jamie+emerson

I just don’t like to sound as if I’m bragging (not a good trait in this industry).

Fair enough and I am not criticising – just alluding to the point that people have very short attention spans so if you bury stuff, they won’t find it. Practically no-one reads anything in detail.

You did raise a crucial point though (and it struck a nerve tbh) about my place within the market. I really, badly want to be in the upper eschelon of North East photographers. My work is consistently as good as any in the region IMHO but I fear I’m still in that lower / middle bracket in my clients’ eyes at least, and they’re the ones who matter. Perhaps I just need to spend some cash and get a properly designed site – this one’s a template job from Photium.

Perhaps you do then – at the end of the day who do you trust to buy photographic gear from (apart from obvious recommendations)? If you need something and you search the interweb you immediately form an opinion about the business – do they look cheap, do they look knowledgeable, do they look expensive etc and that comes down to user perception. In the absence of any personal contact, that perception comes (in part) from the design and usability of the website. Of course the quality of the photography is also very important too, but you need to get people to go past the homepage and to do that they need to think they have come to the right place for their needs.

And another way of upping your game – and it sounds simple – charge more. Charge double. People buy based on perceptions – if you charge the lowest rates, your customers will expect the lowest quality.

The first thing I would like to say is that your photos got my attention in a good way, and IMO that really counts for a wedding photographer.

I’m sure a photographer posted on here not too long back, and website aside I thought he couldnt take a good photo!

Not my area of expertise at all, but should you be putting prices on your website? It could work in 2 ways. People will either click and imediately think they can’t afford it, or click and think your too cheap (yes some people are like that)

Wouldn’t it therefore be better to word in your potential market ie ‘we offer value for money’, or ‘we offer only the finest materials etc’ if you get where I’m coming from?

At least then you might get leads you may not have other wise got?

Edit: Just read the post above mine ^^

Please note, I am unlikely to be able to respond to emails or phone calls until the 2nd February 2012, but please do go ahead and leave a message and if I can respond, I will, thanks!

I’m sure you can remove that now

Looks ok to me but this tickled me “short wedding package” I immediately thought of height restrictions and under a year marriages, been to a few in each of theses categories!!

Can I also suggest you do research into your competitors ? You may of course have already thought of this ! Find out who is getting all the business and have a look at their sites.

Also, do some customer research, find out why people come to you, and what you could do better. Be prepared from some honest responses.

This link in the footer is not much good

http://www.jamieemersonphotography.com/latest.xml

Klunk – I do specialise in dramatically lit wedding portraiture – perhaps that’s what you’re seeing? Not to everyone’s taste, I admit, but it’s one of the few things I can do easily and quickly during the crazy rush of a wedding which sets me apart from the weekend warriors.

I understand that, dramatic lighting can be good, it’s not really the point I’m making/the issue I have with them. Setting myself up to be shot down here but The lighting your using is pushing the subject b&g into the background and washing out the faces (which should be the focal point of the image. You just need to adjust the lighting in post to bring them back in a touch.

please excuse the copyright infringement to illustrate the point (mousedown prevention is very easy to get around btw). Its a global pass on the image for a quick example its a minor adjustment that needed.

Every page has metatags, titles and keywords. All recent pictures are tagged before leaving Lightroom. And yes, it has been submitted to all the search engines

Which is all great but SEO has moved on from here and these are the basic minimums that all sites will have as a matter of course. To feature well in the SERP’s you need to be looking at content and advocacy and how to improve both of these.

To help here you need to start with looking at
[list][*]Home page content (and then the others)[/*]
[*]On page keywords[/*]
[*]File and image names[/*]
[*]Inbound links & gaining traffic[/*][/list]

The last point is a big one. The more popular your site the higher it will rank. If you were bringing this to me as a job I’d suggest getting yourself on Pinterest, your area of business is perfect for this.

after all the fancy marketing talk, flashy websites and sales pitches, the images are what count.

Yet the gallery is one of the hardest things to find on your site.

On the subject of your blog: maybe try WordPress? Blogspot looks nasty, in my opinion, and the single scrolling page just feels cumbersome. WordPress has some very nice (free) templates that would match or compliment your personal site. Also, the blog hyperlink that leads from your site should open a new tab/window so that your site remains open in the viewer’s browser.

From a technical perspective: your framing is, to my eye, a little uncomfortable and ill-considered in several images and some of the darker images feel a little drenched in processing. The ‘you may kiss the bride’ image is just a bad photograph – out of focus, poorly framed and carries a real sense of unease. The picture of the couple standing in the castle ruins (Jesmond?) is similarly uncomfortable, although it is at least in focus. Personally, I would remove them from your portfolio/site.

The paler/softer images, like the girls in an embrace, are much more timeless and ethereal in their feel – something that people are really (typically) going to be looking for in wedding pictures. I’m not saying that all pictures should be like that, just that you really seem to be more sympathetic with that style and is probably has a broader appeal for weddings.

Use less vignette. Everyone should use less vignette. Softening contrast and boosting blacks on minimal vignette will give a more natural feel whilst still helping to pull the eye into the image.

I get the feeling that you are bored with wedding photography.

Bruneep – changed that, thanks for noticing – I’d forgotten all about it.

Mastiles – I’m actually toward the top end of the middle group price-wise in my region – everything is cheaper round here – I just want to make the leap into the next level.

FunkyDunc – Thanks for the comments. My plan is to just have one strating price with add-ons.

Hels – I keep my enemies very close 😀

Klunk – thanks for the critique – it really is always appreciated. I use both PS and LR but mostly the latter these days. I’ve just had another look at that image and if I were to brighten the couple any more, I’d burn out the white highlights which (for me) is a massive noob error. I do take your point though.

Three Fish – I’ll probably stick with Blogger as it’s directly linked in with Google and content on the blog does very well on Google (see previous post re. ‘Really, really bad wedding photography’ 🙂 You’re quite right about the link opening in the same window – I’ll get onto that ASAP.

I know exactly the image you mean in the home page slideshow and have agonised about it myself – it IS slightly soft, but for me, it carries the emotion of the moment well, so despite being less than perfect technically, I’ve left it in. And yes, I agree that the Jesmond couple photo ain’t the best and should go – they also aren’t my target market which is another good reason to lose the photo (I’m not age-ist, just being business-like!). Honestly, I thought I was pretty sparing with the use of vignettes 🙂

Whilst I accept the critique, I can only honestly assure you that I most certainly am not bored of wedding photography – on the contrary, I am still completely in love with my job – just slightly frustrated that I seem to be in the same place I was five years ago!

I’ve just had another look at that image and if I were to brighten the couple any more, I’d burn out the white highlights which (for me) is a massive noob error. I do take your point though.

the image i posted is adjusted from your original, could be adjusted even more if i had the time to use masks.

Ah, OK I see. Yes, yours is certainly much punchier – I’ll give it a whirl but leave the BG as is – hopefully the couple will jump out a little more then.

I like the slideshow on the home page. But I would change the order they load in – you want the first 2 or 3 images to have real wow impact – your first image of 2 girls hugging each other doesn’t do that.