Seem to be stuck with Getting new business

[PatrickMont]

Hello,

I am having troubles getting my photography business really up and running. I have a number of photographs that have had many compliments on but I just can't seem to get anyone to purchase any of my prints or order any services from me. I am not sure what area I need to improve with. Looking for any help to get my business' wheels moving instead of spinning. Thanks.

Photography by Patrick | Myrtle Beach,SC | Portraits | Wedding | Engagements


Photography by Patrick | Facebook

[Dangelica]

You may want to do a couple of things with the website.

I'd lose the waving banner text and replace it with something easy to read. I would also lose the music. Your first page needs to load quickly preferably almost instantly even for slow connections. lose the big ugly facebook ad in the top right and either put a small facebook logo on the bottom of the page or on your contact page. People are there to see your work not your social network. Make sure your site has appropriate meta tags and see what you can do to optimize search engines.

Your link above says portraits, weddings engagements. Yet i get to the site and see nature animals and action. You may want to define what area you want and put up pictures in that area that pop. Not a selection from every area. Sure have galleries of other work accessible but your portfolio needs around 15 shots that pop in your main area. Make sure they REALLY pop.

The first page really didn't draw me into wanting to click links to read further. i would suggest having a look at some top photographers sites and see what they have. Clean and crisp with easy to read info is always best. If you dont have tons of money to throw at a website smugmug and the like are an excellent investment.

You cant just jump on the web and leave it at that though. You need to get your word out in forums, business cards flyers advertising trade shows magazines etc. Reasearch your market and see where you need to concentrate efforts.

Its hard work and grind every day to get it up and running you cant just put up a site and wait for business to come to you. you need to herd the masses into you.

[TheApprentice]

Originally Posted by PatrickMont

Hello,

I am having troubles getting my photography business really up and running. I have a number of photographs that have had many compliments on but I just can't seem to get anyone to purchase any of my prints or order any services from me. I am not sure what area I need to improve with. Looking for any help to get my business' wheels moving instead of spinning. Thanks.

Photography by Patrick | Myrtle Beach,SC | Portraits | Wedding | Engagements


Photography by Patrick | Facebook

Hi Patrick,

I hope you don't mind if I'm frank with you.

It seems quite complicated to buy something from your site. The pictures in your gallery are too small and flow into each other. I also get the impression that most people shots are from your family. You need to get some better portfolio up there.

On your order and pricing page I need to scroll the text in the little box to see the copyright notice. There is enough space on the page so maybe get rid of that box.
I next tried to find out which pictures are for sale and the price but unfortunately I'm either asked for a password or my email before I can even see a single picture.

I would get a free web traffic tool like Google Analytics. Use this to see where visitors come from and where they get lost on the way to hire you or place an order

Didn't try facebook as I don't like the way it changes my privacy settings.

[Loose_Canon]

Two suggestions: lose the music and change the waving text. Both are amateurish.

Clean & simple = professional. Anything else is a turn off.

[ShantDotMe]

I'm a web designer developer & this might be hard, but I really do hope it helps.

If you are looking to make a new business online & get clients from the site than you should loose the site all together & start from scratch. I bet you are shocked now, maybe you want to stop reading my comment & even block me, if not here is why.

Cause your site is FLASH based, although it will look nice it has its drawbacks, here are some.
- Not everyone does have flash player! Although 95% of people on PCs do, there is 5% that don't.
- People with low end PCs will have trouble playing a flash site, specially when it is as big as yours.
- iPhone & iPad do NOT support flash (there was 2 million iPads sold in the couple of weeks, some of which might be potential client of yours.
- A lot of other mobile brands do not have flash player installed or do not have it at all! & even if some do, it will be somehow impossible to load your site on a mobile
- You site does take a lot of time to load, that might be due to bad flash coding (all pages loaded at once) & the music player you have.
- Flash sites are not Search Engine Friendly. ie, search engines, usually can not index what you have as content hence can't send visitors to your site, cause they (Search engines) do not know whats inside your side.

Just google your domain name you will see that google will show just 1 page indexed. take another photographer site, which doesn't have his/her site totally in flash then you will see that google has indexed more than a page from that domain.

Now that I have stated the problems, the solution is to start a NON-Fully Flash based site. but before you do that, its good to check your statistics & see if you are getting visitors, & if you are how are they getting to your site. If you don't have a statistics program installing google analytics as TheApprentice suggested should be the way to start.

PS: Before we jump in to Flash is/is not ok debate, let me tell you that I'm a flash fan when it is used moderately.

Let me know if you need further clarification or do have other questions. I'll be more than happy to help.

[kuvahmagh]

Really quickly, I don't mean to offend but, I am on a 6mbps high speed connection here and I had to wait for 4 loading bars just to view your homepage, as soon as I seen one I would normally have turned around. I didn't have the patience for the whole homepage to load though and got away from it as soon as I had something else to click on. I'd also say get rid of the facebook ad and the wavy text, people want to see what your about not how good a coder you are. Other than that I didn't stay long, I hate flash.

[Niresangwa]

I only briefly looked through your facebook page... (your website was slow to load and difficult to navigate, sorry) ...but I think your business focus is a field that is waaay too saturated for your images to really make an impact in.

As everyone knows on here and constantly squirms about, photography in general is an over-saturated market, but portrait/lifestyle/wedding photographers have an edge in that people will always want to buy images of themselves/family/friends etc.

...in my mind, photographers who hang out their shingle peddling images of sunsets/bridges/ships/leaves/birds etc. either better be selling something truly sh!t hot or cross their fingers they get a shot that has a personal connection to someone (you may get lucky and get a picture of the bridge some guy proposed to his wife on 50 years ago. maybe).

I guess if you're truly committed to this landscape-fine art deal, then start pounding the beat with local galleries and publications who may have a need for local architecture and landscapes and build relationships that one day MAY lead to business.

I noticed from your FB that you had a shot in a local cafe so you seem to be making in-roads in that last regard.

Another thing I noticed from your FB was that you're constantly posting about deals and trying to sell-sell-sell. As I understand it, this is generally bad practice.

Previous critiques did the website to death in their thoughts, but +1 for what they said. I dont like Wix, its really hard to make it not look cheap. The gallery ports need work. While I love Last of the Mohicans, and especially that music from the soundtrack, it really doesnt work for me.

My advice would be to find your local contemporaries and competitors and compare how your business system LOOKS compared to theirs. Because when potential punters are sizing up photographers, LOOK is mostly all that will matter. If they can find you that is.

Hope you can take something from all of this, and that you can get it up and running!

[Jim Bryant]

You really, really need to edit your images.