Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Ingrid Kolnas and I'm the host of Sustainable Photography. This is episode 153, and today I've got Melissa Love with me. Melissa is actually one of my favorite educators ever. She is so clever and she just. She has the answers for everything, I'm sure. She's actually a web designer and a brand specialist for creative entrepreneurs. She's founded the Design Space, which is a WordPress theme company which really makes it easy to build a great WordPress website. She's not only taught me a lot, but she's taught thousands of business owners how to build their own beautiful websites. I'm not only in her membership, the Design Space, I'm also in her other membership, the Marketing Fix. So I get to hang out with Melissa a couple of times a week and she's just really so great at what she does. I learn from her every single time we talk. And now you get to learn from her as well.
You're listening to Sustainable Photography, a podcast all about business, business tips, inspiration and confidence building. I'm Ingrid Collness, the host of this podcast. And after over a decade as a photographer, I now help talented photographers run sustainable businesses. And for full transparency, you should know that I'm a mentor with paid offers and I will probably mention some of those in this episode.
Hi, Melissa. I am so excited to have you on the podcast. We talk all the time because you give me so much great advice when it comes to designing websites and I thought it was about time that the rest of my community knew about you as well. So why don't we just start with you introducing yourself.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Well, thank you for having me. Yes, we do. We talk almost a couple of times a week. So yeah, this feels a bit formal.
My name is Melissa Love and I'm a graphic designer and a web designer pretty much in the photography space. Have been for well over 10 years. But I also coach creative business owners with their marketing and I do too many things. I also own a couple of products which you can use to design your own website, specifically starcloud.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: That's really great. And you do know a lot about marketing and a lot about business. So I bet you have some thoughts around what it takes to actually make a business sustainable.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: Well, I think this is interesting because I've kind of been on. I feel like I'm on my second or third time round. The mental resilience you need to run a business in the long term. So I. After several business failures and disasters, which I guess becomes part of your origin story, so 15 years ago was when I started my business as it is today, as a kind of graphic designer, which just arose by chance. My parents are graphic designers and I was running a magazine. And that kind of evolved into also doing people's websites. And I had two kids under five in this kind of period of first trying to kind of claw my way back to earning a living. That meant I didn't have to go back out and do my old job. So I worked many, many long nights, especially in the school holidays. I just got so burnt out. And that was my first. It took about two and a half years for me to get to that point. And I was broken. I was, like, hardly getting any sleep. I was juggling so many clients, and I was in that state where I really wasn't charging enough for my work. So I was taking on too many clients. And I never wanted to say no, because what if nobody ever booked me again? So that kind of treadmill of you can't get off in your trading time for money. And I just thought, something's got to change. And that was probably the first. That was the first time I created any kind of product which I could sell. And I got lucky. Like, my first product didn't go very well, but within a year, I was just kind of at that time when page builders were becoming a thing in WordPress. So I was building in WordPress, but the hard way, like coding from scratch. And then the first one I came across was Divi, and I was already using elegant themes pre Divi, and I'd been working, so I was building sites with it. And then I just thought, no one is selling any products for this. I was already selling quite successfully in the photography market through profoto, through their marketplace. And that had brought me some breathing space. It was bringing in a couple of thousand dollars extra a month. And I was like, this feels good. It was getting me through the school holidays, and I just saw this massive gap in the market. So I kind of approached the guy who owns it, Nick Roach, and said, hey, Nick, how do you feel if I. If I build themes for Divi? And no one was doing it, no one was selling. There were no marketplaces, nothing. There was no plugins. I was. I was the first person to ever sell a product. He was like, yeah, yeah, go for it, whatever. And we kind of jointly announced it in this kind of divi group of 30,000 people. And people kind of lost their minds. They were kind of saying, oh, my God, how dare you design a product that costs more than a Subscription to Divi does.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: Oh, they were angry. I thought you were going to say they went crazy for it.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: No, no. So there were those people and then there was like the hundreds and hundred hundreds and hundreds of people who bought it. So it was really interesting. So I remember there was this huge kind of. It blew up and everyone was like talking about it and this is crazy. Who does this? And I kind of said, look, it's a bit like ikea, you know, you could build your own table, but it probably wouldn't be very stable. Or you could employ, like, an amazing, like, cabinet maker to make you the best table in the world, but it would cost a fortune. But most of us go to Ikea and we get something which we can do ourselves, but has some great design kind of principles underpinning, and it just works. So kind of that was my way in, my first experience of having where I thought, this is actually really sustainable. I can create products, I can still work with clients, but I'll only take the ones I want. And because I had less time, because I started to focus on the product business, I was like, started to put my prices up from £1,000 to £2,000 and people were still queuing up to work with me at £5,000. And I thought, right, I think I've hit my sweet spot. And I did that for a long, long time. And I've probably launched too many things now and probably my focus is a little bit split. So I'm back. My kids are now grown up, so I'm actually having a refocus on what does sustainable look like now as I get to being not an old business owner, but an experienced business owner who wants to take a bit more time for myself. We've just moved to Spain. I want to enjoy my life here. Yeah, I don't know the answers to that, to be honest with you. When you have a mature business and a team, suddenly it's quite hard to take a step back. So I'm just working it out again, I think for the second time round.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: I think it's important to kind of keep in mind that what once did work and what was sustainable might change.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: And to just check in with yourself, like, am I enjoying what I'm doing? Is there something I can keep doing for, like, this year and the next year and the next year? Or do I want to make a change? Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: And I think, you know, it's coming. I've been feeling like I knew I wanted to make a change once we arrived in Spain and I'VE given myself a year's kind of grace to make it happen and to start to pull back a little bit and find ways of, you know, focusing on those things. And, you know, I always find with these things, there's never a dramatic moment where you're like, brilliant, I've made that change. It's like turning a big ship. It's very slow and it takes a while because you have to get everybody on board who is, you know, certainly when you get to your business is a little bit mature and you have a team of people, you can't be making quick decisions or letting anyone down. So, yeah, slowly. Slowly.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I think slowly can be good. I think it's so easy to think you have to do it really quickly and you have to rush things.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: It's like almost a competition, like, who could do it first. And I don't think that's a lasting way of doing it.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, there's no overnight successes. Like, I had lots of failures along the way. Things that worked and suddenly things that worked really well, then things that flopped and I think.
So you have to remember that if you're then trying to just reassess or reposition how you were in your business, that's also going to take time. It took time to get to where you are and it's going to get time to make adjustments to get back to what you think is sustainable.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: I definitely agree. But what we are supposed to talk about today, that is web design. So why do you think it matters when you're a creative, why do you think it matters to have a great website?
[00:08:07] Speaker B: Interestingly, I think over the last, let's say, five to seven years, as Instagram and other visual social platforms have become more powerful, that it's very easy as a creative to think, oh, my Instagram game is good. That's where people are going to find me. The problem is, especially if you're a photographer, I want you to just take a moment and think about what happens in the real world. Because what actually happens is people might find you on Instagram, but then they're going to need to go to your website to get your prices. So they'll have already had a good first look, probably on a mobile. It's probably someone who is. Maybe if you're a wedding photographer or a portrait photographer, it's not people's main job to be finding photography. So they're normally doing it in their downtime. They're sitting on the sofa with an iPad or they're on the way on the train on the way to work, and they will have made inquiries with three or four photographers. And at some point, that person is going to say to their partner, listen, we need to make a decision about the photographer. Let's sit down and do it. And at that point, they're not going to go to Instagram, they're going to get out their laptop, their biggest look. We need to see these pictures properly. And that person is going to have a face. Right. And if you're their favorite, they're going to try and sell you to this other person. And if you don't give them a really great tool where the experience is excellent, where they can easily find your best photos. You know, if you've just got a blog and they have to pour through them, they're not. If they can't find your best photos because they're normally thinking, oh, I love this one. Right. She took this amazing photo. Let me just find it. Oh, hang on, I can't find it. Maybe it's on her blog. Oh, maybe it's on her Instagram. Never mind, let's move on to the next person. And you've missed that opportunity to be sold. So, you know, at that point, people aren't comparing Instagram with Instagram, they're comparing website with website with website. And that's why you cannot take your eye off the ball when it comes to your website. I know it's tempting. You're like, everyone's just on Instagram. It's not when it. Not when it comes to making the decision. Not at crunch time.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: I think so, too. I think. And I also think, like, with Instagram, everything's easily the same. Like, all you see is this feed. And then you have like maybe two sentences in your bio where you can use your words and say kind of who you are and who you work with. But on your website, you have this space and it's all yours. No one can tell you, like, oh, you're not supposed to post that.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: And I see especially with, like, boudoir photographers, they get kicked out of Instagram all the time.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: So I think just having a place that's all yours, it just. It makes such a big difference.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Well, I actually lost my meta profile. It got banned or something on Facebook and Instagram last year for about eight weeks. And it was right before a huge launch, and I just was, like, massively panicking, but it took me eight weeks to get it back. I was just gone. And then in that time, and I had to kind of beg to get it back and at the time I thought it was important, but I was just reviewing our sales from that point last year and they didn't dip. They didn't take too much of a hit. I was able to post through one of my. I made a new profile and got back into some groups and it was a bit traumatic, but it did make me think, gosh, I'm so glad we have a solid email list. You know, the website is strong. It was a real lesson in like, oh God, maybe I'm a bit more dependent on social media than I thought.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: I think when you are used to using social media and then just having someone go over to your website if they want to, I think just having a website isn't enough because I've seen plenty of amazing Instagram feeds and then going over to their website, it's like, oh, okay, this isn't really giving me the impression that I thought it would. Like, your website can definitely be hurting you as well.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Because people think maybe this person isn't that serious.
Maybe they're just a part timer. They haven't got a great website. I don't feel like they're as legit as I thought they were.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Exactly. So is there specific things we should have on a website to make sure that it's actually giving us clients and not just having people look and then just leaving?
[00:11:57] Speaker B: Yeah. So there's five things that I would say. First of all, you need a homepage that makes sense and people get really hung up on. What should I put on my homepage? If you look at any of the templates we design or ones that we do for clients, your homepage is like the movie trailer for the rest of your website and it should reflect what's in the menu. So if your menu says home about portfolio info, testimonials, blog contact, that is the snippets you should have on your homepage. Whatever you're going to put as your positioning statement in the hero header and that's a whole other positioning statement, that's a whole other discussion. But below that you have a little snippet of about you call to action. Then you'll have your portfolio calls to action. Then you might have a testimonial. So that kind of helps people's mind really relax because like it all makes sense. And also Google likes that it makes sense with the menu because you get two types of people, like my father in law, who's a maths teacher and used to be in the military. He's only ever going to click on the menu button. He will not scroll down and like click on a random photo.
It's not him. Whereas I'm like, I'll just scroll and be like, oh, click. And off I go. So different types of people and you have to cater for both. So having an orderly homepage that makes sense doesn't mean it has to be boring. It just has to be in the right order and have calls to action to all the key parts of your site. So that's the first one. The second one is like having your portfolio set up to sell. So for people who are like, yeah, I don't want to maintain a gallery for my best images. People can look through my blog. I'm like, as we've already talked about, when it comes to other people trying to sell you, they're going to get bored. And someone else who has. You have to have your best of the best in a gallery. But below that, on that same page, we always encourage having two or three very carefully handpicked blog posts, not just leaving it to chance, not your latest ones. Two or three that you've perhaps written the title of to specifically appeal to a particular niche. So if you are shooting DIY backyard weddings, you might say DIY Backyard Wedding. How one couple saved money by doing everything themselves. So people go, oh my God, that's us. Or Laid Back Castle Wedding with a marquee festival.
How one coupled it. So you want to be thinking, I am like a wedding blog. I want to make sure there are things where people cannot wait to read this because they see themselves in it and they are your ideal clients. So you might pick two or three ideal clients and imagine you're hand picking three blog posts just for them. Forget about the SEO in the title, just rewrite those titles so that people cannot resist clicking them. So yeah, sure, let people browse your blog, but don't it has to come above. It can't be more important than your main amazing gallery. So that was the second one and the third one, which I know you want to talk about today, is most photographers don't have a sales page because they hate the word sales. And it sounds like something like sales pages, I think, oh, it's a big salesy thing. Like someone's selling a course and it goes on forever. And it doesn't have to be like that. So in all of our templates we include a page called the Experience.
And a sales page really is just a handling their objections. So presenting anything that might stop them from booking with you before they get a chance to ask You. So leaving no question unanswered, like, do you hate being in front of the camera? So do I. Here's how I learned to overcome it. And this is why you should work with me. So you're presenting yourself as the solution to their problems. You are also establishing your expertise by showing empathy that you understand how they feel and then making sure you've got testimonials and things which prove that you've got some FAQs and you've got a final kind of what I call a personal sales letter, which is like at the end you have a call to action where you reassure them that here's what's going to happen next and you are that person. But also in the middle of that, you should be covering your process. So I know I'm using the same example, but if you're a wedding photographer, you've been to 100, 200 weddings, they've never organized a wedding. So whilst we might know that a wedding day naturally breaks down into five, six, seven sections, like getting ready, first look, blah, blah, blah, they don't know that. So if you lay out your process and show some images that you captured, these special moments of the day, they'll be like, I haven't even thought of that.
This is so. They'll think, this is so reassuring. Because the job of that sales or experience page is for them to get to the end of the page and when they come down to choose that final photographer, they're thinking, you know, she's a bit more expensive, but to be honest with you, she really knows what she's doing. I'd rather pay a bit more for her than take a risk on one of those other people. So your website's job is to eliminate risk for that person, to position yourself as the least risky option so that they're not making the decision based on price. Any.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds like a really good idea and a really great way of doing it.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So that was the sales page. The final thing was your contact workflow. So imagine all the time you've put into your SEO, your Instagram, you get someone to your website, they even fill out your contact form. And I was a photography conference last week and I said, show of hands, how many times do you follow up with someone once they've inquired, what do you do? They're like, oh, I send them an email and then I maybe do one other follow up. I was like, man, you know, these people deserve the red carpet. Whenever I work with a client inquirers, I will often go and audit their website and fill out their contact form just to see how many people have like a really boring message. Like your form has been successfully submitted. Like the most boring message ever at the time when they are the most excited to work with you ever. It's such a letdown. So your contact workflow begins with that, but it should be redirecting to a page where there's a little video of you. I'm talking like you walking the dog. I'm not talking like a fancy video at this point. Most photographers have really great headshots and that can be a little bit intimidating. So at this point you want to be in your office or where they're likely to or out walking a dog so they just see a friendly face and think, oh, this person looks cool. You know, they're not intimidating. My best advice is take that 30 second video, never watch it again because you'll hate it. But just put it straight on your website.
Doesn't matter if there's kids running around. People love that or cats or whatever and just do it. And then below that you want to remember you're establishing your expectations. Like drop in a grid of blog posts all about wedding planning. Or you maybe have a link to your brochure because they're not filling out your contact form just for the fun of it. They want your brochure or your pricing. So give them what they want. Send them an email that's automated which also gives say, hey, I'm sure you're after my pricing ratio here. It is like no gatekeeping. This is like I'm out shooting a wedding but I'm going to be in person. I'm going to personally be in touch with you in the next 24 hours. And then I have a little app like if somebody is like making inquiry about a website, I get, I don't know whether you use this in build. I use Bonjouro and I get a little notification and I don't care what I'm doing. Like I'm in the supermarket, doesn't matter. I'm like, hi, just wanted to let you know I got your inquiry. I'm out doing this, but I'm going to send you. Just thought you'd like to put a face to a name, blah, blah, blah.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: I love that.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: You know, they love that. And then I'm going to follow up with two or three emails giving them all my free resources for planning their website. You'll do the same thing for planning your wedding. And you know again, when they come and sit down at to make that final decision, you know, are they going to go with the person whose voice and face they've seen a couple of times, who they've maybe gotten a call with? Are they going to go with the person who sent them all this cool, helpful information and has taken their inquiry really seriously, you know? Or are they going to go with the person who did one follow up and, you know, didn't really do anything personal? They're going to go with the person who seems like they care more.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: I think so too. And I don't know how many times I've talked to someone who's like, oh, no, I don't follow up. If someone wanted to work with me, they would care more. And it's like, do you know how busy people are?
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: Like, your email could have gone to spam. They could have just been distracted and someone else is doing the following up and that's the person who's booking them. Like.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: If you actually want to take this seriously, you need to show that you care.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: Yeah. But I love that idea of doing that video. I used to, when I did more like weddings and elopements, I used to do that with loom. Like I'd send them like a hi, just got your message. But I love how you're just doing it, like wherever you're at. And I think that's taking it to another level. I think that's brilliant.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Don't take it too seriously. It kind of ruins it if you try and be too serious. Like, people love it. Like, I used to like send them when I was walking my dog. I'm like, I'd show them the dog. Or if you're a photographer and you're actually shooting a wedding, you're like, hi, I'm at a wedding. Show them the wedding. Like, that's so cool.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Oh, that's amazing.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: Yeah, Just, it doesn't make you unprofessional, it just makes you real to them.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: That's a really good idea because I think if you do have a really professional presence on your website, it, it might make you seem like a bit unapproachable. So you showing your like real self. That sounds like an excellent idea.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Especially if you're a photographer because you're going to be with them like in their family home maybe or at the wedding at a really intimate time. So at some point you've got to start establishing that rapport which is going to translate into being a real human person they're going to meet. So.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
If you Want your own custom website or help with your business in general? You can send me a DM on Instagram. You'll find me ingvillness. That's ing V I L D K O L N E s Right before the end of the year, that could really be the perfect time to invest in your business so that you can start off the new year the right way. With that said, I definitely also recommend Melissa and everything she does. So check out the StyleCloud and the marketing fix as well. You'll find all the links you need in the show notes.
Okay, so you've told us all the things that we or some of the important things that we need to have on our website, but you can put all that stuff in there and it's not going to look very good. So how can you make sure that you're designing it in a way where it actually looks professional and that it's templates in line with your own branding?
[00:21:29] Speaker B: That's such a good question.
Very few people start, like, open a website platform with a blank page and start from scratch. I would say, like, 99% of people will have bought a theme or a template as a starting point. It's two things that happen. They haven't perhaps looked at the combination of fonts, colors, and images that come in the demo site and analyzed why it works. So before you touch it, go and do a walkthrough and think, now, why does that work? And you might think it's those two colors together, or it's the way that there's negative space in that image with the type laid over it. There's going to be a reason why it works and why the designer has chosen that. So go through and think, what do I need to preserve in this template at all costs? The other thing that happens is people end up shoehorning. Like, there's a nice little paragraph in the template, but you've actually got seven paragraphs. So you put it all in there and you've got, like, you start off, you end up with a massive long column of text with, like, loads of white space. So you're like, oh, God, what do I do now? So I see kind of what I call it, like the white column of doom. And it's too much text to read in one go. So with most templates, you can always duplicate a page and just go and have a practice, you know, try duplicating a section that you like and breaking that text up. Most people put too much text in one big block and it's too much People just skim straight over it and don't read it.
And I've got some great exercises. I can share a link if people want to do like a free design class with some exercises in Canva on breaking up text into small chunks and presenting breaking down chunky copy into several ideas.
It's all about how the human mind works and how the eye works on the page. That's really fun to do. And the third thing that people don't do is they're like, yay, the most exciting thing right when you start a new business, it's like, yay, I'm going to design a logo and choose my colors. And it's like that when you start a website, yay, let's start designing. But there's a step you need to kind of do before that, which is to have your brand guide. So I don't go anywhere near a browser till I have absolutely nailed down with a client all their logo variations, all their colors, all their fonts, even right down to what button's going to look like. We don't get. We do all of that first. And again, I've got a brand guide that you can a Canva one like there's loads on Canva. Just search for brand guide on Canva and do that work first. It will repay you 100,000 times. It will stop you doing what I call panic designing where you're like, oh no, I'll just use this font and you know, and I'll just go with this color for using a color picker. It's not my brand color, but it's near enough and those that attention to detail really matters. So, you know, brand guide stops you kind of going a bit off piste and getting lost in the details.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: And that's something that I see a lot as well, like the use of like five or seven different fonts or you know, whatever. But how can you choose the right ones? Because there's, you know, there's so many to choose from. And should you choose stuff that you love, is that like the key to just finding the right things? Do you think about your client or how do you do that part?
[00:24:18] Speaker B: Okay, so there's a kind of, I think of it as like a three cornered stool. Like you've got your ideal client, you've got things that you love and then you've got what your work looks like. So sometimes people will do a Pinterest board for me and it'll be all like floral and light and pastel and then their work's really dark. And moody. And I'm like, oh, this isn't feeling good. So when I get people to do a mood board, I make sure they pin their actual work on there as well. And so those three things. But also you might be someone who like goes motorbike in your spare time and exclusively dresses in leopard print, but you're trying to shoot fine art weddings. So that there's going to be, I've seen things like that. There's going to be a disconnect. So it's. Those three things have to be in balance. So you just have to ask yourself, is one of these things too dominant? Does it feel a bit off? Should I tone this down? So that's kind of the overall thing. But in terms of choosing font, if you just have a logo and you don't have fonts, it might be worth going to back to either some. If you designed your own logo, maybe find someone who's willing to do a little brand treatment with you. Or, you know, maybe you've probably bought a template because actually it looks quite like your brand already. And in that scenario, it's not a bad thing to go with the fonts that are in a template because they work. What I would do is find out what those fonts are, put them in a brand guide. Does it all work together with some of your images and just do that exercise on paper? I have got some resources on kind of what I call type hierarchy. So what do you do? Because what you don't want is for your logo font to be fighting with your heading font. So I kind of have a top down approach where we start with the logo. Sometimes that font, if there's a font involved in a logo, will also work for headings, but other times it won't. So we just work down from heading, subheading, body, copy, call to action, and just make sure nothing's fighting with each other, that you understand the differences in sizes. So it's just a simple exercise. And if you're putting together a brand guide, you'll naturally go through that exercise where it all goes wrong, where you say where you see five or six fonts. What tends to happen is people will put in their two main fonts, but they will accidentally leave some of the fonts from the template in there as well.
You'll start by changing one button, but you won't consistently change the style of all of the buttons.
And I know why you do the homepage like, yay, this is fun. And the about page is fun. And then you're like, oh, faq is such a boring page. All contact can't be bothered. You kind of run out of steam. So the poor inner pages are like your sad, neglected children who you haven't bothered to do the buttons. You've left some other fonts in there. You've left some of the colors from the template in there. You've just run out of steam. So, yeah, that's what I tend to see.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's very relatable to a lot of people because that's just the case very often that you just. It starts off being fun and then the fun stops and you haven't done your homework ahead of time. And I also know that a lot of people are very focused on, I don't want to choose, like, my brand stuff because I like so many things. I don't want to be, like, tied down to a brand. I just don't. I just want to do whatever.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: What would you say to those people?
[00:27:14] Speaker B: You just won't get the polish that a professional designer would bring to a job, which is our job, is massive attention to detail, to think about what a button looks like on. In every scenario, hovered hover states. So that's when you see a design and you think, that's excellent. It's because the detail is there and consistency. The font sizes are the same in every given scenario. Like, there's not three different heading font sizes. It's all very, very consistent. And that gives people a feeling of peace as well. It leaves them free to enjoy your work instead of having a jarring moment where they're like, oh, new color or random font.
It allows people to just relax because they're in good hands and just focus on your work.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: So it really does matter for your business as a whole that you thought this through. Okay.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: So I know we've kind of talked about this already, but are there other mistakes that you see a lot of people making or, like, some common things that are like, yeah, don't do this.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: I think sometimes I see people who don't give enough information. Like, they'll have a. Just some lovely images on their homepage, but says, you know, I photograph beauty. And that's all great, but I'm like, but where do you live? Like, sometimes I find websites where I'm like, I have no idea where you live. Are you near me? How can I book you for a portrait session when you might even be in another country? There's just, like, no clue to what kind of people, what kind of packages they offer, what kind of work. So sure. Be kind of artistic and whimsical, but also make sure you're giving them some actual hard facts so that they can. They're not going to waste. You know, I think when people can't really glean enough about you, they're unlikely to fill out the contact form because they don't want to waste their time.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so too. And I think that a lot of the time it's also because you don't want to leave people out. Like, if I don't say where I live, then I could be for everyone anywhere. And I think then you're probably missing out on the fact that you're not going to get any clients local to you and a lot of people are going to be hesitant about reaching out at all because they don't know.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: Yeah. So is there other things that we need to do to make sure that our website is both beautiful but also works well?
[00:29:23] Speaker B: Well, the other thing I see is people don't have enough of the different types of photos you need for your website. So some photographers shoot exclusively in landscape, but we actually need portrait images for two column layouts all the time. We also need images with lots of negative space so we can lay text over them. I've got a blog post which I can share with you. I don't know whether we can put it in the show notes. It's the five types of image you need for your website and it kind of just walks you through. So next time you're out shooting, you can have a mental list. Next time you're at a wedding or shooting a session with a family or whatever you do, you can have this little mental list of, right, I need this kind, I need a process image. That's me doing my thing. I need this, I need a details image, I need this. So I've got kind of this list of images that you should look for. And if you get into the habit of shooting one or two for yourself and for your website each time you do a job, then you'll soon have a really good bank of photography. And also make sure you do have some professional headshots shot by another professional photographer as well.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I've seen so many websites where there's not a photo of the photographer. Like you have no idea how they look and you don't know their name because they, maybe their business isn't called like their name. And it's like, I don't know what your name is, I don't know how you look like. And that matters because it's such a personal thing, photography. So you want to make sure that you kind of get to know the person a bit. So those things are really, really important.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: Oh, and the other thing is, you know, I think vertical video is such so strong at the moment. I'd want to perhaps see some maybe gifs or mini videos. Like instead of a static portrait image, it'd be nice to see a little bit of vertical video. So next time you are out shooting, just grab some. Especially for your wedding, like grab a groomsman, they love this, and ask them to shoot some behind the scenes of you doing your job. Just say, could you shoot like a minute of me taking photos of the couple or whatever? And then you can take that and you can just put it in slow mo and do a six second gif and you've got a nice little bit of moving image of you doing your thing. So I think people are looking for a bit more.
You can also kind of, you know, Rebecca Carpenter is a good friend of mine and she's a great example of someone who grabs someone like a bridesmaid or someone and says, can you shoot behind the scenes to me for the next five minutes? And then she intercuts that with the finished image and makes a nice little reel and puts it on Instagram. So something like that is a great little piece of content, which, yeah, that.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Is a good idea. But you just touched on something that I'm kind of curious about and that is video. How do you add video to your website without it being too slow?
[00:31:44] Speaker B: So I'm a big fan of using GIFs for like tiny like clips of looped video. If not, you're just going to make sure you upload it to something like Vimeo or YouTube and embed it. You're never going to upload a big video to your site because it just won't play on mobile or whatnot. But if you're streaming it from a hosting service, you're fine.
[00:32:02] Speaker A: That's good. Okay. So probably the most important part of your website is the very first bit. Like the place where you land without doing any scrolling. How can we make that really powerful and strong and showing what we do without someone having to click on something or do anything?
[00:32:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's such a good question. What I see a lot, and we call when something, when a website loads and what you can see is called above the fold. And that's like a hangover from newspaper production. It was when you saw a stack of newspapers folded in half like you still see it. Anything you can see above the fold is really, really important. So I see a lot of people have Best London Wedding Photographer as the first thing that you see when a website loads. No, you know, these people are there because they're for a really emotional reason. They've fallen in love and they're getting married or they want to book a family shoot and they're like, it's not really going to do it for them. You know, if you can structure your heading tag so that Best Wedding photographer is small, but that's your H1 and your H2 that says something emotive. What you're looking to create is some kind of positioning statement. If you are more confident with your copywriting, you can play a bit faster and looser with the rules and have like a simple statement. So I would look for a description of your photography, but below that you want what we call a positioning statement. And if you're not a copywriter and you don't want to play fast and loose with the rules, there's a simple formula which is what do you do, who do you do it for and how do you do it differently from someone else? So you might say heartfelt, emotion fueled photography for carefree, loving couples who don't love, who don't want endless posing, you know, who don't want to feel like they're this, or who want to feel relaxed. So that's a simple formula anyone can use to create a positioning statement so people can go, that's me. It's like a piece of hand raiser content.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: So yeah, I think that's really important. And maybe also include a note of where you are, like, are you in my city? Are you in another country like you said. Yeah, I think that's really good. And the reason you're here today is because I've learned so much from you. You have your Marketing Fix membership and then you have StyleCloud. Can you tell us about those two things?
[00:34:12] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. And it kind of goes back to what we were saying about sustainability. So I've been designing WordPress themes and templates for a really long time, but people said to me, oh, but how do you use them? I'm not that confident with WordPress. So I built a course and then people said, great, I've built my website, I'm really happy with it, but I don't know how to do marketing. So yeah, so that's why that's evolved to become the marketing fix. So the marketing fix is for any creative business though we also have like randomly we have a couple of accountants we have some of an opera singer. It's quite interesting. Yeah. But it's essentially a way to be mentored on a kind of weekly basis. We have five hours of live coaching a week with various different members of the team. We've got like a tech expert, a copywriter and me, we've got a social media expert. Plus there's a bunch of courses inside which teach you how to build like your basic marketing plan and your basic marketing funnel. But the value is probably in the hands on coaching every week and we love doing it. It's our favorite. It's our favorite thing.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's great. It's such a good community and I haven't met all the different coaches, but I've met some of them and they're just so lovely. And yeah, it's just a really nice, nice space.
And StyleCloud, that is for designing WordPress websites. But I know that the second you say WordPress, so many, I would say, especially maybe photographers, they get really scared and it's like, no, I heard that's really complicated and I don't know how to do any coding and I don't want a WordPress website. Can you kind of say something to those people who are scared of WordPress?
[00:35:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So WordPress has changed enormously over the last five years. So if you're kind of thinking you haven't used WordPress for some time, I think you'll be really pleasantly surprised to see that it's very visual, front end, you can move things around on the page, drag and drop, and you can just click on something and start editing it. So things have really, really changed. And WordPress core, WordPress itself, like it used to be, that you've probably heard of big page builders like Divi and elementor core. WordPress itself was quite hard to use for ages, but over the last two years, what's happened with what they call the block building system is, you know, it's massively, massively improved. So now you don't need these big, heavy, slow, bloated themes. Instead you can just use the block builder itself with a couple of plugins to give you some extra kind of controls. And that's what we've done. We've built a big library of layout themes and blocks which work directly in the WordPress Builder. So you're never just stuck with one theme. You've got access to 14 themes and they're all broken down into blocks. You can mix and match the blocks and the layouts from everything. They're all designed to work together, you don't have to store them in your site, they're stored in the cloud. So when you pull down a section or a layout, you only just pull down that particular thing that you need and it magically takes on your fonts and your colors. So yeah, we kind of built the tool that we wish we had as web designers and then once we built it we're like, this is pretty cool, maybe other people want it.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: I think that's really great. And I don't know if you have any advice when it comes to choosing a platform like WordPress versus Wix or Squarespace.
[00:37:11] Speaker B: I'm a big fan of WordPress. I mean, I've been using it for 15 years, so obviously I'm very invested in the community. But WordPress is the only platform which is owned by the people. It's owned by a foundation, it's protected, you own your files on your own server, you rent your own space. That sounds really complicated. It's literally you just do it with one click, but no one can take it away from you. So the number of people I've migrated away from Squarespace, where we've lost all their blog posts or had, they had to be recreated by hand. And the same with wix, like if those companies change their terms of service or heaven forbid, I don't think they will go away, but if they did, you're not left with anything. And if you're using WordPress, please do go for a block based theme because even if you switch your theme off, your content is still just there on the page. It might be unstyled, but you're not going to lose any of it. So for me it's just the safest long term bet. But it's also probably in performance terms, in terms of speed and SEO, it's also the most well structured.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I've seen the same thing that you have where a client has had a WIX website and then it's like, okay, but you don't actually own the content. How are we going to get it out of there? And then you can't export it out. You have to, like you say, you have to copy and paste and it's just really hard and they can increase their prices at any moment and then you'll be, yeah, you'll be stuck unless you change it. So yeah, I think that's, that's really hard. But I also know that it is a lot easier now to use WordPress than it used to be. I've also used WordPress for such a Long time and. And I've tried different builders like you mentioned Elementor and I used Beaver Builder for the longest time and when I started getting more into doing web design for other people, I was like, okay, so it has to be Beaver Builder because it's so easy to use.
But then that changed because Kaden suddenly appeared and that changed everything. So I was really happy when I found you because you have so much great advice about using Cadence. And of course you have StyleCloud, that is such a great tool. But how do you know if you should go for like the DIY approach and kind of set it up yourself or if you should invest in someone to do it for you?
[00:39:22] Speaker B: I think there's choices in between that too. So if you are quite creative and you like the idea of doing your own website, by all means you should definitely do that because it gives you the confidence to go forward and manage it. But if you're stuck for time and you just think it's just not my thing, the thought of it fills me with dread. Yes, it's a great idea to outsource it, but there's probably a hybrid scenario where, like, for example, at StyleCloud we offer like a VIP session so you can do as much as you can yourself. Then we'll come in and help you tidy it up and check it on mobile. So you can often hire someone to help you just polish it up so you don't have to. It's not like all or nothing. What I wouldn't do. And if someone comes to me and they're just starting their photography business, they're like, I want a custom website. I'm like, this is not the time for you to spend £5,000 on website, my friend. Your work is going to change. I was like, buy template. In two years time, your work will have evolved. That's the time to invest. So don't spend big at the beginning, you don't need to, because modern design templates are so good and WordPress is so easy to use these days, or Wix or whatever you want to use.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you're right. I would recommend a website for most people, but if you're just starting out and if you're just figuring things out, then, you know, get your first clients first and then you can start like getting your first website together and then once things are going better and you have the finances in place for it, consider letting someone else help you out, because you're not supposed to do everything yourself. I don't do everything myself and I'M sure you don't do everything yourself either. Yeah. So I think as photographers, maybe all creatives, we tend to think, like, we have to do all the things ourselves, and that's just not the case.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And the same advice goes with people like, should I have a different website for my family photography versus my wedding photography? And the answer is, get the proof of concept first. Like, you know, if you must have a second Instagram account, cool. But before you build a second website, make sure you're getting plenty of bookings in. And if you ask those people, did it, did you feel put off by the fact that I also do wedding photography? Like, most people are going to say no. People ask me this all the time. And in 99% of cases, often the clients are in the same circle of life. They're getting married, then they're gonna have kids, but they also might start their own business. So they want branding photos. It's very rare that I'll say, yeah, go and create a whole separate website for that. Normally it should be a nice circular ecosystem that kind of feeds. Feeds each other.
[00:41:43] Speaker A: Yeah. So in what cases would you recommend having two websites?
[00:41:47] Speaker B: Oh, if you do weddings and, say, sporting event photography, sure.
[00:41:52] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:41:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Or, I don't know, motorsports, boudoir. Who knows? If it's a really incongruous combination where there's no crossover between those two audiences, for sure, spit it out.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. That makes sense. And it sounds like you kind of recommend that you do the thing first and then you make the websites. And a lot of people would think, like, I need to have everything ready before I can start offering it.
[00:42:17] Speaker B: Well, that's where landing pages come into play. You can build a whole subsection of your site just by having a little mini menu on a landing page, so they can easily flick between the pages they need. They feel like they're in the section that deals with the thing they want. And at some point you might think, do you know what? I really do want to separate these. But I can afford to do it because I've got this revenue coming in and that side of the business is growing and it needs to have its own specialist brand. What I see is a lot of people having, say, Joe Smith weddings and Joe Smith brand photography, and the two have so much overlap that they're cannibalizing each other with SEO. So you just have to be sure that it's the right time to do it.
[00:42:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And will it hurt your SEO if you have a lot of different kinds of photography? Like, is it best if you focus on, like, I only do weddings. Or is it okay if, like you do weddings and then you do family and then you do new were in like.
[00:43:10] Speaker B: No, I think it's. It's fine. Because what you're doing, you're marketing to the same client just at different stages of their life. So you know what, in that scenario, you wanting to position yourself as their life photographer, you know, capturing all the different aspects of their life, from their weddings to their family milestones to their business triumphs, you know, you are their life photographer.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: That sounds really nice.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, it's absolutely fine. And what you might want to do is build different landing pages with blog posts that feed off in a kind of silo to help you get found for newborn photographer at your area or whatever it is. You can work on your SEO for those individual kind of strands of what you offer. But, you know, it should be a selling point that people are saying, I'm here to capture, you know, all the best parts of your life.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: I think that sounds amazing and I think a lot of people have something to think about now, like, should I add another website or can I just use the one I have and just make it a bit better? And yes, maybe I should wait until I actually have a few clients before I have the need to actually make that website, like, offer what I want to do first.
[00:44:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And if you really have to start another social media account, and that's also a lot of work in and of itself. If you add on another website to maintain and to blog from, you know.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: Yeah, because one thing is the making of the website, but then there is like the upkeep as well. My website used to be both in English and Norwegian and I thought, like, that's fine, I can make both. But what I hadn't thought about is, like, whenever I would update on one, I would have to go in and update on the other as well. It wasn't the best for SEO to have two different languages. That might have changed now, I don't know. But that was like the thing I hadn't thought about was like the extra maintenance part.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:44:59] Speaker A: Yeah. But thank you so much, Melissa. This has been so interesting and you've mentioned a few things that you might share links to and I will add that to the show notes. But if someone is interested in Learning more about StyleCloud to learn more about how they can create their own website in an easy and also beautiful way, where can they go?
[00:45:23] Speaker B: It's StyleCloud co.
And if you go to free StyleCloud free. You can grab some blocks and have a play and connect to our library and.
Yeah, so that's quite fun. But yeah, just come to. If you just go to StyleCloud Co and you've got some questions, jump into chat and we can direct you to all. We've got a huge amount of resources for training and trying demo sites and all that kind of stuff.
[00:45:48] Speaker A: Perfect. Okay. I'm going to link to that in the show notes as well, because I think.
Well, first of all, I do want people to understand how amazing WordPress is and I think that a lot of people could do more themselves and if they don't want to, there's a lot of solutions for that as well. You design websites, I design websites and I think different stuff is the right fit for different people. So. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:46:12] Speaker B: But even if you do work with a designer, make sure you get some training so that you don't feel scared to update it.
[00:46:17] Speaker A: Absolutely. I think that's key as well, to know how to add, to change out your images. Because just because you have finished your website doesn't mean, like it's done forever. You do need to keep it up to date.
[00:46:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you so much, Melissa.
[00:46:33] Speaker B: Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
[00:46:35] Speaker A: Yeah, this was a lot of fun and thank you.
[00:46:38] Speaker B: Cool. All right then. I'll see you soon.
[00:46:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Bye.
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