A photographer website that brings bookings

A photographer website has one job: someone looking for a photographer for a wedding, a christening, a family shoot or product photos should, within a minute, see your work of exactly that kind, get a rough idea of the price and check whether you are free on their date. If the portfolio is organised by type of shoot, galleries open quickly on a phone, packages have a starting price and booking a date is one button away, the site starts bringing bookings. If it is one endless gallery of everything you have ever shot, the visitor goes back to Google and opens the next photographer.

The portfolio: by type, not in one pile

A bride is not looking for product shots, and an online shop is not looking for weddings. Split the portfolio into separate pages, or clearly separate galleries, for each kind of work you want to sell, and put only your best frames in each. Fewer, stronger photos work better than two hundred average ones.

Separate pages also help in Google, because "wedding photographer" and "product photography" are searched for separately. How to make each one sell is covered in a services page that sells.

One rule: only show photos of people with their consent, especially children. Agree it in writing in the contract for the shoot. This is general information, not legal advice; ask a lawyer about your exact obligations.

Large photos without a slow site

Photographers have a problem other trades do not: the whole site is made of large, heavy images. Upload frames straight from the camera and the gallery will load so slowly on a phone that people give up before they reach your best work.

Here is an example calculation. The numbers are rough, to show the scale of the difference:

Google gives exact figures for the last row: at equivalent quality, lossy WebP images are 25–34% smaller than comparable JPEGs [2]. And if the gallery loads photos as the visitor scrolls, the phone downloads only the first few, and the rest arrive when the visitor gets to them.

What the site should do:

1. Keep the original with you and put a resized copy on the site. Nobody views 6,000 px on a phone.
2. Give each screen a photo in its size. The browser picks which copy to download itself when the site offers several sizes [4].
3. Lazy-load only the photos further down the page. Google specifically advises against delaying the first large image that is visible straight away; lazy-load only the ones off screen [3].
4. Serve WebP with a JPEG fallback. That is how this site works too: every photo has a WebP version, and the original stays for browsers that do not support it.

More on speed in why is my website slow, and on phones in a mobile-friendly website.

A photographer's portfolio is browsed on a phone, in the evening, between other things. If the first frames do not open at once, nobody gets to your best wedding.

Photos and Google

Google works out what is in a photo from the text around it, the file name and the alt text [1]. Its guide gives an example: a short, descriptive file name is better than IMG00023.JPG [1]. For a photographer that means:

• names like wedding-plovdiv-ceremony.jpg, not DSC_4821.jpg;
• short alt text that says what is in the frame, without stuffing keywords (Google explicitly advises against it) [1];
• a few sentences of text on every page: where you shoot, what the session includes, who the photographer is.

Add photos to your Google Business Profile too. Google asks for JPG or PNG between 10 KB and 5 MB, recommends 720 × 720 px and photos without heavy edits or filters that represent reality [6]. Setting the profile up from scratch is covered in how to set up your Google Business Profile, and collecting reviews from happy clients in how to get more Google reviews.

Packages: a starting price and what people get

"Call for a price" sends people to compare someone else. Show your packages with a starting price and the same rows in each, so they are easy to compare:

Add a short "How it works" in a few steps (enquiry, call, deposit, the shoot, the finished gallery) and a few questions with answers: what if it rains, can I have all the frames, how many photos will I get. And tell people about yourself. With a photographer, they are also choosing the person who will be with them all day: what to write on your About us page.

Booking a date: one button, few fields

Weddings and events are booked by date; portrait sessions by time slot. So a photographer's site usually needs two things:

• For weddings and events: a "Check a date" form. Date, city, type of event, roughly how many hours, phone or email. You reply personally, with a price and the deposit.
• For portraits and mini sessions: a booking page by time slot. Google Calendar, for example, has appointment schedules, which create a booking page from your available hours [5]. You set one up on a computer, by default it does not allow bookings less than 4 hours ahead, and some features need a paid Google Workspace or Google One subscription [5].

If you are not sure online booking is worth it for you, read online bookings: when they are worth it. The "Check a date" button should be visible on every page, especially on a phone.

A checklist you can copy

• A separate page or gallery for each type of shoot you sell
• 15–30 of your best frames per type, not everything at once
• Written consent for the photos of people you show
• Resized photos, WebP with a JPEG fallback, lazy loading further down the page
• The first large photo loads straight away
• Descriptive file names and alt text
• Packages with a starting price and the same rows
• "How it works" and questions with answers
• A "Check a date" button on every page
• Photos and a link to the site in your Google Business Profile

A website or just Instagram?

Instagram is a great shop window, but there your frames are ordered by date, not by type of shoot, packages and prices are hard to find, and your profile rarely comes up in Google when someone searches for a "wedding photographer" in your city. The good combination is both: Instagram for the everyday, a website for the decision. More in website or Facebook page.

If you would rather not think about image sizes, hosting and maintenance, Studio V1 builds websites for small businesses for about €50 a month: design, build, hosting, maintenance and minor updates, with a real person to talk to and the first version live within 7 business days. See our projects or get in touch.

References

1. Google Search Central. "Google image SEO best practices." developers.google.com/search
2. Google for Developers. "An image format for the Web (WebP)." developers.google.com/speed/webp
3. web.dev (Google). "Browser-level image lazy loading for the web." web.dev/articles
4. web.dev (Google). "Serve responsive images." web.dev/articles
5. Google Calendar Help. "Create an appointment schedule." support.google.com/calendar
6. Google Business Profile Help. "Manage your Business Profile photos & videos." support.google.com/business