Nicole Begley (00:00)
In today's episode, we are talking all about websites and how your website might be costing you bookings, especially the end of 2025 going into 2026. The websites of yesterday just aren't cutting it anymore. So stay tuned for a good website audit.

Nicole Begley (00:20)
I'm Nicole Begley, a zoological animal trainer turned pet and family photographer. Back in 2010, I embarked on my own adventure in photography, transforming a bootstrapping startup into a thriving six-figure business by 2012. Since then, my mission has been to empower photographers like you, sharing the knowledge and strategies that have helped me help thousands of photographers build their own profitable businesses. I believe that achieving $2,000 $3,000 sales is your fastest route to six-figure businesses.

that any technically proficient photographer can consistently hit four figure sales. And no matter if you want photography to be your full-time passion or a part-time pursuit, profitability is possible. If you're a portrait photographer aspiring to craft a business that aligns perfectly with the life you envision, then you're in exactly the right place. With over 350,000 downloads, welcome to the Freedom Focus Photography Podcast.

Nicole Begley (01:19)
Welcome back to the Freedom Focus Photography podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Bagley. And today we're doing a little something different. I'm going to dive into a website audit and I want to walk you through some of the most common websites mistakes that I see photographers making in 2025. And most importantly, what these mistakes might actually be costing you. So by the end of this episode, you'll know exactly what to look out for on your own site, what's working, what's not, and what to do about it.

All right, so let's dive into it. Your photography is probably incredible, but your website, if it doesn't reflect that, you are likely losing bookings and you might not even know it. And what I mean by that is if you're running a high-end luxurious brand and your website feels kind of dated and hard to use and the messaging's not clear, like there's a disconnect there and you're never really going to build the value and the desire for what you're offering people without

updating at that website because here's the other thing when someone ⁓ gets even when they get a great referral from somebody else from a friend and They're like, my gosh. Yes. I'm definitely gonna book her. can't wait they're still likely gonna go to your website before they reach out to you and contact you and If your website doesn't match that glowing referral that their friend gave them Well, they're likely good amounts and you're not actually going to end up with that client. So

building our website is just such an important thing. And, you know, I've been working with photographers for, a decade now, helping them grow their business. And I've seen a lot of websites. I've seen a lot of really beautiful websites and I've seen a lot of, well, not so beautiful websites. And so I wanted to put together a list for this episode today of really the top 10. I ended up with 11 because, I just, just couldn't get it down to 10.

So you have a bonus mistake. But some of the biggest mistakes that I see, and I want you to mentally audit your own site as we go through these. So are you ready to dive into it?

So mistake number one, that is an outdated design. You know what I'm talking about. I remember when I started this business in 2010, everybody had the same kind of template that you'd go to a landing page. It was just like one image in a two by three aspect ratio with just white all around it. There was probably music. You would click through, there'd be like a gazillion buttons and a gazillion pages. And it was just a lot.

Websites are not like that anymore. ⁓ It's gotten so easy to find beautiful templates to create a much more engaging user experience. ⁓ And really your design communicates your brand standards. So if your site looks dated, clients are gonna assume your work is, or that it's gonna kind of chip away from the value that you could be building and the demand that you could be building as people go to your website. Because don't forget,

as a luxury good, which is what we are, nobody needs high-end photography. Nobody needs photos of their dog. Nobody needs photos of their family. Yes, do we want all those things? Of course. Are they super valuable? Are they something that will continue to be more more valuable as the years pass? Absolutely. But it's not a food on the table, roof over your head type of need. So in order to sell those types of things,

Like we're not looking at pain points. We need to be actually looking at building the desire for what we offer and having a beautiful website, you know.

and making sure that our website is not outdated is where we would start from that. So question for you, when was the last time you updated your site? If it's been more than two or three years, it probably needs a little refresh. If you built it five, six, seven years ago, yeah, it might be time to kind of rebuild that whole puppy from scratch to make sure that you are keeping with the times and keeping a website that is up to date. All right, mistake number two. This is a biggie.

Generic messaging. Alright, what does that look like? That is the one of just like, take great pictures of your dog. I just want to capture your family. I've been photographing dogs since I was little. I picked up a camera when I had my first baby and then just started photographing my friends' kids or the other preschool kids. Go look at 99 % of the photography websites out there and if your messaging is the same as them, you have generic messaging.

We need to really up the game and create messaging that showcases who we serve, how we serve them, how we're different than the rest of the photographers in our market. And that is really, really important to do.

So here's a really quick check that you can use to figure out if your messaging is too generic. Could another photographer in your area copy and paste your homepage or copy and paste your about page and it would work for them. If so, it's too generic. We need to figure out the values that we stand for, who we really serve and then dig into that. And for that, who we really serve, I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking the people they serve is whoever fits in their niche and their demographics. So if you're

A family photographer, you're like, yes, I serve anyone with a preschooler. If you're a pet photographer, you're like, I serve anyone with a dog. But we actually don't. Some photographers are more adventure-based. They're probably not going to take that little tiny Yorkie poo out on a five-mile hike. They're probably not out adventuring with their dogs on the weekends, where if you have a really high-end boutique fashion-based brand,

Yeah, maybe you are looking for the dogs with the pearls and the dogs that ride in the purses and things like that. Those are two very different ⁓ potential clients and both can be great clients.

Same thing if you're photographing families, like what makes the families that you love to photograph different and what are the values that you want to bring through into your business?

So there you go. Mistake number two, generic messaging. Make sure that you do that audit. Could your copy on your website work for anybody else? If so, it's too generic. All right, mistake number three. While you're looking at that copy, is it too much? Do you have too much text? What does this look like? Paragraphs everywhere, long about pages, all sorts of text. You guys, we used to be able to read.

⁓ Over the past 10 years, especially over the past three, four, or five, people's attention spans, if they see more than a couple lines of text, there is no chance they're reading it. We want our websites to be skimmable. We want to be able to see beautiful pictures, kind of get the points of whatever the text is saying, and have some areas where they can read a little bit more. But if you have more text than images on your website, it is hurting you.

Make sure that you have more real estate given to beautiful images than you do big blocks of text and make sure that that text is skimmable with headlines, sub headlines. ⁓ You can highlight or bold certain sentences in a longer paragraph. You can have bullet points to make it a little bit more skimmable. If you have testimonials,

and you want to put that whole testimonial up, what's those impactful sentence? Bold that sentence because people will likely skim it, read the bolded sentence, and then if they're like, ⁓ I do want to read more of that, then they'll read the rest of that paragraph. So mistake number three, too much text.

All right, mistake number four. Those photos that you do have are not the star of the show. So what does that look like? Small gallery images, photos buried below the fold, design elements competing for your work. You guys, we are photographers, so our images should be first and most prominent thing that people see. When somebody lands on our homepage, we really want them to see our best work immediately.

and not have to scroll down and find it. And when they do, they're just really small images that you can't see big. So make sure we can have those images as big as possible on our site and make sure that they are definitely the star item.

All right, mistake number five, not having a clear call to action. So what does this look like? ⁓ No obvious next step or unclear how to book, contact or inquire. ⁓ Or it could just be something that's like book here and it just goes to a contact page. Like what, what is the process? We did an entire ⁓ episode here on the podcast all about how the inquiry process has changed. If you haven't listened to that,

highly recommend that you do. We'll link it down below in the show notes.

It was episode number 300 that was released on July 22nd of this year, 2025. It's called why our photography inquiry process is broken. So go listen to that if you haven't and ⁓ then yeah, come back on over here. But anyway, the call to action, we need to make sure that we have a clear next step for our clients. Is that downloading a guide? that?

booking a call, like what do we want them to do and make sure that call out action is sprinkled throughout the website that like all roads lead to taking that next step because confused visitors don't convert. And if they have to hunt down how to work with you, they're not going to. So your quick check is can someone figure out how to contact you within five seconds of landing on your website?

All right, mistake number six, not showing your products or offerings. think a lot of us get into the mistake of, I'm a photographer, I sell photography. Nope, we do not sell photography. We sell our photographic art on products, generally. Some of us do sell some digital images, ⁓ but most of us, once we start to move into that more sustainable lane, start moving into products.

because usually it's pretty hard to move the price of digital only up to a level that is really sustainable because if you're selling digital only, even if your images are 8,000 times better than the other digital only photographers in your market, you're still selling the same thing to the eyes of your client and those digital only options are really kind of a commodity and there's always going to be people less expensive and clients don't understand why digital files from one photographer's $200

or digital files from you are $2,000. So when you, you know, you can still sell digital files, love to sell digital files, but along with products. So by creating beautiful, tangible items for your clients, you're differentiating yourself from those clients. And that's really kind of what we're selling is a way to create artwork albums, things that people are going to enjoy for many, many years, but

It's really important that we showcase that on our website. If we just have images, again, we're not building that demand for what we offer. So we want to have images of our work, but also images of our work in the final form that they will be enjoyed, which is on walls, in albums, on products. And some of your labs will be able to have

images that you can download and then have a Photoshop mask. You can just go ahead and put your image on top of these mock-ups, these digital mock-ups of the products. You could also use lots of different kinds of software to create ⁓ walls. They can be actual pictures of people's homes, but there's so many beautiful images of well-decorated homes, a lot of AI images of homes.

⁓ that really are homes that maybe don't exist, but we all want to live in. So they're really good for marketing. They're beautiful. ⁓ But anyway, you can have these beautiful rooms that then you superimpose your artwork onto using any of your sales software that you might use. You can use Canva. You can look for those images that are just, you drop your image right on top on ⁓ websites like Creative Market.

there's so many places where you can go and find some of those digital files to then showcase your art in its final form as artwork on their walls. And that should be the main focus of the images on your website, some of your headers. ⁓ Maybe you have a whole gallery of like different artwork examples or ways to enjoy your images or you just intersperse them into your regular gallery. Like make sure that you start to put those or

ever you can because people buy with their eyes and if they can't visualize what they're getting, they don't value it. So do you have images of your actual products on your site, not just the photos you take, but what clients will walk away with? All right. Mistake number seven is a big one and that is a terrible or non-existent mobile experience.

You guys, going to mess up the actual stat, but I believe it's something like 86 % of traffic on the internet is now on mobile. 86%. And I'm hearing that from my other friends that are in ⁓ the online business world, that the vast majority of people are going to their sites on mobile. It is the same for photographers. The vast majority of our clients are viewing our images on mobile, which as someone who creates

What I think is some beautiful images, some beautiful photography, the fact that they're viewing them on this teeny tiny screen makes me really sad. But we can't change it. That's where they are. So that's where we need to meet them. So we need to make sure that our site looks beautiful on a website, like on a desktop. We also need to make sure that site still looks really engaging and beautiful when you're looking at a little tiny vertical screen.

We need to make sure that our websites are responsive so that it adjusts the design based on what they're viewing it on. Is it a big wide monitor? Is it a normal size monitor? Is it a ⁓ tablet in vertical orientation? Is it a tablet in horizontal orientation? Is it a website? Or I'm sorry, is it a phone? So what does your website look like on all those different devices?

which is really frustrating and challenging, but it is definitely something we need to make sure that we're doing and accounting for because so much of the traffic is coming from mobile. So if they're coming to you on their phone and your website is really not set up for phone navigation or really hard to navigate or just looks bad there, you've already lost them. So I want you to go ahead, grab your phone, pull up your website and see what that looks like.

I'm super guilty of this too, that I'm working on my websites or I'm working on a landing page or I'm working on whatever. I'm working on that on my desktop. I'm never working on building my websites on a phone. I can think of nothing more frustrating than that. Sometimes we forget to look at it from the phone. It's really, really important that we do make sure that they check that out whenever you're updating things. All right, mistake number eight. No social proof or testimonials.

In today's world, there is less trust than ever out there in the marketplace because people are inundated with offers. ⁓ People are inundated with AI. They're like, is this a real website? Is this a real person? Is this real photography? And the social proof is something that just elevates

the value of what we offer, it legitimizes that we're a real person, it legitimizes this is a real offer, it lets people know that they are going to have a good experience, that it's not a scam. It's so, so important that we continue to work in client reviews, testimonials, or proof that real people have worked with and loved you. And you don't have to wait till you have paying clients to do this. You can ask any of the models you might've used for your portfolio building.

⁓ Ask them what it's like to work with you. Ask them, you know, what did they think about the session? What were they nervous about before the session? How much they enjoy their images? Like, you don't have to wait till you have paying clients to start building up that testimonial bank. So please start doing that. Make sure you send them to your Google reviews. Make sure you sprinkle it in all throughout your website because social proof builds trust faster than anything else.

Okay, mistake number nine, confusing navigation. What does that look like? Too many menu options, unclear labels, you can't find the pricing or contact information easily. Like every single time we make people click more, it's a chance that they're gonna leave. They're gonna get frustrated, they're gonna go. ⁓ So super simple navigation actually leads to more bookings. ⁓ I've seen sites where there's like six high level, ⁓

navigation buttons at the top and then underneath each one is like six more sub navigation links. Too much, too much. You don't need to have just a one page website, but really you should only have four to six different navigation options up top. Maybe a portfolio and about me, ⁓ an experience or investment tab and a contact page. That's really all you need. You don't need to have too, too many things. So simple is better.

and make sure it is nice and easy that people can easily find your pricing, your portfolio and contact page in one click from your homepage. All right, mistake number 10. Now we're starting to get into the technical stuff and that is slow load times. I know you've experienced this before. Maybe you put something in a chat and it's thinking too long and you're like, ⁓ I can't possibly sit here for 30 seconds. So I'm just going to pick up my phone and scroll on my phone. I'm not speaking from experience. That doesn't happen to me.

Lies it does ⁓ but anyway sites that take too long to load people were just gone They they are they are just bounced. They're not gonna stay if your site is not loading So you need to make sure it is loading quickly How do you make sure it's loading quickly? Well, we need to be really careful about what size images we use to optimize on our website because if we're uploading, you know five megabyte files

which are actually fairly small, my camera, shoot with the R5, those files are, I think they're close to 40 megabytes. Like after I edit them, my final images, ⁓ they're huge. They're at least 25 megabytes. That's what the compressed raw. And then if I was uploading those for every image, 25 megabytes to my site, even if my site goes through and compresses it,

Those are just way too big. So we need to make sure that we're optimizing our images to look great on the site, but also load quickly on the site. Very, very important. ⁓ Same thing with videos. A lot of times you can go ahead and upload it to YouTube or Vimeo and then embed it. And when you upload it to those sites, it can be an unlisted video. So people aren't just like scrolling YouTube and find it. It's unlisted, but then you embed it into your site.

And so that way when your site loads, it's playing it from another platform and you're not having to load all of that through your website so it can load faster. So there's a lot of things to consider there with load times, but you should definitely make sure it's quick. So here's a quick little test for you is to go to your website and time how long it takes for your homepage to fully load. If it's more than a second or two, you definitely want to take a look. All right. And then our bonus.

tip or mistake is not having SEO basics covered. you guys, SEO is a long game, but right along with email newsletters, I think it is a critical long game. I think it is a, if you don't take care of this, like at some point, well, throughout the whole thing, you're making your business a lot harder than it needs to be. That SEO is just like basically free marketing. Your website's there.

It's you're working on it. It's beautiful. You're updating it like let people find it because it is your main storefront. So let's make sure that we are taking care of our SEO. Do we have Google integration? Is Google indexing it? Did we submit our site to Google? Do we have a Google My Business or My Places, whatever they're calling it now. Are your pages optimized? Are you showing up in local searches? Are you having people leave Google reviews such helps?

⁓ update or bump up your SEO. Because if you're not showing up in Google searches, you're invisible to potential clients actively looking for photographers. Now there is a little bit of an elephant in the room here around SEO and that is ⁓ showing up on chat GBT searches because I think there's going to be a big shift over the next year as people

more and more people start using chat GPT instead of going to Google for research or asking questions or looking for a photographer. right now, I think the main way that chat is pulling in recommendations is based on your Google ranking. Now that could change, ⁓ you know, who knows what that world's going to look like over the next year or two. But it doesn't change the fact that making sure that you're showing up well.

for Google searches is still really, really important. So a quick way to check that is I want you to go to your website and if you're on Google Chrome or whatever browser, make sure you search in an incognito browser ⁓ because if you search in your own browser, it knows you've been there, you're gonna be pulled up to the top. It's kind of gonna bump you up in a way that other people wanna see. So if you go incognito,

see where you're showing up. If you end up going to like, I don't know, a friend's house in another part of town or in another city or another state, go incognito on their computer and Google, you know, your city pet photographer, your city family photographer and see where it shows up because then you're also, you know, in a different location away from your house. Cause sometimes Google is like, I want to make sure I show the closest thing. So when you're searching from your house for your home business,

You might be elevated a little bit even in incognito search. ⁓ anyway, definitely take a look at that and make sure that you are showing up ideally on the first page. And if not, let's keep working on our SEO. Like I said, it's not an overnight fix for SEO, but it is a long game and it is a really important long game to play.

If you want to download a free PDF with these 11 mistakes, plus the questions that you need to ask yourself or look into to do your own website audit, just go to freedomfocusformula.com slash web audit. One word, W E B A U D I T freedomfocusformula.com slash web audit. And you can download this for free. Um, but let me go over it here real quick for those of you guys that are listening. Um, so mistake number one, outdated design.

⁓ when was the last time you updated your site? If it's been more than two or three years, it just might need a refresh. Mistake number two, generic messaging. The question to ask yourself is could another photographer in your area copy and paste your homepage and the copy would still work. If yes, it's way too generic. Too much text, quit check is do you have more text space on your website than

image space, like you want your images to take up more real estate than your text.

Mistake number four, your photos aren't the star of the show. So when somebody lands on your homepage, do they immediately see your best work or do they have to scroll down to find it?

And by that, I don't mean you need to have your whole portfolio up above the fold, but you should definitely have a big impactful hero image that can scroll. doesn't have to scroll. can be static. ⁓ but there should definitely be a big, beautiful image when people first open your website.

Mistake number five, no clear call to action. Can someone figure out how to contact you within five seconds of landing on your site?

Mistake number six, not showing your products or offerings. Do you have the images of your actual products on your site? Not just the photos you take, but what the clients actually walk away with. Mistake number seven, terrible mobile experience. Pull up your phone right now on your phone. Look at it for real. How hard is it to navigate? What does it look like? Be honest. Mistake number eight, no social proof testimonials.

Do you have testimonials visible on your site?

Mistake number nine, confusing navigation.

Can someone find your pricing portfolio and contact page with just one click from your homepage? Mistake number 10, slow load times. Open up that puppy and time how long it takes to open. Really, we should be looking for less than a second, two seconds max.

Mistake number 11, no SEO basics. So your quick check for here is Google your city type of photographer. So Charlotte Pet Photographer and see where you show up. Make sure you do that in incognito browser. And then if you really want to test it, do it from someplace other than your home.

Don't forget, if you want to download just a PDF list of what we just went over there, just go to freedomfocusformula.com slash web audit to grab it for free. Okay. So if you listen to this and you're thinking, my gosh, my site has like eight of these 11 problems, I get it. Here's what usually happens next. You might tell yourself, I'll fix it later, or I'll get to it when I have more time. Do we think that's ever going to happen?

I don't know if you're like me when I say I'll fix it later, that really means I'm never going to get around to it. So later never comes. Every day you wait is going to be another day that a potential client checks out your site and doesn't book. Like I'm not saying this to stress you out. I'm saying it because I care about your business and I know how much a strong website matters.

What's the cost of waiting? All right, well, let's think about it. How many inquiries have you gotten in the past six months that didn't convert? How many of those people do you think checked out your website and decided to go with someone else? Or how many people went to your website and didn't even reach out to you because of some of these mistakes that a lot of us have on our website? Our websites are working for us 24 seven or against us. And if it's not reflecting the value of what you offer your clients,

It is quietly costing you bookings that you might never even know about it. So what do you do about it? You have a few options. You can go total DIY, which means you just log into your platform, show it Squarespace, WordPress, and just like basically you just start building a website with whatever tools they have. ⁓ this is very challenging unless you are a web designer or a web developer. I don't recommend the total DIY. ⁓

It's just going to be next to impossible to get something that functions and looks, ⁓ well, that functions well and looks nice. so option number two is DIY with templates. So this is still DIY, but instead of just like logging into Squarespace and being like, I don't know, let me just add, start adding things here. ⁓ this will be buying a template from a template creator that you just import into whatever.

website platform you want to use. And it's kind of set up already. You change some colors, you change some thoughts, you add some images and you're ready to go. So this is a good option if you have more time than the money to invest in your business and you're willing to spend a decent amount of time kind of creating this template. ⁓ You know, at least when you're buying a template, generally it's designed in a way that should convert.

and ⁓ with design principles in place. So that is definitely an option. Option three is having somebody build you a custom site. Now this is definitely the most expensive, but it's also the easiest in terms of lift for you because while you're still gonna have some homework, you're still gonna have to work on your copy, you're still gonna have to gather images. Like you don't have to go be the one to put it all in there to figure out how to SEO optimize it, to figure out how to

Make sure the images are the right size for loading them into this template. You can just focus on the messaging, what you want to share, and kind of how you want it built. And your custom website builder, that person will work with you to create a great user experience on the website, a great website that will help lead your inquiry to, or lead your visitor, your website visitor to become an inquiry, to become a booking.

So they can kind of build a custom experience through your website. Like I said, generally these can be pretty expensive. ⁓ I had a custom Hair of the Dog Academy website built, ⁓ gosh, probably about seven years ago. And it was close to $10,000 then. Like it is not inexpensive, but it's worth it. It's beautiful. I love it. It's a great website, ⁓ but it's a big investment.

There is one more that is kind of an option that's really only available to those of you guys listening to this podcast, somewhat close to release date, and that is my friend Connor Wahlberg. You guys might know him as an SEO expert. He also designs ShowIt websites, and he is offering a custom website build on the ShowIt platform for only three photographers at a special $2,000 price point.

⁓ he is building these out. So he has a nice really portfolio of these custom sites, cause this is a new service he's offering. And, ⁓ so therefore, since it's a newer service, ⁓ he is offering that discounted rate. So he can use it for his, his portfolio to, to market for the full service at a later date, which will definitely be over $5,000. Once he's marketing, ⁓ these, he, once he builds out this portfolio. So anyway,

Connor's amazing. I fully support him and trust him and know that he has your back and can create a beautiful website for you. And the bonus is because he's an SEO expert, you know that those last two options that we talked about, the load time and your SEO on your website are definitely going to be included. It's going to be fully custom. It's not just a template.

designed specifically for your brand, your work, your clients. It's going to include SEO setup, mobile first design, WordPress blog integration, and six months free in its SEO membership. Like I said, he's only taking three photographers at this price because he wants to keep it personal and collaborative. And then after this round, the price is going to go up.

If you are interested in chatting with Connor, we will have that link down below ⁓ underneath this video, but it is connorwalberg.com slash design dash inquiry. And Connor is spelled C O N N O R. Walberg is W A L B E R G. So connorwalberg.com slash design dash inquiry.

And you can reach out to him, non-binding to reach out to him. Just, can ask them more about the services. So ask you about, ⁓ what you're looking for and if it's a right fit, then, you guys can move forward and yeah, take advantage of this really incredible deal. So if you listen to this episode and realize your website has some or all, it's okay. We're not judging of these problems and you've been putting off fixing it because you don't have the time. You don't know how, or you don't want to spend thousands and thousands of dollars.

This might be exactly what you need. anyway,

go ahead and check it out. And I just wanted to leave you with the thought that your work deserves a website that matches its quality. Your business deserves a website that really builds and shares the value of what you're offering. So don't let your website be the thing that's holding your back, whether you DIY it, grab the templates, ⁓ or go all in with ⁓ some custom design. ⁓ Let's make sure our websites are working for us, not against us. All right.

That's it, I'll see you guys next week.