Your website as a photographer is such a crucial element to the success of your photography career.
In this episode I talk about why it's important to have a website and the key thing you need to focus on to optimize your site. Think about having a clothing brand but having no physical location for people to buy your clothes at the store or no website for people to buy online. You need to have a website and it needs to be curated in a way that suits your potential client's needs.
(head over to uvsucommunity.com to find resources on the basic essentials you need for a successful photography website that won't keep you procrastinating on creating one if you don't have one yet)
While having a website is a great start to your photography journey, many photographers make the mistake of only focusing on what they emotionally enjoy in their work to display on their website.
You're not hiring yourself for photography services, so your focus needs to be on your visitors' experience when they land on your site.
This is the key thing you need to know in order to optimize your site.
Your website analytics.
It's not just enough to focus on the content of your site but you need to know the data of what's going on when your potential client lands on your site.
I talk about the 3 major website providers most of us know about.
Squarespace
Wix
Wordpress
I primarily focus on Squarespace in this episode because that's what I use and remember, I don't claim to be an "expert". I'm simply sharing from my own experience what has helped or hurt me throughout my photography career.
Although, having done a little research to save you some time, Wordpress does not have an analytics program built in to their site because Wordpress is what is called an "open source" website. Though, there are an enormous amount of awesome plugins that can get the job done but these are just a few;
Google Analytics (Free and easy to install)
Heap
Crazy Egg
WP Statistics
Wix is a little easier than Wordpress in the event that it does actually have analytics software already installed into their website for their users. Here's a link to the article that explains how to set that up.
Adding Your Google Analytics to Your Wix Site (https://support.wix.com/en/article/adding-your-google-analytics-tracking-id-to-your-wix-site)
Squarespace is amazing when it comes to their analytics. They, too, have analytics built right into their site for users. It was an easy couple of clicks to have it "unlocked" basically under the "Analytics" tab when you login to your Squarespace back office.
This is powerful information. These are some of the questions you need to be asking yourself.
Do you know who is visiting your website
Do you know what they're doing once they land on your site
Do you know where they're coming from
Do you know what keywords or blogposts that are driving the most visitors to your site
"If you know the data to your website you won't have to hit the bullseye with blindfolds"
I then go in to what types of data Squarespace provides to you from your sales, demographics, keywords, popular content and more.
Popular Content
This information is the bomb. It's also the "actionable tip" I encourage you to focus on from today's episode.
Remember, my focus is to give you at least one actionable thing you can do to apply to your business and cause growth rather than being overwhelmed with information that leads you paralyzed.
The popular content data of your Squarespace back office can strategically be used to understand where most of your visitors are landing on after they open your site.
This is important because in terms of optimization on your site, if you know what content is popular, you can focus on driving more of an experience and more of your attention to that section, thus driving more traffic to your site and creating a better...
