Our Commercial Photography Websites…Lessons Learned

In March we launched our new Commercial Photography website. In fact, this is our 4^th web design since we launched our 1^st website back in June 2000. We’ve learned some lessons along the way so I thought I might share them with you

Don’t Jump in With Both Feet! Our 1st Commercial Photography Website

Back in 2000, our studio was only 2 years old so we were still focusing on getting our name out there as a reputable commercial photographer and building a client base. We felt that the internet would be an effective tool for doing this so (obvious now but back then the internet was still in its infancy), we invested a lot of money (€4,000 in today’s money) in our 1 ^st website; see Images 1-4. Our focus was on having a web presence and our website was basically an online brochure that displayed just 30 of our commercial photography images

We discovered some time later that it wasn’t even a good brochure because no one could find us! Turns out the web design company were more designers than web developers; they did little or no search Engine Optimisation (SEO) on our site and had used an image for our name rather than actual text so even if you Googled “David Cantwell Photography” you couldn’t find us!

LESSON 1 - Take time to choose a reputable Web Development Company that provides SEO

LESSON 2 - Make sure your website is visible and easily found

A Little Knowledge Goes a Long Way! Our 2nd Commercial Photography Website

So now we had a website that was lost in cyber space and no money to navigate people to it. In 2003, I found a part-time course run locally on Microsoft FrontPage; a website administration tool (now defunct) and by the end of the 3 month course I had a basic understanding of how to design and develop a website

After another 6 months of working on a new web design while, at the same time reading everything I could on SEO, I was ready to go live with our new website See Images 5-6. Over the following few weeks I monitored and tweaked our website so that week on week, it improved its Google ranking. Now, not only could we be easily found if you were looking for David Cantwell Photography but if you were looking for a; Commercial Photographer, Food Photographer, Interiors Photographer, Hotel Photographer, Corporate Photographer etc.

LESSON 3 - SEO is just as important as your web design

Time for a Facelift! Our 3rd Commercial Photography Website

By 2011 our website was highly ranked on Google and we could be easily found. But we felt it needed an overhaul as it; had dated, wasn’t impactful enough and didn’t feature enough of our photography. So, over the Christmas break I researched the current website trends and looked at website templates. I then spent every spare minute developing a new site and in January 2012 we launched our 3 ^rd website; see Images 7-9

LESSON 4 - Your website should keep up with current website trends

♫Let it Go ♫ Our 4th Commercial Photography Website

In April 2015 Google updated its algorithm to give priority to responsive websites; websites that are mobile friendly. The change was so significant that web developers nicknamed it, “Mobilegeddon” ( a blend word of "mobile" and "Armageddon") because the change could cause such huge disruptions to page rankings

I knew we had to upgrade our website if we were to maintain our Google ranking so; I started researching how to go about it. At the same time though our hosting provider informed me that they were no longer supporting Microsoft FrontPage (the software I used to create our previous websites) so I realised that I was going to have to hire a web development company

I have to be honest, I found it difficult letting go. For 12 years, I’d developed our website and it had become a labour of love. But I had to be pragmatic about it; if we didn’t make our website mobile friendly, pretty soon we’d be back to where we were in 2000; lost in cyber space

So, in March 2017 we launched our new commercial photography website www.davidcantwellphotography.c... Our website is now not only responsive and mobile friendly but it showcases over 1,000 of our commercial photography images

LESSON 5 - Your website should keep up with technological trends

Blog Post by Naomi Dunleavy - Studio Manager & Photo Stylist