Hi everybody, sorry for keeping you waiting for the next post. We’ve decided to start New Year with some basic must-follow tips for professional or amateur photographers who’re willing to launch a website.

Some of the tips you will find below are going to work perfectly for any type of website. No matter if you have photography or model agency, agricultural or architectural company, web design or education studio.

Design

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So, number one thing you must follow is appealing and amazing design. The design is the face of your business. So, don’t be afraid and apply the most essential and powerful tricks from everyday business into the design concept. Let the webdesigner express your exclusivity through pixels. There is the only way to be the first – be the best. So, go ahead and tell everyone about your exclusive offers and possibilities. Do not forget to integrate the essential principles of your business into the web presence.
Here are few examples of photography websites for your inspiration.

Paul Reiffer

Model Actor Photography

Flash

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Second thing to use to make your photography website rock is using Flash technology. You may know that question about HTML 5 vs. Flash has become very popular lately. On one hand we have light, cross-device, easy-to-use and less expensive solution. On the other hand we have multi-layered animation, XML driven support, drag-and-drop functions as well as absolute design & layout freedom. We should note that Flash websites has been put in the same line with HTML ones due to their wide range of functions and possibilities. Anyway, we rather belong to “Flash school” and think that people of art deserve boundless ways of presenting themselves in the web.

Functionality

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The number of functions your visitors may operate with when surfing your site is called functionality. You need find a way to surprise your visitors with helpful and fun features so they will remember your site and definitely come back to you later. Even more, they will recommend your site to anyone else. Here is the list of the most necessary features for a photography website:

• “Zoom In/Out” for photos
• “Print/Save” for photos
• “Buy” directly from a site
• Private Galleries/Rooms for your existing customers
• Multi galleries
• Video galleries

Here is an amazing example of all-in-one functions (which you will find at the very top of the website screen) at MyActionProductions site developed by ReadyPhotoSite.

Backend support

This is sort of functionality for the website owner. More and more websites nowadays are built on CMS (Content Management System) platforms with a backend admin tool for managing the content. You don’t have to be a webdesigner or programmer to edit pages, portfolios or program the functions because this has been already done by professionals especially for you. Just be who you are and focus your energy on making best shots for your clientele.

This is an example of backend admin tool for ReadyPhotoSite Flash photography CMS websites for manipulating the gallery and content pages.

You have a chance to create your own trial website and play around with the admin tool through ReadyPhotoSite exclusive free membership. Read more about advantages of free membership with ReadyPhotosite.

Register your free account right now here!

Portfolio

You may definitely amaze your visitors with professional and creative design so they can say “wow … this website rocks”. But in order to make your visitors become your clients you have to prove you are the right person they have been searching for so long. Portfolio is the best way to prove this. That’s a great way to showcase your masterpieces. Few tips to keep in mind:

• Make sure you cover all the aspects of your works in portfolio. Details are essential and necessary.
• Categorize your works. It will be much easier to search through your gallery and find what you need.
• Make the portfolio navigation as easy as possible. No one wants to strain the brain, so no puzzles here.
• Make sure the photos are being loaded dynamically and by batches, which is much faster.

Check out nice portfolio cases below:

Daniel Herendi

Dominique Vinciguerra Photographe

Feedback

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The contact form is the simplest way to let your visitors, users and fans leave feedback on your site. You may also consider guestbook forms where people can post feedback to the actual website page. Another great way to leave comments, reply to them and view them all is blogging. Blogs provide the space and tool for easy and fast communication between people with related interests. There are multiple ways of launching blog: using free service (for example Blogger.com which gives you free space, free blogging system and free name) and using free open source blogging software (for example Wordpress).

SEO

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SEO (known as Search Engine Optimization) is the process of improving the visibility of your website in search engines in a “natural” way. Where some may buy the position in search rates or use irrelevant information on the website pages to gain popularity artificially (and for a short life time in the most cases) you can optimize the code of your site to be more user-friendly and simple and write qualitative content “for users” and not for “search spiders”. Find lots of useful information about on-page and off-page seo techniques provided by SeoMoz here.

By the way, ReadyPhotoSite Flash websites are enhanced with tags support and deep linking, which make our flash websites more searchable by Google.

Let’s sum up the most popular, effective and successful trends in photography websites:

• Creative and sophisticated design
• Simple, fast yet magnificent flash animation & effects
• User-oriented functionality
• Backend/CMS support
• Impressive portfolio
• Feedback support
• Effective SEO plan

Related posts:

1. Flash Photo Website vs HTML Photo Website
2. Photography Website Templates: To Use Or Not To Use?
3. How To Promote A Photography Website
4. 5 Useful Tips To Choose The Right Photography CMS
5. Why Have A Personal Portfolio Website