Thank you Rick for asking us to be guest bloggers on your site! Our post is entitled, "42 Seconds is all you have!" Here we go!
Did you know that the average website gets about 42 seconds of click-through time before people make the decision to act, or leave the site? Yikes! So what should our thought process be when looking at how our website is designed? Have we even thought through what we are trying to accomplish with our site? Do we want people to enjoy looking at lots of cool pictures? Do we want people to want to Pintrest all of our shots? Or do we want to actually turn a prospect into a client?
When we set out to build our current website, we had a very specific strategy:
1. Attract - We want to attract a client to something unique that helps us stand out from everyone else.
2. Excite - We want to excite them with content, not overwhelm them with images.
When I (Zach) used to play music professionally before I became a photographer, we were the opener band when we first started out. And guess what, no one comes to see the opener. When a prospect (someone that came to see the headliner, but we want to convert them to a paying customer of our music) hears us play, we need to attract them to us, play a short set to leave them wanting more, and give them a call to action (come to the table and meet us in-person). That is how we got record sales and created fans at shows. If you play too long, all people start to do is wish you were done and start chanting for the headliner.
We want to do the same thing on our website. We realized that if we have wedding galleries 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 with 50 photos in each one, no one will ever look at them all, they will get overwhelmed, and be soooooo bored by the end they won't even want to hit the contact button which is the only link that truly matters on your site! So we recommend showing 30 images tops and you will get more people contacting you for more.
We don't want people hanging out on our site, we want them acting. If the couple wants to see more images, they can head over to the blog or facebook and get engaged there. They will also get to see a full wedding in an album during our sales presentation to get an idea of an entire body of work.
3. Connect - That is it! We want them to contact us as soon as possible so that we can qualify them and and book them. We want leads and we want to turn those leads into clients.
(We will have another post on qualifying clients and how we specifically do that in one of our regular blog posts: Tuesday Photography Tips & Tricks.
Check out this video we made to see how this is practically done on our site!
Thanks again Rick. We enjoyed being your guests.
Zach and Jody
zachandjody.com
Named as one of Nashville, Tennessee’s top wedding photographers in 2009, Zach and Jody Gray quickly gained national recognition for their imagery and business savvy in the wedding photography industry. They have hosted numerous highly successful photography workshops on business and shooting in the states and overseas, and have been invited to speak at WPPI, Imaging USA, creativeLIVE, and SWPP in London. Their images have appeared in various publications including People, Southern Bride, and PPA Magazine. Zach and Jody have also been named by Westcott as one of their Top Endorsed Pros and are a part of the exclusive SanDisk Extreme Team.
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