AboutJohn Wilson Expertise Over 27 years specializing exclusively in professional wedding photography. I can answer most questions relating directly to wedding photography concerning the business, film, digital, traditional & digital labs, marketing, effects, pricing & packaging, shooting outdoors and in-studio with multiple flash, color management and creating magazine style wedding albums. I can't answer questions regarding other fields of photography.
Experience Over 27 years experience photographing weddings professionally. Past 4 years shooting digital exclusively.
Organizations Better Business Bureau.
Education/Credentials Going to photography seminars and reading all the wedding photography books I can find then applying the techniques and new styles I've learned with each wedding. You always need to grow and learn to keep up in this field. With each new wedding you photograph, you must challenge yourself to do better work than your previous wedding. You must always have the goal of making the wedding photographs for a bride & groom be the best photographs they have seen of any wedding.
I was visiting your website and it sure is big and seems well designed to me. Do you do your website yourself or does someone else do it for you? How much of your business comes from your website vs word of mouth and other advertising? I don't have a website but I have seen some creative flash websites I've been thinking about. The most expensive is only around $400. If you had it to go over again, would you still use a website? If so or if not, what would you do differently? Any other thoughts or recommendations about a professional website design would be appreciated. Thanks.
Jerry
Thanks for your questions about a professional business website design. I am the website designer for all my websites and I also design websites for other businesses in the Chattanooga Tennessee and surrounding south-east region.
Actually Wedding Photographics is not one of my more sophisticated designs, but it works and doesn't take too much of my time to maintain. I've made it "big" and have provided a lot of content with copy written to help optimize its pages in search engine results. We get about 20% of new business from our website. When we first started doing wedding photography in Chattanooga about 6 years ago, the website brought us the vast majority of our photography customers. Now that we have photographed about 200 weddings in the surrounding area, we do enjoy a lot of referral business in Chattanooga.
As of today, November 2, 2008, we have 7 more weddings booked until the end of the year. We currently have 17 weddings booked for 2009. Ironically most the weddings we have left this year we aquired thanks to our website. Most of those weddings are in Knoxville Tennessee and Gatlinburg. So even for established photographers in a given market, a website can be a cost-effective way of expanding your market reach.
Chattanooga business people who come to me for website design are interested in more personal service with better custom website design results. They are not restricted to emailing and phone calls like they would be with a distant agency - we meet one another at their offices or mine to discuss their websites in person. Often while I'm there, I can shoot small products, the location, major company players etc. This reduces their costs for such services when I'm at their location and I since have the talent and resources to provide these services as a single vendor.
So I recommend, when possible, to work in person with your website designer. If your designer is the same person who can provide you professional photography, professional video, shopping carts and more, go with that person.
"52% of people who see an online video ad go to a website, visit a physical location, or buy something. Source: Online Publishers Association, Frames of Reference Study, 2007.
"70% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company designated as a BBB Accredited Business." Source: Princeton Research Findings 2007.
The two facts above are among a myriad of things to consider for an effective business website. A freelance website designer like myself can provide a very cost-effective website and internet marketing solution to business.
I don't recommend a flash only website. While they can look very attractive and and they render consisently across various browsers and screen resolutions, there are internet marketing and other limitations of flash template websites. When I want flash to showcase my photography, I merely embed a flash slide show on any given page of my website. A good website designer can create an XHTML website with dynamic html and other technologies which rival flash template websites. There are a few website companies which specialize in flash template websites and what really makes them attractive as a website solution is the simple fact they incorporate envogue graphic design elements in their simple flash websites and they are priced relatively low. A better solution is to pay a little more for a freelance website designer who can also incorporate graphic design elements which tickle your fancy. Then you will have a website design you are proud of and which will work hard for your business.
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