How to Curate Your Website
You’ve laid the ground work for you beautiful new site and now its time to curate your Showit website! Congrats, friend! This is the fun part!
Struggling to choose images for their site is a common complaint I hear among my students, so I thought it was time to share some knowledge in hopes this helps you too!
Thinking of your website as 2 parts, the copy, and the images, can help! The copy tells the story literally, the images make people “feel” the story! Let’s tell it well!
5 Tips for Curating Website Images
1- Get in front of the camera-yes you! Your headshot needs to match your branding. Send a clear message to your clients, don’t confuse them with different styles of photography on your main page. If you are thinking about redoing your site and don’t have headshots that match, go ahead and schedule them ASAP! This will make a huge difference. And while you’re sending them to your designer or uploading them in Showit? Update your IG, FB, and personal profile images too! Keep it consistent.
2-Negative space is your friend. While some of your favorite images might be filled with intricate details. or a close up couples shot, use these sparingly. It’s helpful to have negative space in your images for text, logos, menu bars etc. If you don’t have many images that can accommodate this, head to a styled shoot or see if you have images that by cloning over details you can create this style! Main point? Leave space for your copy to shine on too on your Showit website.
3-Avoid seasonal photos. Your website should be full of evergreen content and save the seasonal themed images for your social media and Pinterest. An exception to this would be if you have a featured gallery of say, a family session with beautiful fall leaves, because that is popular in your area. Make it intentional and be sure to still blog those to send to future clients as well!
4-You know when you go to sell a house and they tell you to depersonalize it? Same goes for your website! An image of YOU looking at the camera helps your clients feel connected to you. An image of a couple staring right back at your prospective client can be too direct. It’s easier for people to “see” themselves in your photos if they aren’t making eye contact with the image! Find photos showing emotion between people as opposed to a traditional portraits. An exception to this can be testimonials from clients.
5- This might be the most important thing so I hope you’re still reading along! Only showcase image you could recreate! If it was a crazy one off or a style you don’t offer to everyone, skip it and showcase it on your media channels or blogs instead. An example from my portfolio is this family shoot in Arizona, while I want to shoot in Arizona more, my base audience is San Antonio. It’s unlikely that I can create this image for a family in Texas or be hired to fly to Arizona for a family session.
These 5 tips will help you curate your Showit website so when your designer asks for images, you have a guide to go by! I’m so excited for you to be creating your digital home! Cheers to designing, friends!
PIN IT FOR LATER
Resources
The Kate Collective-Website Design and Branding
Salted Pages-Copywriting for Creatives
Blogging Workflow for Photographers
Anna Kay Photography is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Antonio, Texas. Anna loves to educate new photographers and encourage them to build the business they’re dreaming of. Ready to connect? Reach out here!
