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Whether you're a seasoned photographer or are new to the field and building your portfolio, a website is crucial to your future success. A well-designed photography website helps you put your best foot forward and stand out from the competition.
Your photography site’s design should align with your professional goals and optimize your images for an online audience. To grow your business and web presence, you'll also need to develop a marketing and social media strategy.
Read on for a step-by-step guide on how to create a photography website or optimize your existing online photography portfolio for greater professional success.
How to make a photography website
Your photography portfolio is your professional calling card. Designing a photography website is different from designing a website for another small business. You need a website template or design that emphasizes images over text and displays the details well.
Set your goals. Whether you want to share your portfolio to build your professional brand, book clients, or sell photos, your goals will help you make decisions for your site.
Choose your favorite photos. It’s best to stick to a limited selection. Make sure your photos reflect recent work, major clients, and the type of work you want to create.
Choose a template or website layout. Your chosen photos and goals can help to guide you here. Test a few layouts to see which shows off your photos best and allows you to include other important details like service pricing.
Set fonts and colors. Your photos can help you here too. Go with fonts and colors that pair well with the palette or tone of the photos you’ve chosen.
Add website copy. This can be short and simple on your homepage—just introduce yourself and your work. If you’re feeling stuck, try using an AI tool for inspiration.
Add additional pages. Depending on your website goals, you’ll likely want to include an About Me page and a Contact page. You can also add an in-depth portfolio page, online shop, or services and booking page if you need.
Get a custom domain name. A domain is the URL people use to find your site. It’s simplest to use your name or your business name.
Publish and share. Once you have the basics in place, hit publish and start sharing your website. Get feedback from friends and peers and share your site on your professional accounts to start driving traffic to it.
How to set goals for your photography website
Photographers launch websites for many different reasons. Identifying your goals in advance will help shape the design of your photography website. To set goals for your website, ask yourself a few questions.
What type of photography do I want to focus on?
In an ideal scenario, what do I want someone to do before leaving my website (e.g., buy a print, book a session)?
What do I want to do next with my photography (e.g., earn money, learn and share, meet a community)?
For example, a photographer might be looking to grow their business in a niche area, like engagement photos or headshots, and will create a website to highlight their work in this area.
Other photographers may use their website as a hub to schedule photo shoots. Some photographers view their website as an online portfolio to send to potential clients and display a variety of photography styles and projects. Someone looking to make some extra money could add an online store to sell prints of their photos or teach an online photography course.
Websites for photographers aren't always set up to promote services or sell something. Some people set up a photography website simply because they're proud to show off their art.
How to optimize images for your website
When you upload photos to your social media accounts, chances are you might give them a light edit before posting them online. However, uploading and displaying images on your professional photography website requires a couple of additional considerations.
You might need to:
Adjust the color settings
Reduce the image file size
Rename the file to conform to certain specifications
Squarespace accepts the most common file extensions (.jpg, .gif, or .png), with names that only contain letters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens.
It's important to take these extra steps to optimize images for the web. Images that are too large might look blurry or affect how quickly your website loads. This might cause people to leave your website before viewing your photos. Images that are too small might not look as good on a desktop browser or lose detail on a mobile phone.
Optimizing photos on Squarespace
Photographers often use third-party applications and programs to compress images, improve image quality, or make other adjustments before uploading. However, Squarespace has built-in editing tools for more streamlined image optimization. Squarespace websites also come with responsive design capabilities, so your photos look good on any device.
You can also adjust how many photos are visible in a gallery block and how they're displayed. That way you can show off your work in a layout that suits it best.
For example, an automatic slideshow at the top of a page will roll through your photos one by one—great for photos with a similar theme or style. Or you can make your images visible all at once using a neatly defined grid—better for showing off a smaller selection of images. You can also add captions and links to photo projects, giving clients a fuller picture of your capabilities.
Read more about how to optimize images on your website
Selling photos and prints online
Selling prints is part of a smart business strategy, as this can help you expand your brand and audience while creating an additional income stream. Your customers will appreciate being able to buy additional prints of photo shoots you've done together to give as gifts. Others might be fond of a photo you've taken and want a print to frame, or opt to license a print for an editorial or advertising project.
To sell printed pictures, you'll need to build a photography website that allows you to add an ecommerce store or content subscription. Squarespace shops give you the option to sell physical prints or digital downloads of your art.
Squarespace also offers print on demand extensions so you can sell prints of your work without handling shipping and inventory fulfillment. Print on demand products typically provide different canvas textures on which to print photos, as well as photo album options. Squarespace’s checkout helps you calculate shipping and taxes and offer different payment and shipping methods.
If you’re focused on selling access to your photos, like selling stock photos, you can even create a Member Site to paywall access to your image library. You'll likely have the best luck selling prints once you've developed a following, a solid customer base, and a marketing strategy.
Read more about how to sell prints online via a photography website
Should you watermark your photos?
A photo watermark is an image—like plain text or your business logo—that's layered on top of a photograph before it's uploaded to a website. Watermarks are a permanent signifier that you are the creator of an image or photograph.
A watermark is a good way to protect your images from being used without your permission, though it’s not foolproof. But if someone reuses your photo without credit or permission, a watermark can help you take appropriate action in response.
Watermarks can be large or small and placed in prominent locations—for example, across the middle of a photo—or in more subtle places, such as the corner of an image. A larger watermark is harder to remove but can impact the look of your photos.
Photo watermarks also have advantages for promotion. When a photo of yours is shared on social media, people viewing the image may use a watermark to discover your business.
Read more about how to make a watermark
Benefits of creating a photography portfolio website
Getting your work in front of others is the main benefit of starting a portfolio website. Without it, it can be difficult to stand out from other photographers and reach new customers or clients. But, you also get some other benefits.
Control over presentation: With a photography website, you have control over how your work is presented and can create a layout that showcases it best.
Choose your audience: You can share your images with anyone with your website, without relying on social media algorithms. Or you can create a password-protected page to control who gets access.
Opportunities to earn: Even if you don’t start your website to earn money, having a site opens that option to you if you want it. With the right platform, you can choose a revenue stream that fits your goals and schedule.
A website is one of the best ways to carve out a permanent, public home for your photography portfolio. No matter your reason for launching a website, sharing your portfolio online can help you build connections.
How to market your photography business
Once you launch your photography website, the next step is promoting it to your personal and professional networks. Creative clients often come from referrals and word of mouth. If people know that you have a photography business, you’ll be top of mind for recommendations.
Marketing can also help you uncover new business ideas. For example, you may discover client interest in photo shoots tied to certain events or holidays (e.g., Halloween, graduation, etc.).
Strategies to promote your photography business share some similarities with a blog marketing strategy.
Set your promotional goals. Are you looking to sell more photo prints? Are you looking to build your photography business? Are you looking to sign up more clients?
Budget your time. If you have a busy schedule, focusing on one or two promotion strategies makes sense. These might rotate in and out depending on your needs.
Decide how you’ll market. Your strategy might include email marketing and newsletters, social media, a blog, SEO optimization, or other activities, like content collaborations. Focus on where your target audience is most likely to spend its time.
Start with word of mouth. Many businesses get their start by providing services to friends, family, and professional contacts. From there, you can grow your client list by encouraging referrals from your network.
Seek out community. Find a community of peers to share ideas and client recommendations. Or build connections where your target clients spend time. For example, instead of advertising in a wedding forum, join the group and ask what special touches people appreciate from their wedding photographers.
Read more about how to promote your photography website
Promoting your photography on social media
Because of the visual nature of photography, one of the most effective marketing tactics is to create a social media strategy. Social media is an easy way to share your work, grow a following, and cultivate your professional brand.
Start by asking yourself a few questions to create your social media strategy.
Which social media channels align best with your photography and business goals?
Do you already have a following on a specific channel or feel more comfortable with one platform?
Does your target audience spend time on any specific platforms?
You can use these questions to choose which platform or platforms to focus on. From there, see how other photographers use the platform and interact with their audience. You’ll get a sense of what feels natural to you, or promotion tactics to try.
Once you’ve created your social media accounts, make sure to mention and link to your website regularly.
Create a Bio Site, a customizable URL where you can link your site, store, appointment calendar, or other content all on one page. Include this in your social media profile.
Add a link to your site when you share new work to stories or in other posts that allow clickable links.
Plan regular updates to share new work. New posts will keep you top-of-mind for your followers so that the next time they need photography services or products, they think of you.
Make sure to link your social media to your website so website visitors can follow you and keep track of your updates. Squarespace offers several tools to help you display your social grid on your site and share content between your site and your social account.
Read more about how to connect social media to your photography website
This post was updated on March 27, 2024.