So you spend several hundred dollars and purchase a website template, upload your images, and think you've got one of the best websites. If so, read on.
Recently Weddx picked 20 customers from its database, all wedding photographers, all curious about how their websites are doing as a marketing tool. Each photographer picked about 10 to 15 of their favorite clients for a survey. We have gathered 210 responses from brides. The photographers are geographically across US and so are their clients. The focus of this survey is all about wedding photographers' websites -- look and feel, navigation, ease of use, etc. To everyone's surprise, most reviews are negative, some received what we call a "disaster". Below are some responses from brides regarding different elements of the websites:
When asked about the use of music, an overwhelming 80% of the brides provided negative reviews, and 19% neutral, only 1% positive!
- "OMG, don't get me started on the music, I hate it. I don't know about other people, but I do my research at work and I always forgot to turn off the speaker!"
- "The first thing I do when I look at a photographer's website is to turn off the music. There are some websites that I can't even find a button or icon to do so, I leave the website immediately."
- "I can see sometimes I could maybe see myself enjoy the music, but what's the point? I didn't come to your website to enjoy the music, I want to see your work."
- "I once visited a local photographer's website and the song playing was the same song of my first dance with my husband. Well, that's not the problem, the problem is he is my ex-husband. He abandoned me! The music brought back all the horrible memories as I am looking to get married again. I had to close my browser. Please, don't use music. Thanks."
When asked about the use of flash, 58% provided negative reviews, 22% neutral, and 20% positive.
- "The problem I have with flash is its too fancy. When I click on a menu, some random things (not sure what it is) was flying across the screen, I just don't care, show me your pictures please!"
- "It's just too slow to load. At work, it's OK, but when I go home, I have a DSL connection through my phone company (guess not as fast as other cable?), the website took quite a while to load and I got impatient with many of them and never get to see their work."
- "Too many effects, too many sizzles, too many clicks to get through anything."
- "I am not totally against flash, but I can't handle the black background. I cannot read text against black background, it hurts my eyes."
- "Many times I wanted to show the website to my friends when we get together, my iPhone won't display flash!"
When asked about overall experience of using the websites, 42% provided negative reviews, 31% neutral, 27% positive:
- "Many times I was greeted with a starting page, I needed to either select website, or blog. Once in the website, I had no way of getting back to the starting page. Not a big problem, but why bother with a first page at all?"
- "There are three things I want to see, your previous work, your pricing information, and how to contact you. I don't care about anything else, and you wouldn't believe how hard it could be to get those three things. Very frustrated!"
- "Many of the photographers do not display any pricing information. I totally do not get that! Why? I had to send an email to ask for pricing. And some won't give me and ask for a meeting. Seriously, are we wasting our precious time and then realize you are just out of my budget range however you try to "arrange" your package for me? I did it with one photographer and never did it again. Actually, I got so mad and I skipped all without pricing information afterwards. At least give me a clue if not the full price list."
- "Many of the websites are extremely similar in styles, are they all designed by the same person?"
- "I always like to verify availability first, so I love the calendar. But one problem I had is clicks. My wedding was 12 months away, so I had to click 12 times before I see that month. Every click comes with this little "loading" thingy, the whole thing took like forever to finally get to it."
Hope you now have a clearer picture of what brides want and how your website serves them.
Stay tuned as Weddx is about to launch its own Website services with built-in integrated blogging.
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